would also be the handmaiden of civilization to others as well, because in it there was no idea of aggrandisement.  He had recently made a most remarkable tour through this interesting country, and since he landed in Cape Town, on the 24th May, had seen a great deal of it.  He had visited Kimberley, and gone down in a bucket to see one of the diamond mines; he had travelled to Vryburg, and across the treeless desert in the south-western portion of the Transvaal to Klerksdorp; thence on to Johannesburg and down the gold mines, and further on to Pretoria, where he had an interview with President Kruger, and attended meetings of the Volksraad.  He had been 150 miles north of Pretoria, and dwelt for a fortnight in the open veldt, without going near a house, and had seen the Kafirs in their kraals.  He had crossed the Transvaal, through Heidelburg and Newcastle, in Natal, down to Durban, he had visited Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, and had now returned to Cape Town.  What he had seen of this great country had astonished him, and he thought it had a vast future before it; but it required to be governed in the most enlightened and satisfactory manner, and he appealed to both races—­Dutch and English—­to co-operate and unite in developing its wonderful resources.  It was by this way alone—­by cordial co-operation and a generous feeling towards one another, that this would be realized.  He believed that Imperial Federation would be the best solution of the difficulties which had arisen.  He had heard whispers of what was called Republicanism.  We worshipped words rather than things; but the British Constitution, especially when it would be expanded by Federation, would be practically a Republic with a Queen as President.  He would, therefore, appeal once more to the judgment of thoughtful men to weigh the principles contended for, calmly, wisely, and without prejudice or passion.  The flippant, the superficial, the thoughtlessly ambitious, and those who did not take a fair, judicial, and comprehensive view of the great issues involved in it to each portion of the Empire over which the British Crown held sway, might deride and condemn it, but he, as one of its most ardent pioneers and supporters, recommended it to all colonists as well as to his countrymen at home, as the best preservation of their commercial, social, and political interests in the future, which they would lose altogether if they abandoned it in favour of the disintegration of the British Empire.  He had studied this question for some years, and by a sort of instinct he felt that it was the right thing to be brought about.  He had brought before them proofs that some distinguished men were already feeling the desirability of some such thing being effected, and he could not but help thinking that their ranks would be augmented by other people of influence and power, who may hereafter be brought to think seriously and carefully over this great question.  He took the opportunity himself, some three years ago, to put a letter in