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is this recognised, that if by any conceivable accident Britons were no longer able to hold their own, there is no great Power that would not deem it well worth the incalculable risks of a great war to seize the wreck of our South African inheritance.

All that is admitted by everybody to-day. Mr. Rhodes, who looms so large before the eyes alike of friends and of foes, is but the concrete embodiment, the typical personification of the universally recognised doctrine of the importance of South Africa. But forty years ago the truth, the truism, was so far from being admitted, that both parties in the State acted deliberately and continuously on exactly the opposite hypothesis. The House of Commons and the House of Lords, the representatives of the great middle class which then held all powers in the hollow of its hand, were of one mind on this matter. If there was one point upon which Whigs and Tories all agreed, it was that South Africa was a nuisance to be abated, rather than an estate to be

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SOUTH AFRICA IN 1897.

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and the great went wrong vital point, stood almost ing a resolute ing opposition hallucination that possessed her councillors. The Queen, as I shall presently show in some detail, was never deluded by the hollow claptrap talked about the worthlessness of South Africa. When her councillors persisted in flinging away whole kingdoms from her Imperial heritage, they did so in the face of an opposition from their Royal Mistress which, whether persuasive, plaintive, or passionate, was wearilessly persistent. She stood, as I said, almost entirely alone. But she never flinched. Her Majesty has never been a Little Englander. She was not, of course, able to defy the counsels of her Constitutional Ministers. But she withstood them manfully, as a true Queen should, and at last, after many days, she had the satisfaction of seeing her subjects come round to the wisdom of the opinions which she had maintained with the fidelity of an Abdiel in the days of long ago.

But that is not all. The Queen not merely recognised the importance of South

Africa, but, in the days when Federation was but regarded as the airy dream of the philosopher, she supported it as the one method for securing a strong, contented, and united South Africa. Cecil Rhodes has been practically on his trial this year, because, at the eleventh hour, he strove with patriotic daring to secure by the high hand the great end of African federation, which Her Majesty had been thwarted in her efforts to attain forty years ago, when it would have been easy enough but for the infatuated folly of our politicians. It would almost seem as if the nation, grudging the loss of the American colonies which it owed to George III., took a sinister and suicidal revenge upon the dynasty by baffling all the efforts which the Imperial-minded grand-daughter of George III. made to save the colonies in South Africa.

If only our self-confident politicians would have done the bidding of their gracious. Sovereign, Africa would have been federated before Canada, and the long, bloody, and shameful story of the last thirty years of war against the Dutch and the native would never have been unfolded to the gaze of an indignant world.

II. DOWNING STREET v. WINDSOR CASTLE.

Carlyle, in his " Latter Day Pamphlets," indulged in some tolerably severe diatribes against Downing Street. But no one who reads the story of what Downing Street has done in South Africa can help feeling that Carlyle did not rise to the level of his opportunity. When the American humourist felt very bad, he swore till he was out of breath, and then hired a man to go on cursing until he bade him stop. It would take more than the combined energies of three men and a boy, the second beginning where the first left off, to curse up to the exigencies of the iniquities of Downing Street in relation to South Africa. Only after such a blowing off of the steam is it possible to discuss quietly the long record of political ineptitude, of Imperial blundering, of neglected opportunities, of broken faith, and of bumptious folly. It is no wonder the very name of Downing Street stinks in the nostrils of South Africans. It is not the fault of Downing Street that there is any South African Empire surviving to this day.

If indeed there had not been a Windsor Castle to ward off some of the worst of the evils which Downing Street inflicted upon the luckless colony, it is by no means impossible that the German flag might at this moment be flying over the Cape of Good Hope. The Queen was unable to prevent much mischief. It did not lie within the compass of the Royal prerogative to avert the Sand River Convention, the abandonment of the Orange Free State, the disgrace of Majuba Hill, or the still more inexcusable blunder of the surrender of 1884. But so far as her influence and authority prevailed it was uniformly exerted against all the knockkneed blunders of successive Ministers. The Sovereign was true to the Empire, and if we have any Empire in South Africa to-day we owe it more to Her Majesty than to any of her advisers.

If the Queen had been allowed to have her way years ago there would have been no need for the emergence of Cecil Rhodes, who, like a man born out of due time, had to labour in double tides and by devious ways to overtake the arrears of work left undone by the blind leaders of an uninstructed public. He is now meeting the same fate, at the hands of the same kind of people, as those who, forty years ago, roused the indignation of the Queen by the scandalous fashion in which they treated another great African administrator.

Olive Schreiner some time ago-in the Karoo they do not always date their lettersrecalled the memory of the greatest of our proconsuls. She wrote :

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"I am sending you a picture of Sir George Grey's statue. I wish you could find place for it in the Review of Reviews; it would show the dear old man that he was not forgotten in South Africa; and that thousands who, like myself, are not able to remember him, yet cherish the memory of his life and

work here. Of the three large English-speaking men who have during the last fifty years appeared on the South African stage, William Pater, Saul Solomon, and Sir George Grey, I think the last was the greatest and most unique. A 'God's Englishman,' if you like it. It is the thought that there have been such Englishmen that takes away one's despair for England's future. His statue, of which I enclose the photograph, stands in the public gardens in the centre of Cape Town. The building behind him with the pillars is the public library which he laboured for and so richly endowed. I have walked out of the Cape Parliament, which stands just over the way, where debates were going on in which the most talented and wealthy Englishmen in the world were voting for strop' bills, and in which personal ambitions and the greed of wealth and power showed at every turn, and I've felt a curious consolation in coming across that statue. Greed and ambition may conquer for a moment, but there are also other elements in our national character. If Ahriman exists, so also does Ormuzd."

