Chapter 6

"In short, the problem in the Cape Colony is one, which happily does not exist in either of the other great dependencies of the Crown; it is altogether peculiar to South Africa, of which, after all, England acquired possession by conquest, and, having acquired it, has never completely won the adhesion of the Dutch inhabitants, who resent such acts of Government as the abolition of slavery, the introduction of the English principle of equality before the law, and, above all, an unsettled vacillating policy, which last has the worst possible effect upon all the nationalities, European, as well as native, throughout South Africa.

"The present attitude of even British South Africa, is one, not of expectancy, but of slight hope, mingled with distrust, and after such conspicuous events as the dismemberment of Zululand, the retrocession of the Transvaal, in addition to the ineffective efforts towards confederation, he would be a bold man who, as an Englishman, would dare assert either that his country protected her children, or her dependent races, or that there is any settled British policy in the very Continent, where vigour, firmness, and consistency, combined with mere justice, seem to be absolutely essential.

"South Africa has yet to be won over to England, or, in other words, confidence has to be restored. The effort is surely worth making, and anything like a determined effort on the part of the Sovereign, and Her Majesty's immediate advisers would find a most vigorous and cordial response.

"The idea of confederation seems to be quite dependent upon such preliminaries, as mutual confidence, and a measure of common necessity, in order to such a question being seriously entertained.

"The Colonial Conference of two years ago, seems however to have paved the way for effective development in the direction of confederation.

"For it must be remembered, that the somewhat complex British constitution is not the creation of any one Monarch, or Parliament. It has grown to its present dimensions little by little, influenced always by the necessities of particular cases. The House of Peers has ever been summoned by writ, and early precedents indicate, that the Sovereign was not always limited to a particular class of Barons, who alone could be invited to the deliberations of the nation.

"Although it is not admitted, it is nevertheless the fact, that, at the present time, all who are most anxiously desirous of seeing a way to establish a means of drawing together, in Council, the Colonies and the Mother Country, are quite disagreed, as to what is the best means to this end.

"A formal confederation is desired, but all are agreed upon the difficulties which, for the present, at any rate, stand in the way of completing an exactly defined treaty, or definition, to confederate as between the Mother Country, and the Colonies.

"Perhaps a means to this much-desired end may be discovered, by way of less formal, but almost equally effective, courses of policy as regards Colonial possessions.

"Every one feels the difficulty in the way of summoning Colonial Representatives to either the House of Lords or the House of Commons, for, while special provision would be required to increase the numbers of the House of Commons, there are apparent and real obstacles in the way of inviting Colonial Representatives to sit in the House of Lords, either as ordinary, or as _Life_ Peers.

"It does not seem too much to hope that, before long, the Crown, may desire to see assembled in London, during some period of the annual session of the Imperial Parliament a Council of Colonial Delegates, meeting in a place to be assigned to them, who will have no voice in other than Colonial Policy, just as now, the House of Lords has no voice in the originating of Money Bills, who will be free to discuss any measure affecting Colonial Policy in general, or the affairs of any Colony, in particular, who will be entitled to forward their conclusions, requests, or opinions to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies, and who will constitute a most effective means for ascertaining the current of opinion in any particular Colony for the time being.

"The Houses of Convocation might be referred to as an example of an extra Parliamentary Body of recognised position in the deliberations of the State.

"And, to revert to South Africa, the sympathies, and probably loyal adhesion of all the intelligent classes of every nationality, would be elicited by nothing more than by the express personal interest of the Sovereign, and Her family in the Cape Colony. The occasion of the visit of Prince Alfred, when a mere child, elicited unbounded demonstrations of enthusiastic loyalty to the Crown, and those from Dutch and English alike. The name 'Alfred,' in honour of His Royal Highness, is to be everywhere met with in connection with all sorts of public bodies, Volunteer Corps, and other Institutions.

"Personal influence goes for more than all the defined policies of successive administrations, or excellent theories of Government. A Prince is of more weight than the best of official Governors, and it is not likely that in medieval ages, or even at later periods, such an appanage of the Crown, as we desire South Africa to become, would be unvisited by either the Sovereign, or someone of the Sovereign's family. The visit of their Royal Highnesses Prince Albert Victor, and Prince George of Wales was limited to a brief sojourn at Cape Town, and did not extend to the Colony in general.

"The necessity for the employment, in the interests of the Empire, to use the phrase most practical,--uncouth, however, it may seem,--of our Royal Princes appears to be a very decided and certain means to the end we have in view, namely, the binding together, by means of sympathetic enthusiasm, the Colonies to the Mother Country, but most particularly the creating of a healthy common accord between South Africa and Great Britain.

"Let any Colony or Dependency feel assured that it is regarded as worthy of attention by those nearest to the Crown, and any sense of isolation, any suspicion that the people, or their country are regarded with any measure of contemptuous indifference must forthwith vanish. Sympathy, encouragement, personal contact, seem to be essential elements to the solution of what is admittedly a problem."

I regard this letter of my well informed correspondent as a most interesting and truthful expression of wide-spread opinion, among the intelligent classes of Her Majesty's loyal subjects in South Africa.

I do not believe the South African political problem to be insoluble. Two things are required to solve it satisfactorily. For the present,--I quote the eloquent words of a distinguished politician with whose wise and noble sentiments I cordially agree--"what we ought to do in a case of this kind is to send out a statesman of the first order of talent, patience, and truthfulness, irrespective of politics or prejudice. For it is an Imperial problem of the highest importance; and the powers of true patriotism and ambition should be amply gratified in dealing with it."

And for the future, let me add my own earnest conviction, that what is wanted is Imperial Federation, as the goal to be ultimately reached, to render South Africa politically satisfied and content.

