J. Ewing Ritchie

“ Let me plead that they are not such as they are represented, and that it is better that we make them friends. Cetewayo, by not crossing the Tugela and sweeping with fire and slaughter through Natal when that colony lay stricken and terrified at his feet, has set us an example of forbearance which it were wise to imitate. If we fail to do so, the blood feud between us and his people can know no end. ”

“ No faith is to be held with Rome. “Delenda est Carthago” is their motto. They leave the natives to quarrel among themselves, while our English policy has been to play off one petty savage chief against another, and to arm and strengthen the natives with whom we are ultimately to fight. The natives see through this, and argue, as Sir Arthur Cunynghame testifies, that the English fear them, else why, they ask, do they give them such high wages? or why do the Government allow them to buy arms? It is some such feeling that has urged on Cetewayo into his present hostile attitude. ”

“ If we cease to rule by kindness, we must do so by brute force. Contemplating this delightful state of things, the Natal Witness of the 8th of February says:—“Civilisation has become unmistakably aggressive. The result which it was hoped might be gained by the quiet influence of the plough-share and the railway, is now destined to be effected, under the guidance of Sir Bartle Frere, at the point of the bayonet. The great herald of peace, whose feet were to be so beautiful upon the mountains, has become the genius of war. ”

“ In spite of instructions from home, Sir Bartle Frere has initiated an aggressive war on the Zulu nation which already represents an expenditure of a million and a half, and which, before it is fought out to the bitter end, will occasion the expenditure of a much larger sum. In a time of unexampled commercial distress, when thousands of homes have been made desolate; when tender and delicate women who have been nursed in luxury and comfort have been deprived of their daily bread; when grey-haired old men have found themselves after the struggle of a life made paupers ”

“ In the Cape Colony, the chief amusements of all classes are riding, driving, shooting, and billiards. In the interior there are fine views to be seen, and in some quarters an abundance of game. The thunderstorms are frightful, the rivers, dry in summer, are torrents in winter. The droughts, the snakes, the red soil dust, and the Kaffirs, are a perpetual nuisance to all decent people. “Although South Africa is a rising colony,” writes Sir Arthur Cunynghame, “I hardly think it offers to the emigrant the chances which he would obtain in Australia or New Zealand. ”

“ Nor should we have been trembling, as we have of late, lest any morning we might hear the Zulu army had marched into Natal and had not left a white man alive to tell the tale of the terrible tragedy that ensued. I maintain there would be no end to these Kaffir scares and Kaffir wars so long as the men and money of the mother country are so employed, and so long as the colonial governors are allowed to rush into war. If a man goes to live in South Africa he should do so with the feeling that he runs a certain risk, and that knowledge would make him live on good terms with the natives. ”

“ We have sacrificed valuable lives, but the men who have fallen have been embalmed in the nation’s memory, and the story of their heroism will mould the character and fire the ambition and arouse the sympathies of our children’s children, as they did those of our fathers in days gone by; and yet there is a danger lest we undertake responsibilities beyond our means, and find ourselves engaged in contests utterly needless in the circumstances of the case, and certain to result in a vain effusion of blood and expenditure of money. As far as South Africa is concerned, this is emphatically the case. ”

“ The colonist reaped, at any rate, a benefit from such a policy, for he made profitable contracts for his waggons and horses, and there was a refreshing stream of English gold, which otherwise would have been dried up. The Book of Nature might say, Leave the Boers and the savages alone; but to a highly-cultured people the Book of Nature is a blank, and the passions and prejudices, and fears and hopes, of the passing hour are the only considerations by which the public and the puppets it places in office are moved. ”

“ Natal was not British territory when they settled there, neither was the Orange Free State Territory; and, at any rate, in 1854 their independence, which had been persistently fought for, and nobly won, was acknowledged by the British Government as regards the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Surely in South Africa there was room for the Englishman and the Boer, and if it had not been for the dream of Imperialism, which seems to dominate the brain of our colonial rulers, the two nations might have lived and flourished side by side. ”

“ First we seized Natal; then we took possession of the Diamond Fields, and our last act was the annexation of the Transvaal. How far this system of annexation is to spread, it is impossible to say. It is equally impossible to state what will be its cost in treasure and in men. It seems equally difficult to say upon whom the blame of this annexation system rests. It really seems as if we were villains, as Shakespeare says, by necessity and fools by a divine thrusting on. We should have left the Boers alone. They were not British subjects, and did not want to be such. ”

“ The mob and the pictorial papers will glorify the returning heroes who have crushed a savage who was mad enough to defy on his own behalf and on that of his people the British power, and the British public will have to pay the bill—not, unfortunately, the hard-working, over-taxed working man; he is a myth, as much so as a mermaid or a griffin; but that large middle-class, on whom the tax-gatherer instinctively preys; who have been shorn so often that it has become to them a second nature ”

“ And now once more we are at war, and a cry has been raised for the extermination of the whole Zulu race; and when that is over, there will be fresh hordes of hostile natives to be fought, new lands to be annexed, a scientific frontier to be gained, and the colonists will make fortunes out of the millions thus spent. I ask in sorrow, How long is England to be strained and denuded of men and money for these costly wars? Surely it is a reproach alike to the Christianity and statesmanship of our time that we have not yet hit on a more excellent way. ”

