his racial change was by no
means all that separated the European population in the Cape Colony
from the Dutch of Holland. A more potent agency had been at work. The
corner-stone of the policy of the Dutch East India Company was the
determination to debar the settlers from all intercourse--social,
intellectual, commercial, and political--with their kinsmen in Europe.
One fact will suffice to show how perfectly this object was attained.
Incredible as it may seem, it is the case that at the end of the
eighteenth century no printing-press was to be found in the Cape
Colony, nor had this community of twenty thousand Europeans the means
of knowing the nature of the laws and regulations of the Government by
which it was ruled. So long and complete an isolation from European
civilisation produced a result which is as remarkable in itself as it
is significant to the student of South African history. This
phenomenon was the existence, in the nineteenth century, of a
community of European blood whose moral and intellectual standards
were those of the seventeenth.

[Sidenote: The nationality difficulty.]

Our dip into the early history of South Africa is not purposeless. It
does not, of course, explain the failure of British administration;
but it brings us into touch with circumstances that were bound to make
the task of governing the Cape Colony--a task finally undertaken by
England in 1806--one of peculiar difficulty. The native population was
strange, but the European population was even more strange and
abnormal. If we had been left to deal with the native population alone
we should have experienced no serious difficulty in rendering them
harmless neighbours, and have been able to choose our own time for
entering upon the responsibilities involved in the administration of
their territories. But, coming second on the field, we were bound to
modify our native policy to suit the conditions of a preexisting
relationship between the white and black races that was not of our
creation, and one, moreover, that was in many respects repugnant to
British ideas of justice. Nor was this all. The old European
population, which should have been, naturally, our ally and
fellow-worker in the task of native administration, gradually changed
from its original position of a subject nationality to that of a
political rival; and, as such, openly bid against us for the
mastership of the native African tribes.

Now when two statesmen are pitted