he could
conceive that after the founding of the United States the Dutch
inhabitants of the State of New York had trekked to the westward and
established fresh communities under a new flag. Then, when the American
population overtook these western States, they would be face to face
with the problem which this country has had to solve. If they found
these new States fiercely anti-American and extremely unprogressive,
they would experience that aggravation of their difficulties with which
our statesmen have had to deal.

At the time of their transference to the British flag the
colonists--Dutch, French, and German--numbered some thirty thousand.
They were slaveholders, and the slaves were about as numerous as
themselves. The prospect of complete amalgamation between the British
and the original settlers would have seemed to be a good one, since
they were of much the same stock, and their creeds could only be
distinguished by their varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance. Five
thousand British emigrants were landed in 1820, settling on the Eastern
borders of the colony, and from that time onwards there was a slow but
steady influx of English speaking colonists. The Government had the
historical faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was
mild, clean, honest, tactless, and inconsistent. On the whole, it might
have done very well had it been content to leave things as it found
them. But to change the habits of the most conservative of Teutonic
races was a dangerous venture, and one which has led to a long series
of complications, making up the troubled history of South Africa. The
Imperial Government has always taken an honourable and philanthropic
view of the rights of the native and the claim which he has to the
protection of the law. We hold and rightly, that British justice, if not
blind, should at least be colour-blind. The view is irreproachable in
theory and incontestable in argument, but it is apt to be irritating
when urged by a Boston moralist or a London philanthropist upon men
whose whole society has been built upon the assumption that the black
is the inferior race. Such a people like to find the higher morality
for themselves, not to have it imposed upon them by those who live under
entirely different conditions. They feel--and with some reason--that
it is a cheap form of virtue which, from the serenity of a well-ordered
household in Beacon Street or Belgrave Square, prescribes what the
relat