I am sorry to differ from so amiable a critic of our ways, but, as one who has had a little experience, I can tell him that you may send Colonists out, but you cannot as easily make them stay there.  If they make their fortunes, they come home to England to spend them.  If they are poor, and bad times come, the black man crowds them out, and off they go to Australia.  You can depend on a German peasant settling, but bring an Englishman or a Scotchman, and he wants to better himself.  In that he is quite right, but he does not see his way on a small plot of ground, and off he goes down a mine, or something of that sort.  There are great difficulties in the way of State-aided emigration.  We do not want the riff-raff; we don’t want the “surplus population.”  It is one of the greatest difficulties to get decent, steady Englishmen to settle on the land.  It is the people who settle on the land who make a country, and if Sir Frederick Young can give us a receipt for making English people settle there he will confer one of the greatest possible benefits on South Africa.  Sir Frederick Young departed from the usual custom on such occasions by touching on politics.  I am glad he did, because more interest is given to the discussion, and there is nothing like good, healthy controversy.  Sir Frederick Young is greatly concerned that there should be a settled policy for South Africa.  All I can say is, in Heaven’s name, don’t listen to a syren voice of that kind.  So surely as you have a settled policy—­some great and grand scheme—­so surely will follow disaster and disgrace.  The people of South Africa may be very stupid, but they are very much like other people—­determined to make their policy themselves, and the policy of South Africa is not going to be framed in Downing Street.  I cannot help thinking Sir Frederick Young did injustice to some of my friends who have been at the head of affairs.  “The mournful mismanagement of South African affairs,” he says, “during the last twenty-five years, and most especially during the last decade, has been truly lamentable, and cannot fail to awaken the saddest feelings on the part of every loyal Briton and true-hearted patriot.”  But have affairs been mismanaged for the last twenty-five years?  The revenue twenty-five years ago was L500,000.  It is now nearly L4,000,000.  For twenty-five years, under the beneficent rule of Downing Street, we had not a mile of railway.  Now we have 2,000 miles.  Twenty-five years ago there was no national feeling at all.  Now there is a strong South African feeling, which is destined to grow and build up a South African policy.  As to the talk about a settled and firm policy, Sir Philip Wodehouse was the last Governor who had a grand scheme from Downing Street.  A more honest, conscientious, and able man did not exist; but his policy was a failure.  Then came my friend Sir Henry Barkly.  His policy was distinctly opposite.  It was a true policy for South Africa.  It was a policy of laissez-faire.