Good Service to the Community
In 1826 Sir Lowry Cole succeeded to the position and attempted for a time the difficult and dangerous task of Anglicizing the population. Eight years afterwards General Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who had seen military service in Canada, and elsewhere, was appointed to carry out the slave emancipation policy. Then came Sir George Napier, under whose régime a splendid system of roads was created and, in 1847, General Sir Harry Smith, a most popular and able Governor. He was followed by Sir George Cathcart in 1852. All of these rulers had to deal with native or Boer wars and none of them had much time to spare for the cultivation of material progress in the generally harassed country. From 1854 to 1862, however, Sir George Grey administered the affairs of the Colony and to this remarkable man South Africa owes much, and would have owed more had he not been hampered and overruled at every turn by Imperial fears of a policy of expansion and Imperial objections to the assumption of further responsibilities.
This was the period when Little Englanders abounded in the mother country; when Tories and Radicals were agreed in opposing any added links to the chain of Empire; when the masses believed that the manufacturing industries and commerce which they saw advancing by leaps and bounds on every side were entirely independent of political boundaries and national allegiance; when the markets of the world seemed for a time to belong to England, and the markets of the Colonies were in comparison absolutely insignificant; when public men like John Bright and Richard Cobden, Cornewall Lewis and Sir William Molesworth, Lord Brougham and Lord Ellenborough, Robert Lowe and even Lord John Russell, spoke of a future in which the Colonies would be independent, and of a present which was simply preliminary to a destiny which they did not regret. The popular idol of that day was Trade, as the popular idol of the last days of the century is Empire. The swing of the pendulum has come indeed, but it has brought with it a war which the acceptance of Sir George Grey's policy at this time would have prevented.
England's Unsettled Colonies
There is, of course, much to excuse this view of the Colonies in, and about, 1850. The British-American Provinces were still in a dissatisfied and disorganized condition from the Rebellion of 1837, the racial troubles of 1848, and the fiscal difficulties which followed the repeal of the Corn Laws and Preferential duties by England. The value and resources of Australia were practically unknown. It was still the home of convicts, and had only just entered upon a period of rushing settlement and turbulent mining successes in which the problems of government were extremely complicated. South Africa had been the scene of nothing but war and trouble. All the later Governors had been recalled one after the other, and their policy frequently reversed without either conciliating the Colonists or controlling the restless masses of native population along the ever-changing frontiers. As a rule the earlier policy toward the Kaffirs had been one of half-measures. The first plan of alliances with native chiefs broke down, and in Lord Charles Somerset's time had ended in conflict. Then came the Boer wars with the Zulus in Natal and a British effort to protect the natives against the invaders' onslaughts. Sir Benjamin D'Urban's policy in 1835, after the Kaffir war of that time, was the establishment of a living frontier along the east of Cape Colony, which should be sufficiently strong to resist the pressure of the savage masses from beyond. A line of European settlers was to be established, and beyond that a body of loyal Kaffirs supported by a string of forts. Before a Committee of the House of Commons this was afterwards declared by D'Urban's successor, Sir G. Cathcart, to have been a wise and necessary policy. But, unfortunately, it involved an advance from the Fish to the Kei River, and such a thing the Colonial Office would not tolerate. The policy was reversed and the territory in question given back to the Kaffirs.
England's Unsettled Colonies
Sir George Grey (1854-61) took a different line of action and policy. Everything that he did was bold and determined. He acted first, assumed the responsibility next, and made it necessary for the Colonial Office to either approve, or else recall, a Governor who had for the first time in a quarter of a century proved a successful South African ruler. This statement is not necessarily a reflection upon previous Governors. Sir Benjamin D'Urban was overruled by Downing Street. Sir George Napier went out simply to reverse a certain policy under detailed instructions. General Sir Peregrine Maitland had distinguished himself as a soldier, had made an excellent Governor of Upper Canada and of Nova Scotia, and was no more responsible for the Kaffir war which caused his inevitable recall than was the Premier of Great Britain. General Sir Harry Smith, the victor of Aliwal in India, and the only British officer who before 1899 had won a direct victory over the Boers, had in him the making of a statesman, as his annexation of the Orange River region proved. But the war with Sandili brought about his recall, and a very few years also saw the reversal of his policy toward the Boers, the creation of the independent Free State, the establishment of the Transvaal, and the foundation of endless opportunities for trouble in the future. For these actions the Government of the Earl of Aberdeen and the Secretaryship of the Duke of Newcastle must always hold an unpleasant responsibility. Sir George Grey did what he could to rectify the errors which had been made. He was instinct with the Imperial idea, and, although doomed to fail in some measure in the attainment of his great ambitions, none the less did splendid work for the Empire. The men at the Colonial Office were constantly changing, and the only continuity in their policy was a common desire to be relieved from any new developments and fresh responsibilities. Politics did not come into the matter at all, as one party was then as ignorant of Colonial requirements and as indifferent to Colonial possibilities as the other.
HOSPITAL TRAIN LOADING WOUNDED SOLDIERS