In 1882 Sir Bartle Frere wrote, ’I have never been able to discover any principle in our policy in South Africa except that of giving way whenever any difficulty or opposition is encountered.’  The remark is still as true as when it was penned, and South Africa—­the ’Grave of Reputations,’{04} as it has long been called—­must by this time be regarded with doubtful emotions by successive Colonial Secretaries.  What is it about South Africa, one asks, that has upset so many men of capacity and experience?  Who can say?  Often—­most often—­it is the neglect to thoroughly study and know what are called the ’local conditions,’ and to pay due heed to local experience.  Sometimes it is the subordination of State policy to party considerations which has ruined the Proconsul:  witness Sir Bartle Frere, whose decisive action, firm character, and wise and statesmanlike policy are now—­now that he is dead—­recognised universally, as they have always been in South Africa.  Perhaps there is something in Africa itself which makes it a huge exception to the rules of other lands; the something which is suggested in the ’rivers without water, flowers without scent, and birds without song’; a contrariness which puts the alluvial gold on the top of mountain ranges and leaves the valleys barren; which mocked the experience of the world, and showed the waterworn gravel deposit to be the biggest, richest, deepest, and most reliable gold reef ever known; which placed diamonds in such conditions that the greatest living authority, who had undertaken a huge journey to report on the occurrence, could only say, in the face of a successful wash-up, ’Well, there may be diamonds here, but all I can say is they’ve no right to be’; the something which many, many centuries ago prompted the old Roman to write, ’Ex Africa semper aliquid novi affert,’ and which is in the mind of the South African to-day when he says, ‘The impossible is always happening in Africa.’

There is this to be said for the Gladstone Ministry in 1881:  that, having decided on a policy of scuttle and abandonment, they did it thoroughly, as though they enjoyed it.  A feeble vote-catching provision, with no security attached, was inserted in the Pretoria Convention relative to the treatment of natives, but no thought or care was given to the unfortunate British subject who happened to be a white man, and to have fought for his Queen and country.{05} The abandonment was complete, without scruple, without shame.  It has been written that ’the care and forethought which would be lavished on a favourite horse or dog on changing masters were denied to British subjects by the British Government.’  The intensity and bitterness of the resentment, the wrath and hatred—­so much deeper because so impotent—­at the betrayal and desertion have left their traces on South African feeling; and the opinion of the might and honour of England, as it may be gleaned in many parts of the Colonies as well as everywhere in the Republics, would be an unpleasant revelation to those who live in undisturbed portions of the Empire, comfortable in the belief that to be a British subject carries the old-time magic of ‘Civis Romanus sum.’