"The application of any remedy seems to lie more with the Sovereign personally, or Her Majesty's immediate advisers in England, than with any Governor, and High Commissioner, or Cabinet of Cape Ministers.
"For quâ Governor, the Queen's Representative at the Cape, is necessarily checked, or controlled by the Ministry of the day, his Constitutional advisers, and the presence in the Cape Parliament of a dominant force of the essentially non-English, or Africander party, must necessarily also have a very material influence upon Ministers, who depend upon a majority of votes for the retention of their office.
"In short, the problem in the Cape Colony is one, which happily does not exist in either of the other great dependencies of the Crown; it is altogether peculiar to South Africa, of which, after all, England acquired possession by conquest, and, having acquired it, has never completely won the adhesion of the Dutch inhabitants, who resent such acts of Government as the abolition of slavery, the introduction of the English principle of equality before the law, and, above all, an unsettled vacillating policy, which last has the worst possible effect upon all the nationalities, European, as well as native, throughout South Africa.
"The present attitude of even British South Africa, is one, not of expectancy, but of slight hope, mingled with distrust, and after such conspicuous events as the dismemberment of Zululand, the retrocession of the Transvaal, in addition to the ineffective efforts towards confederation, he would be a bold man who, as an Englishman, would dare assert either that his country protected her children, or her dependent races, or that there is any settled British policy in the very Continent, where vigour, firmness, and consistency, combined with mere justice, seem to be absolutely essential.
"South Africa has yet to be won over to England, or, in other words, confidence has to be restored. The effort is surely worth making, and anything like a determined effort on the part of the Sovereign, and Her Majesty's immediate advisers would find a most vigorous and cordial response.
"The idea of confederation seems to be quite dependent upon such preliminaries, as mutual confidence, and a measure of common necessity, in order to such a question being seriously entertained.
"The Colonial Conference of two years ago, seems however to have paved the way for effective development in the direction of confederation.
"For it must be remembered, that the somewhat complex British constitution is not the creation of any one Monarch, or Parliament. It has grown to its present dimensions little by little, influenced always by the necessities of particular cases. The House of Peers has ever been summoned by writ, and early precedents indicate, that the Sovereign was not always limited to a particular class of Barons, who alone could be invited to the deliberations of the nation.
"Although it is not admitted, it is nevertheless the fact, that, at the present time, all who are most anxiously desirous of seeing a way to establish a means of drawing together, in Council, the Colonies and the Mother Country, are quite disagreed, as to what is the best means to this end.
"A formal confederation is desired, but all are agreed upon the difficulties which, for the present, at any rate, stand in the way of completing an exactly defined treaty, or definition, to confederate as between the Mother Country, and the Colonies.