reciprocity society and States are at a standstill. The Boer is accredited with the primitive virtues, innocence, sturdiness, contentment. If he has these, he has also the defects of his qualities. He is crafty, stubborn, and narrow, and intolerant of everything beyond the limits of his native comprehension. Innovations of any kind are sufficient to fill him with suspicion, and those started by the British in their first efforts at Cape government were as gall and wormwood to his untrammelled taste. These efforts, it must be owned, were not altogether happy. There was first a rearrangement of local governments and of the Law Courts; then, in 1827, followed a decree that English should be the official language. As at that time not more than one colonist in seven was British, the new arrangement was calculated to make confusion worse confounded! The disgust of the Cape Dutch may be imagined! The finishing touch came in 1834. By the abolition of slavery--humane though its object was--the Cape colonists were exceedingly hard hit; and though the owners of slaves were compensated to the tune of a million and a quarter (the slaves were valued at three millions sterling), they continued to maintain a simmering resentment. Added to this came the intervention of the missionaries, who attempted to instil into the Boer mind a sense of the equality, in the sight of Heaven, of the black and the white races. At this time 12,000 Kaffirs had crossed over the border and invaded the settlements, dealing death and destruction wherever they went. They were finally repulsed by the British, and Sir Benjamin D'Urban, the Governor at the Cape, proclaimed the annexation of the country beyond the Keiskamma, on the eastern boundary of the Colony, as far as the Kei. But no sooner had he accomplished this diplomatic move in his wise discretion, than orders came from the British Government to the effect that the land was to be restored to the Kaffirs and the frontier boundary moved back to its original place--Keiskamma. Sir Benjamin D'Urban carried out these orders much to his disgust, for he deemed the annexation of the province to be necessary to the peace of all the surrounding districts. But this was neither the first nor the last occasion in the history of Cape government on which men of practical experience have had to give way before wise heads in Downing Street arm-chairs.