The accounts from the Cape have in no way improved
this week. All the telegrams, official and private, show that the colonial officers are wandering about in Basutoland without aim or advantage, the Basutos leaving a place as they advance, only to surround it when they retire. They have, for instance, twice besieged and abandoned Gatberg. The Basuto cavalry is a force as fluid as water, and it gives way to every blow, closing instantly as if nothing had occurred. The burghers of the Transvaal are openly resisting the law, and in Kaffirland the Government is at last so per- plexed that it has become moderate, and has issued special instructions not to provoke the Pondos. The bulletin-writers are evidently gloomy, and perhaps the most significant fact is that the papers are discussing the propriety of enlisting 10,000 Zulus. We are to rearm a defeated native people known to be hostile, in order to defeat another tribe, known to be loyal till we ordered them to surrender their arms. It is quite clear that no Colonial Treasnry can stand this situation long, and with the first application for aid, the whole subject must come up before Parliament.
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