VIEWS OF COLONIAL PREMIERS BY E. B. OSBORN _Author of "Greater Canada"_ I Unification has always been an ideal of South African statesmen, and twice, at least, it has been within measurable distance of realisation. In 1858 Sir George Grey, who had federated the New Zealand settlements despite the intensity of their local jealousies, promulgated the first practical scheme of South African Federation. So well had he ruled the Kaffir tribes on the eastern border of Cape Colony, that the Free State, weary of warfare with the Basutos, made overtures for a federal alliance, and the proposition of the Volksraad was actually laid before the Cape Parliament by Sir George Grey, before the opinion of the British Ministry in regard to his scheme of federation on New Zealand lines and their sanction for the course actually pursued had been received. Sir George Grey was recalled; though on his arrival off the British coast he found that he had been reinstated by a new Secretary of State, the delay led to the loss of an excellent opportunity for carrying through a measure comparable in importance with the Act which brought about the legislative union of Upper and Lower Canada. [Illustration: Photo: Elliott & Fry, London. HON. SIR W. F. HELY HUTCHINSON, Governor of Cape Colony.] For many years after the failure of Sir George Grey's attempt, unification was a little-regarded counsel of perfection. It is true that the Duke of Buckingham, Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Disraeli Ministry of 1868, admitted that it would be politic to consider seriously any further overtures for a federal alliance from the Boers, but the Free State was no longer in the mood to make them, our annexation of Basutoland being resented, and the discovery of diamonds on its western border in 1867 having created fresh causes of irritation. When the second Disraeli Ministry came into power, and Lord Carnarvon, who had collaborated with the Canadian Fathers of Federation (he himself may be described as the Godfather of the Dominion), undertook the charge of colonial affairs, the plan proposed by Sir Henry Barkly for a confederation of South Africa, which should be the logical consequence of the grant of autonomy to Cape Colony, was cordially received. Unfortunately the Free State held aloof, the Cape Ministry remembered only too well the object lessons in anti-Imperialism received from Lord Carnarvon's predecessors, and a _grain de sable_--the tactlessness of Mr. Froude--caused a vast amount of friction. Even then, but for the revival at home of the belief that political quietism and a policy of non-interference with Colonial affairs would enable Great Britain to retain the commercial hegemony of the world, Lord Carnarvon's hopes might have been realised; for he had grasped the all-important fact that South Africa was, and must always remain, a single-minded community, whenever the native question was discussed, and that this