e Transvaal must react
dangerously down here in the old colony, and convert the Dutch
Country party, now as loyal and prosperous a section of the
population as any under the Crown, into dangerous allies of the
small anti-English Republican party, who are for separation, thus
paralysing the efforts of the loyal English party now in power,
who aim at making the country a self-defending integral portion
of the British Empire. Further, any attempt to give back or
restore the Boer Republic in the Transvaal must lead to anarchy
and failure, and probably, at no distant period, to a vicious
imitation of some South American Republics, in which the more
uneducated and misguided Boers, dominated and led by better
educated foreign adventurers--Germans, Hollanders, Irish Home
Rulers, and other European Republicans and Socialists--will
become a pest to the whole of South Africa, and a most dangerous
fulcrum to any European Power bent on contesting our naval
supremacy, or injuring us in our colonies.

"There is no escaping from the responsibility which has already
been incurred, ever since the British flag was planted on the
Castle here. All our real difficulties have arisen, and still
arise, from attempting to evade or shift this responsibility....
If you abdicate the sovereign position, the abdication has always
to be heavily paid for in both blood and treasure.... Your object
is not conquest, but simply supremacy up to Delagoa Bay. This
will have to be asserted some day, and the assertion will not
become easier by delay. The trial of strength will be forced on
you, and neither justice nor humanity will be served by
postponing the trial if we start with a good cause."

Could not the man who foresaw these dangers have prevented them? It is
impossible to resist the momentum of this thought.

[Sidenote: The retrocession.]

The events by which this forecast was so closely realised are not
likely to be effaced from the memory of this generation. Frere had
scarcely left the Colony from which he had been recalled by the joint
efforts of Mr. Krueger and Lord (then Mr.) Courtney before the former,
with his fellow triumvirs, had raised the Vier-kleur upon the still
desolate uplands of the Witwatersrand. The attempt to put down by
force the Boer revolt of 1880-81 failed. Mr. Gladstone's cabinet
recoiled be