POSTSCRIPT.
SATURDAY:
We have received a voluminous mass of correspondence and papers from the Cape colony, on the alarmingly critical state of affairs there. Time and space are not left us for any attempt at giving even the sub- stance of the whole budget, but their bearing may he conveyed to our readers by a single extract from one letter, written to us by a colonist having the very best sources of information the colony supplies. His tone is despairing. "My own opinion is that the colony is lost. The British Government Ras lost the affections, the confidence, and the fear of all parties, Dutch and English, Christian and Heathen, Black and White. Taking Lord Grey as an element, fifty thousand men would not restore order and enforce submission in Southern Africa. The native tribes are thoroughly roused, and evidently acting in concert with one another, and with the hitherto humble and faithful natives within the colony. The Dutch Boers and older colonists speak openly of 'trekking' to join their friends, who now form an independent republic in the interior, where they may defy the whole British army. ; and the English on the frontier were speaking of abandoning their lands and moving to New South Wales, even before the late news of gold-mines had reached them. That news will decide the case. The young and enterprising, the strength of the colony—and indeed all who have the means of moving—will at once abandon a settlement which has not strength enough left to resist the Colo- anal Office for a group of settlements that will in a few months cut the con- nexion alt4ether. It breaks the heart to think what an empire Great Bri- tain is losing—losing with disgrace not only to her policy but to her arms— through the crimes of a Minister and the apathy of Parliament. . . . . Now all hope is crushed. The Cape colony, the Sovereignty, and Natal, are lost. Nothing that Ministers will do can save them By the time Parliament assembles in February, all this will be history; to a great ex- tent it is history already."
Previous page
