o contrast the "brief armed rising" in Canada with the three years' war
in South Africa, and to argue that a degree of freedom could safely be
given after the former, which would involve great danger after the
latter, was to show ignorance of the chain of historical events and
blindness to their true moral. The underlying idea is the one applied to
the old American Colonies and for centuries to Ireland, namely, that the
more mutinous a dependency is, the less reason for giving it Home Rule,
with the paradoxical corollary applied even to this day in Ireland, that
if it is not disorderly it does not need Home Rule. So from age to age
statesmen run their heads against facts, perpetuate the errors of their
forefathers, and do their unconscious best to intensify the evils they
deplore. It was erroneous to regard either the Canadian Rebellions or
the Boer War as events which rendered responsible government more or
less dangerous. Each of these events was itself the climax of a long
period of irresponsible misgovernment dating from about the same period,
the second decade of the nineteenth century, and demanding the same
remedy. In the Boer case, continuity was twice broken by grants of
independence, and the climax proportionally delayed, but the origin of
the trouble was the same. If the Boers had not trekked _en masse_ from
Cape Colony in order to escape from misgovernment, both movements--in
the Cape and Canada--might have come to a head in exactly the same year,
1837.

In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving
needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the
Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial
experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free
institutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line,"
will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the
"healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and
marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he
wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite
correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in
Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of
responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said
so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language
of diplomacy, as follows:

"His Majesty's Government trust that th