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entitled to was an asylum in the Reserve, which asylum must not be abused by making the Reserve a focus for intrigues or plans of future retaliation. [Lord Derby to Sir H. Bulwer, 19 August 1884, p. 138 of C-4191.]

As & matter of fact, before the despatch arrived in Natal, Usibebu and his people had crossed into the Reserve, and most of them are there now.

Since then the anti-Usutus have, as it were, been swept off the chess-board. Uhamu indeed remains, but he is isolated and powerless, and, as far as he appears on the scene, he appears as making com- mon cause with the Usutus in a desire not to be overwhelmed and swallowed up by the quondam allies of the latter--the Boers of the New Re- public. If there is any question of intervening in Zululand, it is, in the main, a question of saving the Usutus, whose conduct our agents have never ceased to reprobate, from the consequences of their own act in calling in the aid of the Boers to help them against Usibebu.

THE BOER INTERVENTION.

The motives and morality of the Boer inter- vention in Zululand have been much discussed. Its justice or morality is, however, of little conse- quence. The Usutus have brought their misfor- tunes on their own heads, and if we save them it will be because their ruin would bring us present trouble, by overcrowding us with refugees, and thwart our ulterior policy, by depriving us of an outlet for the surplus population of Natal. The Boers of the border have long had relations with the Zulus, and have been accustomed to use the northern portion of Zululand as their winter grazing-ground. It may be admitted, therefore, that they had and have some interest in the establishment and maintenance of peace in the country; but whether that motive would have been sufficient to account for their action may be doubted. Whatever their original motive, there can be little question that their enterprise has now developed into a vast land specu- lation-one of many which have given us trouble in South Africa, and which must be expected to recur as long as the Boer wants so much elbow-room as he does, and propagates his species at the prodigiously rapid rate which is his wont. A Boer marries at 20 or 21, and families of from 10 to 17 are the rule. Supposing 10 in a family on an average survive and themselves become parents, it follows that four adult Boers, two males and two females, would multiply in 40 years into something over 120 Boers male and female, each pair wanting a farm of from 4,000 to 6,000 acres. It is with this rate of increase that we have to reckon. If we drive back the Boer from Bechu- analand, he overflows into Zululand, and if we drive him out of Zululand we must expect to hear

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