The nineteenth century is drawing to its close. It opened with splendid promise for liberty, and demands for the restitution of violated rights. At first its high hopes were realized by the successful initiation of reforms which made for freedom. Why, now that it in about to pass away, should it be disgraced, almost at its last hour, by a war of agression, which nothing can justify?
What magnificent hopes for the future had not the Conference at the Hague disclosed to the heart of the nations bowed under the ever increasing burden of military charges! Instead of appeal to arms, arbitration was henceforth to settle international disputes; and yet England to-day’England which was one of the most zealous participators in the Hague Conference, at the first menace of war gives it the kick and knows it no more!
Once more the Yuletide has sent forth the angelic message, “Peace on earth,” even to where the natives gather at the humble chapels of our missionaries; and, shocking as it may seem, these savages, while a murderous struggle is going on between Christians & Christians, are standing by to see whether the Christians of Europe or the Christians of Africa will finally get the upper hand.
England has ever won for herself the glory of being the champion of the independence of weak and oppressed peoples; yet yonder, in South-Africa, there are old men of seventy with their grandsons [of fourteen scrambling all over the rocks to lie in wait for the English soldiers preparing to rob them of the freedom of their country.
A cry of distress has gone up, a cry of the conscience of Europe aroused not this time against the Turk but against the country of Burke & of Pitt, against the country which once prided itself on its inborn love of justice. Is it not a sad spectacle? Has progress been arrested? Can it be that in the century about to be born we are going to retrogress?
I.
If we wish to thoroughly understand the causes, to trace clearly the origin of this unfortunate war, we must go back in history.
On two occasions in the course of the seventeenth century Holland made an effort to colonise extensively beyond the sea: in America in 1628, at the Cape in 1650; and both these colonies have fallen into the hands of the English, by an act of aggression. New-York was occupied en pleine paix by Colonel Nicholson in the year 1646; the Cape was taken in 1806 by General Baird during the war between France and England. Holland being the weaker power was forced to cede her American colony by the treat of Breda in 1667, and her colony at the Cape by the convention of London, April 13th. 1814.
The report to the effect that the Prince of Orange had sold the Cape was only a fabrication: the historical researches of M. Heeres have proved this. On the contrary his minister of Foreign affairs resisted to the last; but Lord Castlereagh opposed him with the formal declaration: “our resolution is taken; it is for us to judge what portion of your colonies, we think it expedient to keep and what portion we are willing to surrender”1.
The sum paid by Engeland was destined not to replenish the Prince’s purse but to indemnify the King of Sweden for the cession he had made of the Island of Guadeloupe, and for the construction of fortifications against France towards her Northern frontier.2 The colonists well understood this. The malicious explanation of a venal abandonment was whispered afterwards, but at the time of the cession all were still convinced that England had forced the hand of their mother-country, and when a Prince of the House of Orange visited the Cape in 1838 he was received by his old compatriots with frantic enthusiasm. In the occupation of the Cape in 1806 England saw, not a question of right, but what it devolved upon Mr. Chamberlain later to christen with the name of “paramountcy.” As she had lost her rich American colonies, England felt the need of consolidating the conquests of the famous Hastings in India, and it seemed to her indispensable to secure a naval station at the Cape. Captain Robert Percival, — probably one of her agents3 — who, on a voyage of observation, visited the Cape in 1803 did not hesitate to declare “that the mere possession of the harbours of the Cape would indeed be nearly sufficient to bring all enemies into our power4.”