Why one frontier is to be sacrificed in this way to another, by the removal of the ordinary police, it is easier to ask than to answer. It is sheer maladministration.

There is great difficulty in admitting the governor's inference, that the war-party in Caffreland has got uppermost, and indulges the marauding party in order to add to its own strength. As the withdrawal of the troops in 1845 produced a sufficient effect upon the Caffres, to increase enormously their disposition to cattle stealing, and there stopped, it is to be concluded, from the absence of a hostile outbreak in the colony, that a war party does not exist in Caffreland to the amount necessary to support the governor's hypothesis. The correct explanation of the state of men's feelings there, is, that as the lieutenant-governor remarked in reference to the colony, 'restless and unruly spirits, who desire war,' may be found among the Caffres; but their abstaining from an invasion of the colony in 1845, when the troops were absent, proves to demonstration either that they are not the ambitious, covetous people pretended, or that they are too ignorant to be aware when they could attack us at most advantage, which would be absurd, or that they are guided by the chivalrous feeling of not fighting with an unprepared foe, which it would be more ridiculous still to attribute to them.

So far from being eager to wage war on the colony, experience has proved that they are brought to this point with extreme difficulty. It was not until 1819 that all the eloquence of Makanna, and an indescribable amount of injury suffered from the colonial government, that the S'lambi tribes could be brought to attack Graham's Town. Again, whatever isolated cases of plunder, and even of murder may have occurred, another invasion, that of 1834-5*, required the accumulation of eighteen years' more oppression on our part, to rouse them to acts of which many of them know well the danger.

On the present occasion they did not invade the colony, when we proclaimed war against the whole nation, although denouncing only three chiefs by name, but only after we had marched an army into their country, and exhibited strong signs of our intentions to seize some of it.

How little the governor of the Cape, who speaks thus injuriously of the Caffres, knows them, is evident from the singular fact of his having in his proclamation rebuked the colonists for

* By one of the errors so common when gentlemen who write with ease undertake to write on topics they have only got up for a purpose, the year 1828 is selected by the 'Colonial Gazette,' of August, for another invasion. In that year the Caffres and colonial troops together fell upon a strange tribe, 290 miles from the frontier, who did not even know what our

were !

cannon

exaggerating the strength of the enemy, when he himself plans an expedition for the signal punishment of the same enemy, and so awfully underrates his power, that the British troops are obliged to save themselves, as they can, in the face of the savages, whose country they so rashly invaded.

But if the governor of the Cape has proved himself to be ig. norant of the people's power to injure us, he is far more dangerously mistaken in supposing, that such a course of hostility as he is now pursuing, will produce lasting peace with them. Our artillery, and superior discipline, may crush the border Caffre tribes, but when the governor of the Cape obtains that success, at whatever cost, he will have turned their bravest spirits into mountain robbers, and they will have warm sympathizers among thousands who may submit to be our sullen slaves. To all appearance, it is a repetition of the error of 1835, aggravated by the experience of it, and under circumstances far more threatening, now that thousands of Caffres have fire-arms;-it is absolutely in principle a restoration of the old system in its most odious feature, the violent occupation of land belonging to the Caffres. Obscurely as the governor's proclamation is worded, the jealousy of the Caffres seems to have put the right construction upon it as a new attack of that kind; but they wisely offered terms rather than expose themselves to it. We had long ceased to encroach upon the Caffreland bit by bit, after the old fashion down to 1834. But we had not learned either to respect their good qualities, or to take a persevering and prudent course for the correction of their bad ones.

Our refusal to treat amicably on this occasion, after the successful negotiation of February last, betrays a state of irritation that must pervert the judgment, and lead to misfortune. In this case, the negotiations were conducted at breathless speed; and as if they were looked upon only as unavoidable, of course belonging to a foregone conclusion. The Caffre atrocity, an act not to be palliated, was committed on the 17th of March, and on the 21st, the announcment that negotiations had failed, is printed at Graham's Town. The war is then also publicly resolved upon on the frontier a week before the news reaches the governor at Cape Town. His proclamation is published there on the 31st of March, but so hastily, that a great chief, Macomo, included in the lieutenant-governor's earlier denunciations, is omitted by the governor, although hostilities were immediately directed against him along with the rest.

In this most serious question of war or peace, the proceedings on our part are not satisfactory, even according to the proclamation, and its details differ materially from the newspaper accounts. But the personal intercourse between the Caffre chiefs

and the Colonial authorities, as reported in the frontier journals, is still more unsatisfactory. For instance: last autumn, upon the occasion of the murder of a missionary, near the country of the Congo Caffres, the tribe which had long been unshaken in its friendly engagements with us, and remarkable for its freedom from plundering, the lieutenant-governor took active steps towards punishing the murderers. For this purpose he assembled several chiefs, when turning to Kama, Umkye, and Pato, he said, addressing himself to Pato, who belonged to that friendly tribe, and pointing to the others, "These two chiefs I have confidence in; in you, Pato, I have none. Let, then, the murderers be produced, or expect the consequences.'

Pato was about to reply, but the lieutenant governor prevented him by saying; 'No, I want no talking, go instantly and find the murderers.'

Pato replied, Only one word, let me speak-I will try and find them.'

Umkye, then addressing Pato, said, 'Be diligent in this matter; begin with this very sun to seek for the culprits, or you are a ruined man.'-(Graham's Town Journal, 4th December.)

