centre is a criterion, can it be reached without appalling slaughter of natives. The policy of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it is more favoured by modern Christians than it was by the Founder of Christianity.

CONCLUSION

That policy has been too much pursued even by those who have really desired to benefit the natives of Africa by bringing them under British rule. Others, and the great majority, have made no pretence, or only the flimsiest pretence, of philanthropic intentions. Their motives, avowed or not, have been political aggrandisement, the opening out of new fields for trade or emigration, the making of money, the winning of fame, and anything else that has fitted in with their patriotic sentiments or their personal interests. This being so, it is almost surprising, and we may be glad, that the natives have fared as well as on the whole they have under the treatment to which they have been subjected. But they deserve better treatment than has, for the most part, been accorded to them, and all experience shows that the better the treatment the better is the result for those who have dealings with them or rule over them. The old proverb, "Honesty is the best policy," has wide meaning, and is invariably true. It tersely states the principle that ought always and zealously to be enforced in the continuance and expansion, in so far as expansion is desirable or unavoidable, of British rule over natives in Africa.

THE GOLD ERA IN SOUTH AFRICA1

By W. BASIL WORSFOLD

(Author of "The Principles of Criticism," "The Valley of Light,"
"South Africa," &c.)

THERE are political movements which politicians do not initiate, revolutions accomplished without statesmen or captains. In these changes we look in vain for the deliberate and discriminating influence of a master mind, whether acting alone or in association with others. Neither war, nor diplomacy, nor capital can be justly said to play a chief part in the drama, although one or all of these may be subsequently called in to assist in its development. Yet both the importance of their results, and the swiftness of their progress, mark them off as something apart from the normal and, by comparison, staid advances achieved by a civilised community during a period of rest.

Among such movements, not the least significant and interesting are those effected by the agency of gold discovery. The middle of the century witnessed the development of the United States of America, and the birth of the Australias; to-day we almost hold our breath as we watch the startling results produced by this same potent influence in South Africa.

A brief reference to the past is necessary to enable us to view the events of the present in their true perspective. In the year 1806 England assumed the administration of the settlement planted by the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope. The European 1 Reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, by permission of Chapman & Hall.

population at this date consisted of some 25,000 persons, being the descendants of the original Dutch settlers reinforced by the Huguenot immigrants driven to the Cape by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The French element was rapidly absorbed into the Dutch stock, and the Africander or Franco-Dutch population thus created had spread themselves almost at will over the south-western corner of the continent of Africa, for they encountered no more formidable resistance than was presented by the yellow-skinned Hottentots and Bushmen. The scattered inhabitants of the Dutch colony were almost exclusively a pastoral people; moreover, they had been practically cut off from European civilisation for a century, and both the illiberal1 administration of the Company, and the circumstances of their daily life, had caused them to become turbulent and degraded.

In 1820 five thousand British immigrants were located in the Albany district near the present town of Port Elizabeth; and this Albany settlement, as it was called, formed the basis of the predominantly English population of the eastern province of the Cape Colony. The Albany settlers, like the early settlers in New South Wales, were mainly occupied in the production of wool for the English market, but this was supplemented by the profits of a considerable trade with the Kaffirs.

Meanwhile the expansion of the colony eastwards brought the Europeans into serious collision with the restless masses of dark-skinned Bantu, who, for two centuries, had been crushing southwards between the Drakensberg and the Indian Ocean. The contact of the Europeans and the Bantu was the means of dissociating the Dutch from the English in a task which they should have unitedly accomplished-the colonisation of South Africa. In the endless border conflicts which ensued,

1 "In all things political it was purely despotic; in all things commercial it was purely monopolist."-WATERMEYER.

differences of native policy, which had already existed, were heightened and intensified. The methods of the Africander were the methods of the brutal eighteenth century; the methods of the English were governed by the philanthropic opinions which accompanied a period of enlightenment when missions to the heathen were established throughout the world, and slavery was abolished throughout the empire. In this time of acute disagreement, a large section of the rural population, some thousands in numbers, withdrew beyond the limits of the Cape Colony. These migratory Boers, half-puritans, half-freebooters, exhibited a genuine heroism in their conflicts with the Zulus and the Matabele Zulus; and having extorted a recognition of their independence from the British Government, ultimately organised themselves in communities within the territories now known as the Transvaal and the Free State. By the creation of these Boer republics, respectively in 1852 and 1854, the solidarity of the Europeans in South Africa was lost. The partial separation of the two nationalities was doubly disastrous. In the first place, the original isolation and decivilisation of a large section of the Africander population was perpetuated; and in the second, the Europeans were weakened by disunion in the inevitable struggle with the warlike and prolific Bantu. Had the Europeans presented a united front, the wars by which the supremacy of the white over the coloured races has been at length established would have been less cruel, less revengeful, and less disastrous to both.

It is a matter of common knowledge that the Boers remain to this day a pastoral people. The English colonists, also, found their chief1 occupation during the thirty years which succeeded the Great Emigration (1835-38) in pastoral pursuits, adding to their original

1 I say " "chief," because the mining of one metal (copper) was commenced as early as 1852; and the annual value of the copper export reached the considerable figure of £100,000 in 1864.

sheep-farming the raising of ostriches and Angora goats. During this pastoral period the progress of the colonists was of that deliberate character which is typified by the ox-waggon, the national vehicle of South Africa. Population increased slowly, for there was little to attract, and a good deal to repel, emigrants from England. Nevertheless, roads were constructed, seaports grew up at Durban and at Port Elizabeth, tropical produce began to be raised in Natal. The wealth of the Cape Colony, represented chiefly by its flocks and herds, steadily increased, and, finally, at the close of the period, arrangements were made for introducing responsible government into the Cape Colony.

A decided impulse was given to the progress of South Africa for the first time by the absolutely fortuitous discovery of diamonds in 1867. Since that date diamonds to the value of eighty millions sterling have been raised. The establishment of the diamond industry at Kimberley was a pregnant event. An enterprising community was planted in the hitherto uninhabited desert which lay beyond the northern boundary of the Cape Colony. The non-intervention policy was perforce abandoned. On the one hand, England's interest in South Africa was awakened, on the other, the Cape Colony was enabled to initiate a railway system on the strength of the increased revenues which accrued from the introduction of capital and the consequent growth of population. That was the immediate effect; more remotely Kimberley is the mother alike of Johannesburg and Buluwayo.

Although the gold era of South Africa commenced less than ten years ago, the discovery of gold was an object naturally kept in view by colonists of the race which had found gold in California and Australia. Successive discoveries of gold were made and reported from a date as far back as 1854. An immediate result of the recognition of the independence of the Boers1 was to

1 By the Sand River Convention, 1852.