“Some think that annexation will bring relief from the grievances under which we labor, but when they have to pay a tax on diamonds, have no administrator at hand to personally inspect and redress their complaints [hear, hear], what then?
“We may get a railway, but that is no certainty; we may get the advantage of a three-judge court, but these benefits are nothing in comparison to what we shall lose, when we lose our independence. For my part, I feel like a man who is unjustly charged with the commission of a crime. I feel like a man who has been wrongly convicted, but the jury have given their verdict and it remains with you, sir, as judge to-day to pass the sentence. As the mouthpiece of the law you must do its behests, but I protest against the passing of a sentence of capital punishment. [Loud applause.]
“So far as the elected members of this council are concerned they have done their duty to their constituents, they have resisted and protested to the best of their ability against annexation to the Cape Colony. I hope, however, sir, we shall soon recover our liberty under a wide scheme of confederation. I bow now to the inevitable. [Continued applause.]”
Messrs. Bottomley and Paddon, the junior member for Kimberley, and the member for Barkly, then also supported the protest which I had read, in short speeches, when Mr. Rose Innes, as if tired of the play, spoke the “tag” declaring the council dissolved, and the curtain dropped.
Thus was carried into effect the bill which three years before had passed the Cape assembly (No. 39, 1877), and which had nearly lapsed through effluxion of time. It was forced on with most unseemly haste at the finish, the provision in the 32d clause that the bill was to take effect when “all matters and things necessary to be done and to happen in order to enable the said annexation to be completed and perfected, have been done and happened,” being entirely ignored, the boundary line of the province, the most important “matter and thing” of all, not having been definitely settled.
Although we were taken over with all our liabilities and engagements, I am sorry to say repudiation has been, more or less, the favorite policy of the Cape government, so far as the “milch cow” of the colony is concerned.[[65]]
Mr. Rose Innes, C. M. G., having finished his work, left for Capetown, and Mr. P. A. Villiers, the acting colonial secretary, with all the public documents, title deeds and archives of the province soon followed in his wake, when instead of being a crown colony, with our own governor, and in direct communion with the imperial government, we found ourselves a portion of the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, and at the bidding of its responsible advisers!
Griqualand West was annexed to the Cape Colony in October 1880.
It was not until March 15th of the next year that an election took place for the return of two members to represent Kimberley in the Cape parliament. There were three candidates for the two seats. Mr. J. B. Robinson, Mr. George Bottomley, my former colleague, and myself. The excitement was most intense. The unlimited expenditure of money by the one, and the pertinacious sectarian adherents of the other, proved a formidable opposition, but the all-round support given the “red, white and blue” enabled me a second time to become the senior member for Kimberley. This election took place when the share mania was at its height, when money was very plentiful, and no ordinance being in existence forbidding brass bands, carriages, flags, rosettes, champagne and other little luxuries indulged in at such a time, the extravagant expenditure bore favorable (?) contrast with an English election in the “good old days.” As may well be imagined in a rich digging community some sharp practice occurred, but this was nothing in comparison with that which took place when the seat, which I afterward vacated, was filled up, for then the grave gave up her dead, the Capetown breakwater its convicts, and the natives “polled early and often” for the successful candidate!
The assembly was in session when Mr. J. B. Robinson and myself arrived in Capetown.