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The aid thus given was highly appreciated by Her Majesty's Government, and was not rendered Appendix No. 4 without substantial and often serious sacrifices on the part of the colonists. A large proportion of the volunteers in Cape Town are men of business, and the time occupied by furnishing the ordinary guards of castle, barracks, arsenal, and batteries was a considerable tax on the town.

Nor, I submit, can the arrangement, which leaves the defence of the Cape Peninsula entirely to colonial forces, be recommended on any ground of policy.

It has always been admitted that whatever might be done with regard to internal territorial defence, the national interests at stake in the command of the Cape Peninsula were too considerable to be entrusted as a permanent arrangement to any but the regular troops of Her Majesty's army, and I can imagine few measures more calculated to check progress towards the provision of colonial self- defence against internal enemies-few more detrimental in every way to the union of these Colonies with each other, and with the British Crown-few more opposed to the interests and avowed policy of Her Majesty's Government in regard to South Africa, than any deliberate departure from this principle.

I cannot believe that there is any intention to encourage ideas of a complete severance of all ties between this Colony and Great Britain. But I would submit that such impressions must be the inevitable result of deliberate departure from the principle that the safe-keeping of the Cape Peninsula and of its anchorages which command the Southern Ocean, would, under any circumstances, remain a matter of national, and not merely colonial, concern.

Any suspicion of a change of policy in this respect must give a severe blow to the honest efforts of my present responsible advisers to provide for colonial self-defence against internal enemies.

What these efforts have been, and how far they have succeeded, will be best understood if Her Majesty's Government will institute the following comparisons:-

1. Between the extent of the colonial responsibilities, in the way of territories and tribes to be kept in order, when Sir George Grey kept the frontier Kaffis from breaking out, during the cattle- killing mania, or at any period before responsible government was granted to the Colony, as compared with what those responsibilities are now.

2. Between the force of Her Majesty's troops, which Sir George Grey had then to support him, as compared with the force of such troops now in this Colony and its dependencies.

3. Between the numbers and cost of colonial forces available for purposes of internal defence three years ago, as compared with the numbers and cost of such forces at present.

If Her Majesty's Government will institute such comparisons they will be able in some degree to estimate how effectively my present advisers, supported by a great majority of Her Majesty's loyal colonists, have addressed themselves to the task of taking on themselves the responsibilities of self- defence against internal African enemies.

But the work is as yet only just seriously begun.

It has hitherto had little of the aid from officers of Her Majesty's regular forces, which is essential to consolidate and perfect it, and some years must elapse before it can be considered beyond the risk of failure from premature exposure to strains which can only be resisted by the robust strength of a well-established system.

What, then, would be the effect of telling the Colony that they must not only be prepared to face, with only colonial resources, responsibilities much greater than those which tasked the talents and energies of Sir George Grey with so many thousand regular British troops at his back, but that they must undertake the unexpected duty of defending the Cape Peninsula, the harbour of refuge and citadel of the Southern Oceans, with all their contingent responsibilities, military, naval, and political. Whatever my present advisers might think of such a task, I believe it would unhesitatingly be declined by any party, or combination of parties, which might succeed my present Ministers in the Government of the Colony; and, if undertaken prematurely and with inefficient means, the only result I can anticipate would be a failure leading to the task being surrendered back into the hands of the British Government, or of some other great military and naval Power.

The mere suspicion of such a task being imposed on the Colony would, I am convinced, lead a great majority of colonists at once to declare against any plan for a union or confederation of South African Colonies; nor can I imagine any other Colony having the courage to think of union with the Cape Colony so burdened.

I can assure your Lordship that I am not now expressing merely my own apprehensions. The course of measures and events to which I have stated my objections may be found not obscurely indi- cated, as the somewhat dreamy hope of a small Republican minority in this Colony, chiefly Hollanders or other foreigners, who talk complacently of the British Government becoming tired of the burden of defending South Africa, and who appear to consider Germany as the great Power, under whose Ægis their hopes of a South African Republic may be realized.

I would add that I have not consulted my Ministers before thus expressing myself, for this simple reason, that I fear the discussion of the question might seriously affect the confidence with which they would advocate those measures of self-defence which they have already brought before their Parliament.

They have already done so, in the full confidence that, if carried, those measures would meet all the reasonable present wishes, as they understand them, of Her Majesty's Government.

They have always believed that the defence of this Peninsula, by a sufficient garrison of Her Majesty's troops, was a fixed element in all their calculations. I cannot myself believe that any change of policy in this respect is seriously intended; but whenever my Ministers realize that reductions in the garrison have been ordered, which would bring down the strength of the garrison, for all duties in this Cape Peninsula, to 141 infantry soldiers, and that colonial forces may be required any day to take permanently the ordinary duties of the garrison, I feel assured they will at once become uneasy, as to the long continuance of any such an arrangement, and will ask me to give them satisfactory assurances on the subject.

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

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