Imperial Federation means a constitutional system, under which she would be no longer misruled and misunderstood, by a Government, in which she has no share, in which she places no confidence, and by whom her wants and wishes are often ignored. It is not, as is frequently untruly asserted by writers, and speakers, who have neither studied, comprehended, nor understood its theory and intention, its end and aim, that it means the subjugation of the independence of the Colonies to the control of the Mother Country.

As one of its most earnest advocates, I emphatically protest against all such erroneous interpretations, as a libel on the principle put forward, as a plan for the National Government. On the contrary, the project of Imperial Federation, without any _arriere pensée_, clearly and distinctly involves the condition, that the Colonies themselves are to take their adequate part, and share with the Mother Country in its future concrete constitution. In the brief, but expressive phrase, I have already publicly adopted, Imperial Federation means, "the Government of the Empire by the Empire." In Imperial Federation, therefore, South Africa would be fairly and influentially represented, along with the other Colonies of Great Britain. In union with them she would take her part in guiding the policy, and directing the destinies of the whole British Empire.

APPENDIX I.

The following discussion took place on the paper read by Sir Frederick Young, on South Africa, at the opening meeting of the Session of the Royal Colonial Institute, on November 12th, at which the Marquis of Lome presided:--

PROFESSOR H.G. SEELEY: In common with you all, I have listened with great pleasure to this interesting and wide-reaching address. I have not myself been so far afield. My observations were limited to Cape Colony; and the things which I saw in that Colony were necessarily, to a large extent, different from those recorded by Sir Frederick Young. On landing at Cape Town I naturally turned to what the people of South Africa were doing for themselves, and confess I was amazed when I saw the great docks, by means of which the commerce of South Africa is being encouraged, and by which it will hereafter be developed. I was impressed, too, with the educational institutions, the great Public Library, worthy of any town, the South African Museum, the South African College, and the various efforts made to bring the newest and best knowledge home to the people. But perhaps in Cape Town, the thing which impressed me as most curious was the new dock, in process of construction by excavating stone for the breakwater and other purposes. This work was carried on by coloured convict labour. The convicts thus become trained in useful manual work, as well as in habits of obedience, and when they are discharged, are not only better men, but people in whose work employers of labour have confidence. I learned that the great public mountain roads in Cape Colony have thus been constructed by convict labour, at a comparatively small cost, while the convict acquires skill and useful training. Going up country, my attention, among other matters, was turned to the distribution of mineral wealth and difficulties of water supply, for, as Sir Frederick Young has remarked, the water supply is one of the great problems which all persons have to consider in South Africa. The season during which rain falls is short, and the rain drains rapidly down comparatively steep inclined surfaces, so that science of many kinds has to be enlisted to conserve the water, and turn the supply to account. I found the rocks of much of the country have been curiously compressed and hardened and thrown into parallel irregular folds, and that these rocks were afterwards worn down by the action of water, at a time when the land was still beneath the ocean, with the result that many basin-shaped depressions are preserved and exposed, each of which holds a certain amount of water. Just as we never dream of putting down a well in this country without knowing the positions of the water-bearing strata, so it is hopeless to bore profitably for water in the Colony till the districts are defined over which the water-bearing basins are spread. Nothing arrests the escape of water in its course through the rocks more efficiently than intrusive sheets of igneous rock which rise to the surface, but until the distribution of these dykes is systematically recorded it will not be possible to open out all the water which is preserved underground. There is no doubt that by utilising geological facts of this nature, a better water supply may be obtained, which will enable more land to be brought under cultivation, and larger crops to be raised. I may say that the Colonial Government is fully aware of the importance of following out such lines of work, and steps are being taken to give effect to such exploration. Vegetation, however, by its radiating power, must always be one of the chief aids to improved water supply. In the matter of mineral wealth, Cape Colony is not so rich as some adjacent lands. It contains coal, but the individual beds of coal are thin, and owing to this thinness the coal necessarily alternates with shale, which is more conspicuous than in the coal fields of Britain. I remember that Professor Sedgwick, my old master in geology, told me that in his youth seams of coal only some four to six inches thick were worked on the sides of hills in Yorkshire, and that the coal was carried on horseback over the country to supply the wants of the mountain population. Cape Colony is in a far better state than that. In the Eastern Province the beds of coal are frequently a foot or two or more in thickness. They crop out on the surface with a slight dip near to the railway, and although only worked at present in a few pits (as at Cyphergat, Fairview, Molteno--I did not visit the Indwe)--the coal-bearing rocks certainly extend over a much wider area of country than that which has been explored. One of the happy results at which I arrived in my short visit to this district was to find that there are certain extinct forms of reptilian life associated with these coal beds, by means of which the geological horizon upon which the coal occurs may be traced through the country; so that there is a prospect of this mineral being followed along its outcrop in the Eastern Province with comparative ease by this means. It is desirable on all accounts that coal should be burned rather than timber, since the destruction of wood is harmful to the supply of water. With regard to the gold of Cape Colony, I have not the requisite knowledge to speak with the same confidence. The quantity in any district is probably small: the amount is great in the aggregate, but very widely diffused. Gold appears to be present in small amounts in almost all the volcanic rocks, so that as those rocks decay and new mineral substances are formed out of the decomposed products, the gold which they contained is often preserved and concentrated in thin and narrow veins of zeolitic minerals, which extend over the surface of these volcanic rocks. To what extent these zeolites may be hereafter worked with profit it is impossible at present to say, for much may depend upon water supply, by means of which the ore would be crushed and washed, and much on the varying quantities of gold present in samples from different localities. On the whole, the utilisation of science in the service of man, especially in relation to metals, coal, and water supply, if systematically carried out, will, I believe, be an element of future prosperity to Cape Colony, and enable the Colony to minister to the welfare of adjacent lands.