Lord Milner's Work in South Africa

w the lesson had been thoroughly learnt. But, however this may be, it is certain that throughout the nineteenth century the Home Government wished to treat both the natives and the Dutch in South Africa on a basis of British ideas; and that by so doing it constantly found itself in conflict with its own local representatives, who knew that the only hope of success lay in dealing with both alike on a basis of South African ideas.

As the result of this chronic inability of British statesmen to understand South Africa, it follows that the most instructive manner of regarding our administration of that country during the nineteenth century is to get a clear conception of the successive divergences of opinion between the home and the local authorities.

At the very outset of British administration--during the temporary occupation of the Cape from 1795 to 1808--we find a theoretically perfect policy laid down for the guidance of the early English Governors in their treatment of the Boers, or Dutch fron