"March 29, 1881.
"Last night the saddest news I ever received in my life came in the shape of a letter from Wood.... After three Secretaries of State, three High Commissioners, and two Houses of Commons had said that the country should not be given back, it seems a terrible want of good faith to the loyals that this decision should have been arrived at. The scene this morning was a heart-breaking one; the women, who have behaved splendidly all through the siege, were crying and wringing their hands in their great grief; the children were hushed as if in a chamber of death; and the men were completely bowed down in their sorrow. Well they might, for the news brought home ruin to many, and great loss to all. I am ashamed to walk about, for I hear nothing but reproaches and utterances from heretofore loyal men which cut one to the very quick.... How I am to tell the natives I know not, for they have trusted so implicitly to our promises and assurances.... One man who has been most loyal to us (an Englishman) told me to-day, 'Thank God my children are Afrikanders, and need not be ashamed of their country!'"
The feelings described by Sir Owen were openly echoed by all sensible men who knew anything of the country: they were certain that it was not within the power of Boer comprehension to understand "magnanimity" in an opponent. To the Boer, as to many an Englishman, this long-sounding word seemed more neatly to be interpreted by the more ugly but concise term "funk."
Sir Bartle Frere, writing of Sir George Colley in a letter to a friend, expressed his opinion roundly:—
"March 31, 1881.
"Let no one ever say that England lost prestige through Sir George Colley. I do not like the word so much as 'character' or 'conduct' which create it. But no country ever lost real prestige through defeat. Nelson, wounded and repulsed at Teneriffe; Grenvil, overpowered and dying on the deck of the Revenge, did as much for England's prestige as Marlborough at Blenheim or Wellington at Waterloo. Sir George Colley miscalculated his own and his enemy's strength, but he had nothing to do with disgraceful surrender, and I am sure had rather be where he now rests than sign a disgraceful peace, which is the only thing that can injure England's prestige."
Mr. R. W. Murray, of the Cape Times, writing to Sir Bartle Frere, thought bitterly indeed.
"Ask your English statesmen," he wrote, "if, in the history of the world, there was ever such a cruel desertion of a dependency by the parent State. How can England hope for loyalty from South Africans? The moral of the Gladstone lesson is, that you may be anything in South Africa but loyal Englishmen."
These letters, taken haphazard from volumes of correspondence on the melancholy event of the time, serve better than the words of an outsider to show the terrible position in which the "magnanimity" of the British Ministers had placed their countrymen. One more extract and we must pass on.