In speaking of the Capital of the Colony I need only further remark that it possesses a completed and adequate dock for the reception of large ships, and a breakwater for the protection of the harbour. The traffic from England to the Cape of Good Hope is now mainly conducted by two Steam Ship Companies, the Union and Donald Currie & Co., which carry the mails with passengers and cargo each way weekly. Many of these vessels are of nearly 3,000 tons burden, some even of more, and at Capetown they are brought into the dock so that passengers walk in and out from the quay without the disagreeable aid of boats. The same comfort has not as yet been afforded at any other port along the coast. CHAPTER VI. THE LEGISLATURE AND EXECUTIVE. It has come to be understood that the appropriate mode of governing a Colony is to have a King, Lords and Commons as we do at home. And if a Colony be a Colony in the fashion described by me when endeavouring to define the nature of a Colony proper, there cannot be a doubt that this is the best mode. Where Englishmen,--or white men whether they be of English or other descent,--have gone to labour and have thus raised a community in a distant land under the British flag, the old constitutional mode of arranging things seems always to act well, though it may sometimes be rough at first, and sometimes at starting may be subject to difficulties. It has been set on foot by us, or by our Colonists, with a population perhaps not sufficient to give two members to an English borough,--and has then started with a full-fledged appanage of Governor, aide-de-camps, private secretaries, Legislative Council, Legislative Assembly, Prime Minister and Cabinet,--with a surrounding which one would have thought must have swamped so small a boat;--but the boat has become almost at once a ship and has ridden safely upon the waves. The little State has borrowed money like a proud Empire and has at once had its stocks quoted in the share lists. There have been causes for doubt, but I do not remember an instance of failure. This has been so universally the result that the British Government at home have become averse to Crown Colonies, and has of late invited her children to go out alone into the world, to enjoy their own earnings, and pay their own bills, and do as may seem good to them each in his own sight. I find that there are many in the Cape Colony who say that she undertook to govern herself in the proper parliamentary way not because she especially desired the independence to be thus obtained, but because the Colonial Office at home was anxious on the subject and put pressure on the Colony.