no sinister motive, no evil idea, no blindness to honesty, no aptitude for craft to any Secretary of State. There are I think no less than eleven of them still living, all of whom the British public regards as honourable men who have deserved well of their country. I can remember almost as many more of whom the same may be said, who are now at peace beyond the troubles of the Native Question. I will endeavour to catalogue the higher public virtues by which they have endeared themselves to their country,only remarking that those virtues have not, each of them, held the same respective places in the bosoms of all of them. A sensitiveness to the greatness and glory of England,-what we may perhaps call the Rule Britannia feeling,-which cannot endure the idea that the British foot should ever go back one inch! Is it not national ardour such as this which recommends our Statesmen to our love? And then there has been that well-weighed economy which has been acquired in the closet and used in the House of Commons, without which no minister can really be true to his country. To levy what taxes be needed, but to take care that no more is spent than is needed;-is not that the first duty of a Cabinet Minister? But it has been England's destiny to be the arbiter of the fate of hundreds of millions of dusky human beings,-black, but still brethren,-on distant shores. The Queen has a hundred coloured subjects to one that is white. It has been the peculiar duty of the Colonial Minister to look after and to defend the weakest of these dark-skinned brothers; and this has had to be done in the teeth of much obloquy! Can any virtue rank higher than the performance of so sacred a duty? And then of how much foresight have our ministers the need? How accurately must they read the lessons which history and experience should teach them

South Africa, II,

14

if Great Britain is to be saved from a repetition of the disgrace which she encountered before the American Colonies declared themselves independent? When we find a man who can look forward and say to himself,"while we can hold these people, for their own content, to their own welfare, so long we will keep them; but not a moment longer for any selfish aggrandisement of our own;"—when we find a Statesman rising to that pitch, how fervently should we appreciate the greatness of the man, and how ready should we be to acknowledge that he has caught the real secret of Colonial administration.

These splendid qualities have so shone over our Colonial office that the sacred edifice is always bright with them. They scintillate on the brows of every Assistant Secretary, and sit as a coronet on the shining locks of all the clerks. But unfortunately they are always rotatory, so that no one virtue is ever long in the ascendant. Rule Britannia! and the Dutch Member of Parliament has to walk out of his Volksaal and touch his hat to an English Governor. Downing Street and the Treasury have agreed to retrench! Then the Dutch Member of Parliament walks back again. We will at any rate protect the Native! Then the Boer's wife hides the little whip with which she is accustomed to maintain discipline over her apprenticed nigger children. Let these people go forth and govern themselves! Then the little whip comes out again. Among all these British virtues what is a bewildered Dutch Colonist to do? If one virtue would remain always in the ascendant,though I might differ or another,—there would be an intelligible policy. If they could be made to balance each other, as private virtues do in private bosoms when the owners of those bosoms are possessed of judgment, then

the policy would assuredly be good. But while one virtue is ever in the ascendant, but never long there, the Dutch Colonist, and the English, are naturally bewildered by the rotation.

CHAPTER XI.

The Orange Free State.-Present Condition.

SIR GEORGE GREY, who was at that time Governor of the Cape of Good Hope writing to Lord John Russell on 17th November 1855,- Lord John having then been Secretary of State for the Colonies,-expresses himself in the following glowing terms as to the region of which I am now writing. "The territory of the Orange Free State forms one of the finest pastoral countries I have ever seen. There is no district of country in Australia which I have visited which throughout so great an extent of territory affords so uniformly good a pastoral country." A short time previous to this, Sir George Clerk, when he was about to deliver the State up to the Government of the Dutch, declared,—or at any rate is popularly reported to have declared,—that the land was a "howling wilderness." I think that the one colonial authority was quite as far astray as the other. Sir George Grey had ever a way with him of contending for his point either by strong language or by strong action. He was at one time Governor of South Australia, but perhaps never travelled as far north as the Salt Bush country of that Colony. The Colony in his time was in its infancy and was not known as far north as the pastoral district in question. I do not know whether Sir George ever visited the Riverina in New South Wales, or the Darling Downs in Queensland. Had he done so,-and had he then become as well acquainted with the pastoral properties of land as

he has since become, he would hardly with all his energy have ventured upon such an assertion. It will be only necessary for any investigator to look at the prices of Australian and South African wool to enable him to form an opinion on the subject. The average price in London of medium Australian wool in 1877 was Is. 6d. a pound, and that of South African wool of the same class Is. Id. a pound. In both countries it is common to hear that the land should be stocked at about the rate of 3 sheep to the acre; but in Australia patches of land which will bear heavier stocking occur much more numerously than in South Africa. The Orange Free State has not yet arrived at the ponderous glory of full statistics so that I cannot give the amount of the wool produced, nor can I divide her wool from that of the Cape Colony, through which it is sent to England without special record. But I feel sure that no one who knows the two countries will venture to compare the flocks of the Free State with those of either of the four great Australian Colonies, or with the flocks of New Zealand.

But if Sir George Grey spoke too loudly in one direction Sir George Clerk spoke very much too loudly in the other. He was probably struck by the desolate and unalluring appearance of the lands to the north of the Orange. They are not picturesque. They are not well-timbered. They are not even well-watered. If Sir George Clerk saw them in a drought, as I did, he certainly did not look upon a lovely country. But it is a country in which men may earn easy bread by pastoral and agricultural pursuits; in which with a certain amount of care,—which has to show itself mainly in irrigation,the choicest fruits of the earth can be plenteously produced; in which the earth never refuses her increase if

she be asked for it with many tears. A howling wilderness certainly it is not. But Sir George Clerk when he described the country was anxious to excuse the conduct of Great Britain in getting rid of it, while Sir George Grey was probably desirous of showing how wrong Great Britain had been on the occasion.

I do not know that I ever travelled across a less attractive country than the Orange Free State, or one in which there is less to gratify the visitor who goes to see things and not to see men and women. And the men and women are far between; for over an area presumed to include 70,000 square miles, a solid block of territory about 300 miles long by 120 miles broad, there are probably not more than 30,000 white people, and half that number of coloured people. The numbers I know are computed to be greater by the officials of the Free State itself, but no census has been taken, and with customary patriotism they are perhaps disposed to overestimate their own strength. They, however, do not give much above half an inhabitant to every square mile. It must be remembered that in the Free State the land is all occupied;--but that it is occupied at the rate I have described. I altogether deny that the Free State is a howling wilderness, but I do not recommend English autumn tourists to devote their holydays to visiting the land, unless they have become very tired indeed of their usual resorts.

The farmer in the Orange Free State is generally a Dutch Boer, but by no means always so. During my very short visit I came across various Englishmen who were holding or who had held land there,-Africanders perhaps, persons who had been born from British parents in the Cape Colony,—but altogether British as distinguished from Dutch. In the towns the shopkeepers are I think