However that may be, it is extremely regrettable that a country, possessing so many good men, men in every way indicated by their abilities and achievements as successful administrators _in posse_, is constantly at a deadlock for the lack of suitable public servants. I could mention spontaneously, without having time for reflection and for selection, a round dozen, probably a score, men of parts full of the sense of our imperial responsibilities, and certain to be able and zealous in the Empire's service: men accustomed to positions in which initiative and sound judgment are demanded of them, who, pining to be men of action, to play their part, however humble, in affairs of State, affairs of which they possess a firm grip, are condemned to enforced inactivity, buried away in country houses, or, let us say, wasting their energies in mere constructive synthesis or destructive criticism, for which, alas! no one is much the better. These men, the born administrators of our over-seas dominions, are lost to the Empire, because of the red-tape exclusiveness and jealousy of the ruling classes of this country. I have been betrayed for the moment into an academic consideration, and let me say here that I sorrowfully endorse--I might add that in a large measure I have publicly anticipated--most of the strictures on our system of misgovernment, corruption, and panoplied vice set forth in the letters of that sturdy Africander signing himself by his true initials "P. S." Under these abuses we groan, and it is difficult to continue to hope that we shall escape from their tyranny, and rise again to that full manhood of our race asserted in the spacious days of Elizabeth, and again when Napoleon threatened our shores. Our grand old country is sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of spiritual and intellectual indifferentism, sordid materialism, and time-serving opportunism. One sees scant justification for optimism, unless, indeed, Judgment should descend upon us and beneficently scourge us back to our nobler past.