Olive Schreiner, when she wrote that, was in one of her moods of wrath against the ormer god of her idolatry, who, if she would look and see, is but carrying on by such

FIR GEORGE GREY'S STATUE.

(From a photograph by Mr. J. W. Dugmore.)

instruments as are within range of his hands the good work which Sir George Grey aspired to but was not allowed to accomplish.

The story of Sir George Grey's South African administration reads like a fairy tale from the days of old romance. He was the forerunner of Mr. Rhodes, the first great Imperial statesman who realised that we must Federate or Perish, and that the only road to a permanent Empire lies through Home Rule. After the lapse of forty years we see from Olive Schreiner's letter how to this day the shining track of his aureoled presence lights up the dull and dusty road of South African politics, and every time we read anew the story of what he did for South Africa and for the Empire in South Africa, we feel anew the surge of two emotions-one of almost savage resentment against Downing Street, the other of passionate gratitude to the Queen. For when the Colonial Office opposed this man, betrayed him, cheated him, thwarted him, and finally cashiered him in disgrace, it was Her Majesty who stood by him, praised him, backed him, watched all he did, read all he wrote, struggled hard against his recall, and then, watching her opportunity,

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secured his reappointment by a new Ministry even before he had set foot on his native shores. It is a wonderful story, and yet it is one which nearly every one has forgotten -this famous and fateful tale of the struggle between Downing Street and Windsor Castle. And as it has been so completely forgotten, and as the old problem of the Empire has just now re-emerged with almost unaltered features, I cannot do better as a contribution to a truer appreciation of the value of the Queen to the Empire than to tell, however briefly, the story of Sir George Grey.

III. SIR GEORGE GREY.

There have been in the Victorian era two Sir George Greys. One, he of Falloden, at one time Home Secretary, is now represented in the House by Sir Edward Grey, the most promising-but for his indolence of all the younger Liberals. The other, the Sir George Grey-" the God's Englishman" of whom Olive Schreiner wrote-is still with us, old and well stricken in years. He was born in 1813, a few months after his father, Colonel Grey, had fallen at the head of the forlorn hope that stormed the fatal breach of Badajoz. After a brilliant career at Sandhurst, he entered the army when eighteen, and before he attained his majority he had received so deep an impression of the misery and destitution prevailing in Ireland and in some parts of Great Britain, that he turned with passionate longing to the promise of a brighter and happier future in the unpeopled fields of the Greater Britain beyond the seas. He had not long to wait for an opportunity of service in the Colonies. Lord Glenelg sent him out when only twenty-five years old as the head of a small expedition of exploration in Western Australia. He was lying at Plymouth waiting for H.M.S. Beagle to start on its voyage for New Holland when King William died and Victoria was proclaimed Queen. Her Majesty's proclamation was dated just nine days after the issue of Sir George Grey's commission. He carried out his mission with such distinguished success, in the face of such imminent perils by sea and land, that no one was surprised when in 1841 he was appointed the first Governor of the Colony of South Australia. He was only twenty-eight. As the Queen was the youngest of our Queens, so Sir George Grey was the youngest of our Colonial Governors. The experiment was justified by its results. "In South Australia he had found discontent, mutiny, want, despair; he had left, after four years of patient and unremitting toil, contentment, peaceful industry, and prosperity." So successful was he, indeed, that at the end of the four years, when the state of New Zealand left Britain apparently face to face with "the abandonment of the island in disgrace or the extermination of their aboriginal inhabitants," Sir George Grey was dispatched with a free hand to restore peace and order. His success here also was phenomenal, almost miraculous. "Sir George Grey found New Zealand in a position of imminent peril; he left it in perfect safety. He came to it at the crisis of a savage war; he left it in profound peace. On his arrival it was bankrupt; on his departure it was solvent and flourishing." Lord Grey, then Colonial Secretary, declared that "the contrast between the state of things at the end of 1830 and that which he found existing on his arrival at the end of the year 1845, is so marked and so gratifying that it is difficult to believe that so great a change should have been accomplished in the short space of five years."

Nevertheless, when Sir George Grey came home, the Colonial Secretary would not see him. He was in disgrace because, forsooth, he had dared to suspend an Act of Parliament, passed in ignorance by the Legislature at Westminster, which would have broken faith with the natives, dishonoured Britain, and precipitated a bloody war. His action was condoned by Parliament, but the Colonial Office never forgave him for his bold, uncompromising assertion of the necessity for allowing the Governors of distant colonies a certain suspensory power over the Acts of the Imperial Parliament.

His words are significant and very much to the point :-"When Parliament, for want of sufficient information, legislates wrongfully or unjustly for a distant nation subject to its laws-unless the high officers of the Empire will take the responsibility by delaying to act until they receive further instructions-the Empire cannot be held together. . . . In declining, therefore, to break promises which I had made as Her Majesty's representative . . . I felt that I did my duty as a faithful servant of my Queen and country, and will cheerfully undergo every risk and punishment which may follow from my having

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vaal, and in 1853, still bent on the policy of reducing the burdens they insisted that the Orange Free State must also be abandoned. As there was opposition on the part of the Colonists who clung to their unnatural mothercountry, a bribe of £5,000 was employed to secure their acquiescence, and on March 11th, 1854, the English flag was hauled down. Delegates were then on their way to London protesting against this surrender, but Downing Street declared it was too late. "The authority of the Queen had been already too far extended. England could not supply troops to maintain constantly advancing outposts. So far

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