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the question of the Boers therefore presses for decision. In the meantime the Reserve is seriously endangered by the Usutu party being able to concentrate against it; and already people are taking refuge in Natal." (P. 117 of 4037.)
Lord Derby replied on the 17th of May adhering to his telegram of the previous day— (p. 118 of C-4037)-thus showing that in the then opinion of Her Majesty's Government, the intervention of the Boers and the probable over- throw of Usibebu, made no difference as to the inexpediency of intervening in Zululand.
USIBEBU'S FATE.
Usibebu was overthrown in June by the Boers acting with the Usutus, and he fled to the Reserve. Then arose a question whether Her Majesty's Government should not intervene to protect him from destruction, and restore him to the position which he had lost (as he and his friends contended) through no fault of his own. His case excited interest, and found advocates in this country. His own appeals were urgent and, in the eyes of many, pathetic. It is impossible to discover in any of Sir Henry Bulwer's despatches a recom- mendation that Her Majesty's Government should aid Usibebu actively indeed, he assumed that we could not aid him; but he regarded Usibebu as a vilely-used man, and would evidently have con- sidered that the rendering of such aid was consis- tent with justice and generosity. If intervention had taken place at that time, it would have been an intervention hostile to the Boers and Usutus combined, and undertaken in the interests of Usibebu and his fellow-sufferer Uhamu. But Lord Derby disposed of the claims of Usibebu and his friends by his despatch of the 19th of August 1884, which concludes the Blue Book C-4192. That despatch put a different com- plexion on the facts from any which is to be found in Sir Henry Bulwer's despatches them- selves, although this is not meant as implying that it could not be justified by many salient facts recorded in the Blue Books themselves. The despatch asserted the impossibility of arriving at any definite opinion as to the merits of the original quarrel between Usibebu and the Usutus, but showed that in its later stages, Usibebu had done acts which brought upon him the Nemesis by which he had been overwhelmed. The main thesis of the despatch was that there was no foundation for the assumption that Usibebu was entitled to aid, which was being withheld from a desire to avoid the loss of life and expense which might result from the employment of a British force in Usibebu's support. Lord Derby declared that if Her Majesty's Government had been under any obligation to aid him, such aid would not have been withheld on the ground of its inconvenience or risk. And he gave it us the view of the Government that all Usibebu was
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