“ If the Home Government will be content to keep a large military force in South Africa for thirty years to come, and if South Africa can afford to pay for it; or if, failing this, the British taxpayer will be kind enough to pay for the protection of the colonies which will not be worth protecting if he does not pay—if all this comes to pass, then for thirty years South Africa will be a place which, though utterly useless as a field for immigration, a place in which certain classes of people can live. ”

“ At any rate, we should never have heard of the native difficulty in Natal—the difficulty which keeps away the emigration required to develop the resources of a country happily situated in many respects; the difficulty which must ever be felt by a handful of English in the presence of a horde of polygamous and untutored savages who will not work, and who, alas! are not ashamed to beg. ”

“ Whatever is now done by way of civilising the native population in South Africa must be done by force. We do not necessarily mean such physical force as is employed in a pitched battle. We mean rather this—that the native population must henceforth be ruled by a show of military strength rather than by trust in British justice or regard for commercial advantages. ”

“ South Africa is not a very rich country. Labour is hard to obtain, and it will be years before irrigation can be carried on a sufficient scale to make agriculture a brilliant Success. Nevertheless, land is so abundant that the energetic colonist is sure, at least, to make a living, and provided he does not drink, has a good chance of becoming a rich man.” A great deal of money is made by ostrich farming and sheep grazing, but they are occupations which require capital. ”

“ Our rule in Natal led to our little war with King Langalibalele, who had come to live in Natal as king of the Hlubi tribe, who is now living, after a good many lives had been lost, near Capetown at an expense to the Government of £500 a year. In England it was felt that the chief had been unfairly used, the trial was adjudged to have been conducted with over-strained rigour, and the punishment to have been too severe. There would have been no war at all had it not been for the blunders of mischievous go-betweens. ”

“ The Cape, for instance, has little sympathy with Natal, and the great Namaqualand has little in common with the Transvaal. In the latter country, as is well known, we have a community hostile to English rule, while the Orange Free State, on each side hemmed in by English dominions, maintains a precarious independency of its own. A grand South African confederation is a beautiful idea, but there does not seem much chance of carrying it out just now. Meanwhile we go on annexing all the surrounding country, much to the discontent of the natives themselves. ”

“ England, after putting down Napoleon, and triumphing at Waterloo, was in no mood to be defied by a handful of Dutch farmers in a distant quarter of the globe. But the Cape Government had Kaffir wars to fight, and they could not afford to treat the Boers as absolute enemies, and they were rewarded with a large portion of the territory, won from the Kaffirs in 1819. But this was not sufficient for their earth-hunger. They crossed the boundaries, and, with their lives in their hands, planted themselves among the savages. In 1838 they went off still further from British rule. ”

“ British traders supply Her Majesty’s enemies, and our enemies too, with guns and ammunition to any extent, in order that these enemies may be better prepared to fight us when the next struggle may commence; and, worst of all, British commerce, represented by colonial shopkeepers and merchants, who, to fill their own pockets, would not for a moment hesitate to bring ruin on the colonial farmers and Republican Boers, cry out that it is preposterous to stop the trade in guns.” Assuredly, the Boers may well complain of the Imperial policy in South Africa. ”

“ In a similar manner, we may say, cheap land means bad security; and the farmer who buys the freehold of his farm in Natal for less than the rent he has to pay for it at home cannot expect to be as secure in purse or person as a farmer in the Weald of Kent. In 1811 was our first Kaffir war. It was waged on our part in the most cruel manner—no quarter was given by the white man—no prisoners taken—all were slaughtered till the Kaffirs were driven backwards and eastwards across the Great Fish River. In 1819 we had another fight, as was to be expected. Wars lead to wars. ”

“ In 1868 they became, after a wearisome contest with the Dutch, so worried by the latter, that they implored the British to take them as subjects. The Basutos are not Kaffirs, but a branch of the Bechuanas, as are the Balongas, who live so peacefully under the shelter of the Dutch in the Orange Free State. As their land is the very best on the Continent for agricultural purposes, they have bought a great many ploughs, are great growers of corn and wool, and naturally, as is the case with such people, are friends of peace and great lovers of money. ”

“ One example will suffice of the way in which that theory of dominion universal, from, the Cape to the Zambesi, which appears to dominate over the official Englishman, when he has anything to do with Africa, acts in a mischievous manner, may be seen in the case of Griqualand East, formerly called No Man’s Land, which was some years since a sort of neutral territory. In time the Griquas, or bastards, settled there. They were an industrious people, and far more advanced in civilisation than any other native tribe. ”

“ From every corner of the land, from the pulpit and the Press, from the hut of the peasant and the palace of the prince, from the cad of the music-hall and the statesman of Downing Street, there has risen a cry for revenge ”

“ At present the great difficulty is the native population. According to all accounts, they are in an unsettled and agitated state. Of the original Hottentot we do not hear much. Mr. Trollope believes that the bulk of the population of the Western Province of the Cape Colony is Hottentot, who has, however, long given up all idea of independence. The Dutchmen and the Englishmen also, who are to be met with in the East and West alike, are not likely to give much trouble; but as we get further from the Cape, and the white population is sparser, the difficulties increase. ”

“ Whether Sir Bartle Frere foresaw this, we are not aware, nor are we aware whether he likes his position. We will not even argue whether he is right or wrong in believing that civilisation must be aggressive. Judging by history, we incline to the opinion that he is right, and if he is right, then the hope of producing the social amalgamation we have referred to was a vain hope altogether. ”