“In asking that this protest may be recorded on the minutes of the council, I may say I do so with a heavy heart, and that I find it difficult to restrain my feelings. It would seem that in the arrangements of this annexation all consideration for the welfare of this province has been overlooked. It was not so when Sir Henry Barkly was governor; he deprecated in the most emphatic manner possible the idea of governing this province from Capetown. Again, when Messrs. Sprigg and Upington were here recently, they saw, as Sir Henry Barkly had seen, the absurdity of such an idea, and in everything they said, both in private and public, they repudiated the suggestion of annexing this province to the Cape Colony. Mr. Upington was especially emphatic in his condemnation of such a policy. Is it not then a great outrage that in spite of all these protestations on the part of the Cape government we should be taken over without being consulted? It may be remembered that a public meeting which was called here to express sympathy with Sir Bartle Frere in connection with Zululand matters was very thinly attended, the people here showing by this their opinion of Sir B. Frere’s treatment of this province, and what they thought of the manner in which the petitions against annexation, emanating not only from the monied classes but also from the bone and sinew of the place, had been pigeon-holed and suppressed. There is no more right, there is no more reason, for us to be annexed to the Cape Colony to-day than there would be for Natal to be annexed to-morrow, which colony is simply nowhere in wealth and public enterprise as compared with this. [Loud applause.] We differ from Natal in many respects. I may remind you of one: when we were in danger, we defended ourselves with our own troops, and did not cry out for imperial assistance, we actually sent volunteers away to help the Cape Colony in its difficulties with Kreli and Sandilli, and are even now being called upon to assist in quelling a rebellion in Basutoland, the result of the latest blunder of the Cape ministry. [Hear, hear.] “Some think that annexation will bring relief from the grievances under which we labor, but when they have to pay a tax on diamonds, have no administrator at hand to personally inspect and redress their complaints [hear, hear], what then?