Sir Henry Barkly, owing to the unstable and vacillating policy of the Cape parliament, found himself on the horns of a dilemma. The imperial government taunted him with having shown a want of diplomatic tact in dealing with the colonial legislature, while the latter repudiated the charge which Sir Henry Barkly brought against the legislative assembly, _i.e._, that of having broken faith with him. Nay, the two honorable houses went even further, they vowed and declared that they had never done or said anything to warrant his sending to the secretary of state for the colonies the dispatches that he had sent. Here was a gordian knot for a governor to loose. What was he to do? He could neither report upon the colonial secretary, nor tell the parliament what he thought of the latter functionary’s action; he virtually exclaimed: “A plague upon both your houses, I’ll go to the Fields again myself.” So he made up his mind to order the government coachman to inspan the traveling wagons, the panels of which, by the way, were ornamented with the royal arms painted by a Cape artist, whose idea of the lion and the unicorn was sublimely humorous—the lion having too much skull by half, and the horn of the unicorn being as crooked as a ram’s, or a satyr’s. His excellency told his executive, that it was as plain as the Cape flats that British rule could not be administered in the diamond fields by commissioners and law courts, and that he was about to proceed to the Fields in order to see how the British flag was to be kept flying over the diamond-digging community. But Sir Henry had been soundly abused by press and public, both in the colony and Griqualand West. The idea then prevailed at Capetown that the diggers would think no more of chopping off a governor’s head than they would of decapitating a domestic fowl. On the Fields there was universal dissatisfaction, the commissioners all the while remaining with virtually “no work to do.” The holders of claims at Klipdrift had had to pay surveyors’ expenses which they had never calculated upon having to pay, and also to meet other demands which they regarded as extortionate, if not almost fraudulent. There were transfer dues, stamp duties and such like, to be enacted in the not far distant future, and the aspect of affairs was not cheering. The Free State was wrathful and indignant, and the Boers there were threatening vengeance. The Dutch on the Fields complained loudly and bitterly of having to pay taxes to British extortioners and being forced to submit to law and order, and declared that the British embrace was too ursine a hug for their comfort.