Such is the character of our first frontier magistrate's diplomatic call upon a Caffre chief. What sort of social reception these chiefs receive at an advanced post may be inferred from the following account of a visit from the heads of the well-tried Congo tribe. One day,' says the writer, while we were sitting at dinner, with the door opening upon the verandah, Cobus Congo walked in. On that day, as it was HIS FIRST VISIT, we did not turn him out, but we resolved on not following the foolish custom of permitting the Caffres to take liberties with us, which are not suffered among themselves. Old Pato, with his panther eyes, came up to the door, begging as usual; and when they had obtained the tobacco, we gave them to get rid of them, off they walked, thinking us great fools for our pains.'-(Graham's Town Journal, April, 1845. No. 699.)

It is little surprising that the men who are so treated, should be found in the ranks of our enemies in 1846; and but stronger reproaches can be made upon the manner in which the new system of civilization has been administered during the last few years, than the simple statement of the fact, that our tried friends have at length become our enemies, and that those who from being enemies were made our friends by a resolute act of indemnity being done by us in their behalf, have been driven again into an invasion by our irrational and violent treatment of them.

The PHILANTHROPISTS are much to be blamed for their share in the impolicy which has brought the native affairs of the Cape

colony to this issue; and they have great errors of their own to repair in regard to the whole interior of South Africa; but, above all, in regard to the latter frontier.

From 1834 to 1837, the philanthropists, represented by Sir T. F. Buxton, powerfully denounced the evils of the old system of the frontier; and they were joined in this by numerous parties who did not enrol themselves in their body. They succeeded in their efforts to overturn that old system. They had both Houses of Parliament entirely with them; and the ministers, without partaking their convictions, were disposed to receive from their hands, any rational, well urged plan of reform. The government was even so ductile, that, at their wish, it adopted the melancholy mistake of the Niger expedition, and was prepared to adopt, besides, all the ulterior schemes for Eastern Africa, belonging to the principle of the Niger expedition. Happily, the fevers of the West Coast of Africa stopped the application of that principle at its outset, or it is difficult to say to what extreme lengths, and with what fatal results, that error would not have been carried, with the prodigious influence then enjoyed by the philanthropists.

The sources of that influence were of a lasting character, and it will revive, if the measures now devised to meet the evils caused by our errors, be wise and prompt. The abolition of Negro slavery, with all its difficulties, has secured the approval even of those whose interests it attacked; and it cannot be the only grand work of humanity that civilized men can accomplish. To reconcile the spread of our colonies, with the rights of the Aborigines of the countries which we are settling; and to enable those Aborigines to share the improvements with which we are fast filling the earth, ought to be attempted in earnest; and with that intelligence which alone can make great designs prosper.

Hitherto the philanthropists have submitted to be almost as much in the dark in these affairs, as the ministers, parliament, and the public. The first step to be taken is to make a grand effort to bring forward in parliament a full analysis of all that in South Africa and elsewhere materially affects the natives in their relation with us. The reform introduced upon the Caffre frontier in 1837 established peace, which has been unbroken for nine years, and, as has been stated, by a vigorous administration, it put a stop entirely even to depredation. The governor of the Cape is positive, that in 1844, that effect was produced for eight months all over Caffreland, and some of the tribes have been reasonably free of offence for the whole period since 1837. It would be wise to have all the facts of the case displayed, so as to be able to see why this temporary and partial success has

been interrupted, and why it has not gone further. The philanthropists, after setting up this system, ought not to have turned their backs upon it. If the commissions of local inquiry proposed in the printed draft for the committee of 1837, had not been abandoned, it is impossible that the failure which is now afflicting us could have occurred.

The philanthropists have treated the missionaries, to whom so much good is owing, with a double injustice. They have endeavoured to set them up as political agents abroad, and they have, themselves, abstained at home from insisting upon those political and official reforms, without which, the labours of the missionaries, in their proper spheres, must be perpetually disappointed. No where has experience proved these remarks to be sound, more decisively than in South Africa; and no where will it be more becoming for them to review with care the advice they have given, the acts they have approved, and the neglect they have overlooked, and then to insist with zeal upon a really humane policy being pursued there in future, in the place of what the governor of the Cape has so rashly planned at the expense of this third invasion of a noble British colony. To govern the Caffre frontier with success, we must require that the Caffres be treated like rational beings, that its administration be conducted upon principles of common humanity; and that ministers, and parliament, and the public, shall be in a condition to judge correctly whether such principles are respected, by care being taken to make the facts known, instead of their remaining for nine years a colonial secret.

Then, and then only, will the London newspapers deal with the subject with common sense, instead of speculating as they do now upon mere fictions. To the Times' and 'Morning Chronicle, it will be sufficient on this point to add the 'Colonial Gazette,' to whose fair extracts from the Cape journals, we are indebted for the illustrations here attempted to be as fairly used in support of views the very reverse of those in that able journal.

The writer of an article of the 8th of August last, on the Caffre war, pretends to extraordinary minuteness of information on the subject of the Caffres; but jumbles things sadly together. He talks boldly of their invasion of Cape Colony in 1828, although no such event occurred in that year, nor for eight years before, nor six years afterwards. He talks in the same bold way of all the invasions of the colony by the Caffres having been the fruits of their marauding spirit, as if they had never been impelled to those invasions by the wrongs they had suffered. He talks of the defensive boundary line of the Cape government, in 1835, after conquering Caffreland, although it