the situation, and I decided that things were very
serious. Apparently, religious motives were at the bottom of the affair,
and I could fancy how fanaticism, bred thereon, might sweep India. My
responsibilities in South Africa were great, for the mad Kaffir movement
had hardly been stayed; nay, my whole surroundings were as a thicket of
thorns, in their possible complications. But India, which might be lost
to us, outweighed everything else, and I felt it my duty to contribute
assistance to the utmost limit of my resources.'

He would ship troops, guns, munitions, specie, everything South Africa
could give, off to India. While he was doing it, a more splendid thing
happened--his masterful laying hands upon the troop-ships passing the
Cape for China, and his sending of them to India instead. 'I have;' he
recorded the act at the time, 'directed that all vessels arriving here
with troops for China, shall proceed direct to Calcutta instead of to
Singapore.' They are laconic words, but their place is over the front
door of the British Empire. To it they brought a service, not ordinary in
its annals, as they marked a man willing to put all to the touch. A
nation and a personality are in the incident, and, remembering that, let
us trace it out.

At this date we had a variance with China, and were undertaking warlike
operations in that country, jointly with France. Troops from England were
hurrying to Lord Elgin, who was seeing our affairs through in China. Some
of the transports reached Cape Town, a few days after Sir George Grey
received the Elphinstone message. They needed water and fresh provisions,
and receiving these would have gone on with all haste to China. It was a
throbbing moment for a Cape Governor, accustomed to think in the British
Empire. What should he do?

You can fancy him working out his course, like a master mariner taking
the stars. Nor, must the process occupy longer. He was rapidly
despatching the forces which were at his command in South Africa. This
might prove rash, having regard to the state of the country. Events might
confuse him, and be his downfall. Still, he was not going beyond the
bounds of his commission, and there were the specious reasons why South
Africa should fly to the aid of India.

He set them out then, and their reperusal, in the armchair of his London
retirement, but emphasised their purport. As a great empire, set hither
and thither, could only be governed by the free consent o