The danger spot, in our over-sea territory, was now South Africa, where British and Dutch were at odds with each other, and both at odds with the natives.  Affairs were a chaos.  The region, grown historic as the Transvaal, had been told to arrange its future as it would.  The Orange Free State had been kicked outside the British line of empire, with a solatium in money, in the manner that an angry father bids adieu to a ne’er-do-well son.  A white man in South Africa hardly knew what flag he was living under, or, indeed, if he could claim any.  Panda, on the Zululand frontier, growled over his assegai and knobkerry.  Moshesh, the Basuto, hung grimly on the face of Thaba Bosego, a Mountain of Night in very truth.  The embers of a Kaffir war still glowed.

Who was to hold the arena?  Its hazards were thrown to Sir George Grey.  At the moment, he would, perhaps, rather have returned to New Zealand, but he was told that somebody with the necessary qualifications must hie to the Cape, and that the Government had selected him.  He packed his baggage and sailed from Bristol, Sir James Stephen going down there to see him embark.  Bristol, as he explained, was then endeavouring to establish relations with the Cape and Australasia, which were coming into note.

‘When I reached Cape Town,’ Sir George pursued, ’they had just got their first Parliament, but it was hardly in operation.  Under the constitution that had been granted, the Governor remained, to all purposes, the paramount force in the country.  His ministers had practically no power over him, and thus everything was more or less in his hands.  On urging them, as I often did, to go in for a system under which the ministers should be directly responsible to the people, not to the Governor, I would be told, “Oh, we can always get rid of you, if you do anything wrong, by an appeal to the Colonial Office.”  It was not until after I left the Cape that popular government was brought into effect.

’What sort of South Africa did I find?  The bulk of the whites were Boers, who were most conservative in their ideas.  There were no railways, and I had great difficulty in making that innovation acceptable to the Boers.  Effort was requisite for the construction of harbours, a matter of equally vital importance, which I took in hand.  It was desirable to give South Africa every possible element of a high civilisation, as, farther, universities, schools, and libraries.  A mixture of Saxon and Dutch, she had to work out her destiny on her own lines, untrammelled by the Old World.  Also, she must enlighten that cloud of a barbarous Africa which was pressing down from the north.

’How South Africa has changed since then!  To illustrate that, Bloemfontein was quite a small place in the far wilds.  Nobody knew where the capital of the freshly created Orange Free State was to be.  No wonder either, since, for a while, many of the people refused to accept the new form of government, and would not vote for a President.  They were angry, at having been thrust forth from their heritage as British subjects.  What nation, they demanded, had the right so to treat a section of its people, who had done nothing to disqualify themselves from citizenship?