South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
I will now deal with those enumerated in the above table who are at
present undoubtedly subjects of Her Majesty, and who are bound to comply
with British laws. The Cape Colony contains nearly three-quarters of a
million of people, and is the only portion of South Africa which has
what may be called a large white population; but that population,
though comparatively large,--something over a quarter of a million,--is
less in number than the inhabitants of the single city of Melbourne. One
colonial town in Australia, and that a town not more than a quarter of a
century old, gives a home to more white people than the whole of the
Cape Colony, which was colonized with white people two hundred years
before Melbourne was founded. And on looking at the white population of
the Cape Colony a further division must be made in order to give the
English reader a true idea of the Colony in reference to England. A
British colony to the British mind is a land away from home to which the
swarming multitudes of Great Britain may go and earn a comfortable
sustenance, denied to them in the land of their birth by the narrowness
of its limits and the greatness of its population, and may do so with
the use of their own language, and in subjection to their own laws. We
have other senses of the word Colony,--for we call military garrisons
Colonies,--such as Malta, and Gibraltar, and Bermuda. But the true
Colony has, I think, above been truly described; and thus the United
States of America have answered to us the purpose of a Colony as well as
though they had remained under British rule. We should, therefore,
endeavour to see how far the Cape Colony has answered the desired
purpose.
The settlement was Dutch in its origin, and was peopled by
Dutchmen,--with a salutary sprinkling of Protestant French who
assimilated themselves after a time to the Dutch in language and
religion. It is only by their religion that we can now divide the Dutch
and the English; and on enquiry I find that about 150,000 souls belong
to the Dutch Reformed and Lutheran Churches,--leaving 85,000 of English
descent in the Colony. If to these we add the 20,000 white persons
inhabiting Natal, and 15,000 at the Diamond Fields, we shall have the
total English population of South Africa;--for the Europeans of the
Transvaal, as of the Orange Free State, are a Dutch people. There are
therefore about 120,000 persons of British descent in these South
African districts,--the number being little more than that of the people
of the small unobtrusive Colony which we call Tasmania.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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