[[178]] Theal, iv. p. 311.
[[179]] The choice of this date shows Sir Harry’s pleasure in restoring all his old arrangements. It was the date of the great meeting of chiefs in 1836 (see pp. [437], [438], and [Appendix V.]), and it was then arranged that on every 7th January there should be a similar meeting.
[[180]] Theal, iv. p. 315.
[[181]] On his way he stayed from January 12th to 14th at Shiloh, and then selected a site for a town at the junction of the Klipplaats and Ox Kraal Rivers to which he gave the name of his native place, Whittlesea.
[[182]] Theal, iv. p. 421.
[[183]] Ibid., iv. p. 422.
[[184]] Theal, iv. p. 427.
[[185]] The question was submitted to a Committee of Privy Council, whose report was approved on 13th July, 1850. They gave it as their opinion that to abandon a sovereignty virtually assumed by Sir P. Maitland in 1845 and proclaimed by Sir H. Smith in 1848 would be productive of more evil than good. But they add sentences which read strangely in these changed times. “We cannot pass from this part of the subject without submitting for your Majesty’s consideration our opinion that very serious dangers are inseparable from the recent, and still more from any future, extension of your Majesty’s dominions in Southern Africa. That policy has enlarged, and, if pursued further, may indefinitely enlarge, the demands on the revenue and the military force of this kingdom with a view to objects of no perceptible national importance, and to the hindrance of other objects in which the welfare of the nation at large is deeply involved.... Unless some decisive method can be taken to prevent further advances in the same direction, it will be impossible to assign any limit to the growth of these unprofitable acquisitions, or to the extent and number of the burdensome obligations inseparable from them. In humbly advising that the Orange River Sovereignty should be added to the dominions of your Majesty’s crown, we think ourselves therefore bound to qualify that recommendation by the further advice that all officers, who represent, or who may hereafter represent, your Majesty in Southern Africa, should be interdicted, in terms as explicit as can be employed, and under sanctions as grave as can be devised, from making any addition, whether permanent or provisional, of any territory however small to the existing dominions of your Majesty in the African Continent, and from doing any act, or using any language, conveying, or which could reasonably be construed to convey, any promise or pledge of that nature. And we are further of opinion that the proposed interdict should be published in the most formal manner in your Majesty’s name; that so, in the contingency of any future disregard of it by your Majesty’s officers, your Majesty may be able to overrule any such act, or to disappoint any such promise of theirs, without risking the imputation of any breach of the public faith.”
[[186]] J. Noble, South Africa (1877), p. 126.
[[187]] “The Governor—likened to a thunderbolt in presence of an enemy—acted with characteristic promptitude.”—Noble, p. 132.