It was natural that the Dutchman should go across the Orange River, and natural too that the English governor should not quite know how to treat him when he had gone. But it would have been well if some certain policy of treatment could have been adopted. Many think that had we not interfered with him in Natal, had we never established what was called an Orange River Sovereignty subject to British rule, a Dutch-speaking nation would have been formed between our Cape Colony and the swarming native tribes, which would have been a protecting barrier for us and have ensured the security of our Colony. I myself do not agree with this. I think that a Dutch Republic if strong enough for this, stretching from the confluence of the Vaal and Orange rivers down to the shores of Natal would have been a neighbour more difficult to deal with than Kafir tribes. My opinion on such a subject goes for very little;--and there would at any rate have been a policy. Or, when we had after much hesitation forbidden the Dutch to form a Republic in Natal and had declared that country to be one among Her Majesty’s possessions, we might have clung to the South African theory which was then promulgated. In that case we should have recognized the necessity of treating those wandering warlike patriarchs as British subjects and have acknowledged to ourselves that whither they went thither we must go after them. This, too, would have been a policy. But this we have not done. At first we went after them. Then we abandoned them. And now that they are altogether out of our hands in the Free State we are hankering after them again. It is impossible not to see that the ideas as to Colonial extension entertained by the late Duke of Newcastle are altogether different from those held by Lord Carnarvon;--and that the Colonial office lacks traditions. In some respects the history of the Orange Free State has been similar to that of the Transvaal. Its fate has been very different,--a difference which has resulted partly from the characters of the men employed, partly from their external circumstances in regard to the native tribes which have been near to them. Mr. Boshof and Mr. Brand have been very superior as Statesmen to Mr. Pretorius and Mr. Burgers, and the Basutos under Moshesh their Chief,--though they almost succeeded in destroying the Orange Republic,--were at last less dangerous, at any rate very much less numerous, than Cetywayo and the Zulus.