may seem, it is the case that at the end of the eighteenth century no printing-press was to be found in the Cape Colony, nor had this community of twenty thousand Europeans the means of knowing the nature of the laws and regulations of the Government by which it was ruled. So long and complete an isolation from European civilisation produced a result which is as remarkable in itself as it is significant to the student of South African history. This phenomenon was the existence, in the nineteenth century, of a community of European blood whose moral and intellectual standards were those of the seventeenth.

The nationality difficulty.

Our dip into the early history of South Africa is not purposeless. It does not, of course, explain the failure of British administration; but it brings us into touch with circumstances that were bound to make the task of governing the Cape Colony—a task finally undertaken by England in 1806—one of peculiar difficulty. The native population was strange, but the European population was even more strange and abnormal. If we had been left to deal with the native population alone we should have experienced no serious difficulty in rendering them harmless neighbours, and have been able to choose our own time for entering upon the responsibilities involved in the administration of their territories. But, coming second on the field, we were bound to modify our native policy to suit the conditions of a preexisting relationship between the white and black races that was not of our creation, and one, moreover, that was in many respects repugnant to British ideas of justice. Nor was this all. The old European population, which should have been, naturally, our ally and fellow-worker in the task of native administration, gradually changed from its original position of a subject nationality to that of a political rival; and, as such, openly bid against us for the mastership of the native African tribes.

Now when two statesmen are pitted against each other, of whom one is a man whose methods of attack are limited by nineteenth-century ideas, while the morality of the other, being that of the seventeenth century, permits him greater freedom of action, it is obvious that the first will be at a disadvantage. And this would be the case more than ever if the nineteenth-century statesman was under the impression that his political antagonist was a man whose code of morals was identical with his own. When once he had learnt that the moral standard of the other was lower than, or different from, his own, he would of course make allowance for the circumstance, and he would then be able to contest the position with him upon equal terms. But until he had grasped this fact he would be at a disadvantage.

Generally speaking, the representatives of the British Government, both Governors and High Commissioners, soon learnt that neither the natives nor the Dutch population could be dealt with on the same footing as a Western European. But the British Government cannot be said to have thoroughly learnt the same lesson until, in almost the last week of the nineteenth century, the three successive defeats of Stormberg, Magersfontein, and Colenso aroused it to a knowledge of the fact that we had been within an ace of losing South Africa. Many, indeed, would question whether even now the lesson had been thoroughly learnt. But, however this may be, it is certain that throughout the nineteenth century the Home Government wished to treat both the natives and the Dutch in South Africa on a basis of British ideas; and that by so doing it constantly found itself in conflict with its own local representatives, who knew that the only hope of success lay in dealing with both alike on a basis of South African ideas.

As the result of this chronic inability of British statesmen to understand South Africa, it follows that the most instructive manner of regarding our administration of that country during the nineteenth century is to get a clear conception of the successive divergences of opinion between the home and the local authorities.

At the very outset of British administration—during the temporary occupation of the Cape from 1795 to 1808—we find a theoretically perfect policy laid down for the guidance of the early English Governors in their treatment of the Boers, or Dutch frontier farmers. It is just as admirable, in its way, as were the instructions for the treatment of the Hottentots furnished by the Directors of the Dutch East India Company to Van Riebeck. In a despatch of July, 1800, the third Duke of Portland, who was then acting as Secretary for the Colonies, writes:

Non-interference.

"Considering the tract of country over which these border inhabitants are dispersed, the rude and uncultivated state in which they live, and the wild notions of independence which prevail among them, I am afraid any attempts to introduce civilisation and a strict administration of justice will be slow in their progress, and likely, if not proceeded upon with caution and management, rather to create a spirit of resistance, or to occasion them to emigrate still further from the seat of government, than answer the beneficent views with which they might be undertaken. In fact, it seems to me the proper system of policy to observe to them is to interfere as little as possible in their domestic concerns and interior economy; to consider them rather as distant communities dependent upon the Government than as subjects necessarily amenable to the laws and regulations established within the precincts of Government. Mutual advantages arising from barter and commerce, and a strict adherence to good faith and justice in all arrangements with them, joined to efficient protection and occasional acts of kindness on the part of the Government, seem likely to be the best means of securing their attachment."

Who would have thought that this statement of policy, admirable as it is at first sight, contained in itself the germ of a political heresy of the first magnitude? Yet so it was. The principle of non-interference, here for the first time enunciated and subsequently followed with fatal effect, could not be applied by a nineteenth-century administration to the case of a seventeenth-century community without its virtually renouncing the functions of government. Obviously this was not the intention of the home authority. There remained the difficulty of knowing when to apply, and when not to apply, the principle; and directly a specific case arose there was the possibility that, while the local authority, with a full knowledge of the local conditions, might think interference necessary, the home authority, without such knowledge, might take an opposite view.

Slaghter's Nek.

A very few years sufficed to show that the most ordinary exercise of the functions of government might be regarded as an "interference with the domestic concerns and interior economy" of the European subjects of the British Crown in South Africa. At the time of the permanent occupation of the Cape (1806) the population of the colony consisted of three classes: 26,720 persons of European descent, 17,657 Hottentots, and 29,256 returned as slaves. One of the first measures of the British Governor, Lord Caledon, was the enactment of a series of regulations intended to confer civil rights on the Hottentots, while at the same time preventing them from using their freedom at the expense of the European population. From the British, or even European point of view, this was a piece of elementary justice to which no man could possibly take exception. As applied to the conditions of the Franco-Dutch population in the Cape Colony