ittered with a sense of wrong."[28]

The writer just quoted makes the following remarks:--

"No one who has not associated with colonists in their homes can rightly
enter into the mixed feelings with which they regard the mother country.
As with a son who is gone forth into the world, there is often on one
side the conceit of youth and impatience of restraint, shown in uncalled
for acts of self-assertion or in dogmatic speech; and on the other side
a supercilious want of sympathy with the changed surroundings, the
pursuits and the aspirations of the younger generation. It seems as if
there were no bond left between the two. But a day of trial comes;
parent or offspring is threatened by a stranger; and then it is seen
that the old instinct and yearnings are not dead, but only latent. The
mother country had hitherto not been forgetful of its natural
obligations to its South African offspring."

"But those" he goes on to say, "who on that fateful evening watched the
hull of the _Pretoria_ slowly dipping below the western horizon felt
that if, as seemed only too probable, dismemberment of the British
Empire in South Africa were sooner or later to follow, the fault did not
lie with the colonists."

The mother country had, he asserts, sacrificed the interests of her
loyal sons abroad to those which were at that moment pre-occupying her
at home, and appearing to her in such dimensions as to blot out the
larger view which later events gradually forced upon her vision. The
words above quoted are strong, perhaps too strong, but if we are true
lovers of our country and race and of our fellow creatures everywhere,
we shall not shrink from any such warnings, though their wording may
seem exaggerated. For we have a debt to pay back to South Africa; and if
we cannot resume our solemn responsibilities towards her and her
millions of native peoples, in a chastened, a wiser and a more
determined spirit than that which for some time has prevailed, it would
be better to relinquish them altogether. But we are beginning to
understand the lesson written for our learning in this solemn page of
contemporary history which is to-day laid open before our eyes and
before those of the whole world.

I have recorded some few of the many testimonies in favour of Sir Bartle
Frere, because he,--a man beloved and respected by many of us,--was the
subject of a hastily formed judgment which continues in a measure even
to this day, to obscure the memory