Other Statistics
In other branches of development there have been marked evidences of advancement; though in the figures which follow, and notably in connection with railways and banking, the English part of the population is again the principal progressive element. In 1860 there were 225 schools and 18,757 scholars, and in 1897 2,358 schools and 119,812 scholars. The railways were taken over by the Government in 1873 to the extent of 64 miles. In 1897 the railways under Government control covered 1901 miles, with total receipts of $15,350,000 and expenditures of $9,500,000. This particular branch of progress was greatly assisted by the Orange Free State under President Brand. Telegraph lines, with 19 stations, 781 miles of wire sending 15,500 messages in the year, were also assumed by the Government in 1873, and in 1897 there were 426 stations, 18,631 miles of wire, and 2,392,503 messages despatched. The fixed and floating deposits in the banks of the Colony amounted, in 1865, to ten million dollars and the bills and notes under discount to over fifteen millions. In 1897 the fixed deposits were $13,500,000, the floating deposits $24,000,000, and the discounts $17,000,000, in round numbers. The chief railways in the Colony start from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, and the main line into the interior now reaches Buluwayo. If Mr. Cecil Rhodes ever succeeds in the aim of his life, it will eventually reach Cairo, and thus connect the Cape with Egypt.
The Colony from a Religious Standpoint
Until the discovery of gold in the Transvaal the British emigration to South Africa was never extensive, and even since that time it has not been greatly added to so far as Cape Colony is concerned. The total of those sent from England between 1873 and 1884 was only 23,337. From a religious standpoint the condition of the Colony is somewhat complex. There are two Church of England Dioceses, and the Church is very popular amongst the English part of the community, whilst its organization is excellent—a fact largely due to the work done during many years by Dr. Gray, Bishop of Cape Town. It is in close touch with the Church at home, and in 1874 had 45,000 adherents, of whom 19,000 were colored people. The Roman Catholic Church at that time numbered 8,000, and the Dutch Reformed Church, which is, of course, the Church of the Boers, included 132,000 adherents. In 1891 there were, according to the Census, 186,073 white members of the Dutch Reformed congregations in the Colony and 24,441 colored; 46,114 white adherents of the Church of England and an equal number of colored; 20,215 white adherents of Wesleyan Methodism and over a hundred thousand colored; and 12,000 Roman Catholics, mostly white; with the balance of the population scattering amongst minor denominations and the various sections of the Lutheran Church.
The most prominent public man of British extraction in the earlier period of the history of Cape Colony was the Hon. William Porter, C.M.G., who died in 1880 after many years' seclusion at his home in Ireland. A native and barrister of Erin, he was Attorney-General of Cape Colony as far back as 1839, and held office for a long period prior to the attainment of responsible government. The constitution of 1854 was largely his creation, and his personality, combined with great natural eloquence, made him a strong place in the hearts of the people. Three times he refused the position of Chief Justice, and, in 1872, declined the office of Prime Minister under the newly established system of complete self-government. Bishop Gray of Cape Town, who died in the year just mentioned, was also one of its great public figures. During quarter of a century, and amidst innumerable ecclesiastical storms and political complications, he administered the affairs of the Anglican Church, and left it in a strongly organized position as the "Church of South Africa," with its own Synod, prosperous finances and growing membership. Sir Walter Curry, of Cape Mounted Rifles fame; Sir Sydney Smith Bell, a learned Judge of twenty-three years' labor; Sir Christoffel Josephus Brand, the first Speaker of the House of Assembly; the Hon. Robert Godlonton, M.L.C., and Thomas Burt Glanville, M.L.A.; Hon. Saul Solomon, M.L.A., Sir Andries Stockenstrom, Bart., M.L.A., Hon. J. W. Leonard, M.L.A., Hon Jonathan Ayliff, M.L.A., Hon. George Wood, M.L.C., the Hon. Andries Stockenstrom, Judge of the Supreme Court, and John Noble, C.M.G., were all men who left their mark upon the history of the Colony.
