ed in
military expenditure are considered, the most rigid economists
will feel that the money paid by Great Britain for the control of
this country has been advantageously laid out."

These extracts are not pleasant reading. They were written at the time
when the Imperial spirit was at its nadir. In the plain language of
the Secretary of State for the Colonies[6] in 1858, it was a time when
ministers were "compelled to recognise as fact the increased and
increasing dislike of Parliament to the maintenance of large military
establishments in our colonies at Imperial cost." Yet one more passage
must be cited, not so much because it is tinged by a certain grim
humour--although this is a valuable quality in such a context--as
because it affords an eminently pertinent illustration in support of
the contention that the refusal of the Home Government to follow the
advice of the "man on the spot" has been the operative cause of the
failure of British administration in South Africa. The reply to the
charge of "direct disobedience," which Grey formulates in one
leisurely sentence, runs as follows:

[Footnote 6: Sir E. B. Lytton.]

"With regard to any necessity which might exist for my removal on
the ground of not holding the same views upon essential points of
policy as Her Majesty's Government hold, I can only make the
general remark that, during the five years which have elapsed
since I was appointed to my present office, there have been at
least seven Secretaries of State for the Colonial Department,
each of whom held different views upon some important points of
policy connected with this country."

[Sidenote: The discovery of diamonds.]

Grey was not by any means the only Governor of the Cape to show the
home authorities how impossible it was to govern South Africa from
Downing Street, and to urge upon them the necessity of allowing their
representative, the one man who was familiar with local conditions, to
decide by what methods the objects of British policy could be most
effectively advanced. But it was not until some considerable time
after the Colonial Department had been placed under a separate
Secretary of State, and the Colonial Office had been constituted on
its present basis, with a staff of permanent officials, that these
protests produced any appreciable effect. What really aroused an
interest in South Africa--that is to say a practical interes