After William Porter, the most prominent of the earlier Colonists, was the Hon. John Paterson. A Scotchman by birth, he went out to South Africa in 1840, and became a teacher, a journalist, a capitalist, a banker, and, finally, during many years was a keen politician. A member of both Houses in turn, a strong advocate of Confederation and railway development, a progressive leader in every sense of the word, his death by drowning in 1880 left a serious void in the life of the Colony. Of Sir John Charles Molteno, the first Premier at the Cape, much might be said. An Englishman by birth, he was a Colonist from the age of sixteen (1830) until his death in 1886. Participating in different Kaffir wars, fighting for responsible government, struggling for railway extension, sharing in all the ups and downs of local political life, he became Prime Minister in 1872, and retired from public life in 1883, after receiving the honor of knighthood from the Queen.
In later years and in the development of Dutch individuality the Afrikander Bund did some measure of good.
Some Prominent Leaders
Apart from its influence in arousing a racial passion which was innate, but as yet sluggish, amongst the Cape Boers, it had detached them somewhat from their previous position of absolute isolation, and, under the local leadership of Mr. J. H. Hofmeyr and others, had brought them into political and constitutional action. That this growing knowledge and experience was ultimately twisted by the influence of President Kruger of the Transvaal and President Reitz of the Free State into an increased and active aversion to Great Britain and the English was the misfortune of the situation. Meantime, however, the movement taught the Dutch something of the freer life of British politics and brought some able men to the front. Mr. Hofmeyr could have been Premier at almost any time during these years, but seems to have been without personal ambition of the official kind. Sir John Henry de Villiers was the first Attorney-General under responsible government, President of the Legislative Council for many years, and has been Chief Justice of the Colony since 1873. He was a Delegate in 1894, with Mr. Hofmeyr, to the Colonial Conference at Ottawa, and three years later was appointed a member of the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council—the highest Court of Appeal in the Empire—as part of a new policy which included Canadian, Australian and South African members in that important body. He has long represented the best type of loyal, cultured and able Dutchmen at the Cape. His name indicates the strain of Huguenot blood which so curiously mingles with many of the Dutch families of the Cape.
Sir Pieter Hendrik Faure, K.C.M.G., is another Dutch leader of the same type—loyal to the finger-tips and progressive in ideal and in practice and as a follower of Cecil Rhodes. He was in the latter's Ministry from 1890 to 1896, and in the succeeding Government of Sir Gordon Sprigg until 1898. The Hon. Jacobus Wilhelmus Sauer has been a very different style of political leader. A thorough Dutchman and enthusiastic member of the Afrikander Bund, he helped to break up the first Rhodes' Ministry, in which he had been included as a part of the Premier's conciliatory policy, and he is now a member of very doubtful loyalty in the Schreiner Government. He has declined a knighthood. Mr. Wilhelm Philip Schreiner has not had that opportunity, but he has accepted a C.M.G., or Companionship in the Order of St. Michael and St. George. He was a member of the second Rhodes' Ministry (1893) for a short time, and, in 1898, when the Bund had become a strong political factor and had overpowered Rhodes and his friendly successor—Sir Gordon Sprigg—at the polls, he became, on October 14th of that year, Premier of Cape Colony as well as the local leader of the Bund in practical succession to Hofmeyr. As events developed in the direction of racial hostilities in South Africa, and as political power at the Cape came to centre in the hands of the Bund Ministry, Mr. Hofmeyr's influence has naturally diminished and that of Messrs. Schreiner, Sauer and Te Water increased. The latter, the Hon. Thomas Nicholas German Te Water, B.A., M.D., has been, for some time, a leader of the Afrikander party, and, though a graduate of Edinburgh University, a student of Berlin, Vienna and other Universities and a man of culture, he also has become enmeshed in the web of racial or Dutch ideals. He was for two years in the last Sprigg Ministry, and is now in that of Mr. Schreiner.