New Zealand is now perhaps the pet of our colonial family; and yet what efforts were made when Lord Normanby and afterwards when Lord John Russell were at the Colonies to stave off the necessity of taking possession of the land! But Englishmen had settled themselves in such numbers on her shores that England was forced to send forth the means of governing her own children. The same thing happened, as I have attempted to tell, both in British Kafraria and Natal. The same thing happened the other day in the Fiji Islands. The same feeling, acting in an inverse way,--repudiating the chicks instead of taking them in,--induced us to give over the Transvaal and the Orange Free State to Republicanism. Our repudiation of the former has lasted but for a quarter of a century, and there are many now of British race to be found in South Africa who are confident that we shall have to take the Orange Free State in among the brood in about the same period from her birth. British rule in distant parts, much as it is abused, is so precious a blessing that men will have it, and the old hen is forced to stretch her poor old wings again and still again. This I hold to be the real and unanswerable excuse for what we have done in Griqualand West and not our treaty with Waterboer. As far as right devolving from any treaty goes I think that we have the best of it,--but not so much the best, that even could I recognize those treaties as conveying all they are held to convey, I should declare our title to be complete. But, that such treaties are for the most part powerless when pressure comes, is proved by our own doings and by those of other nations all round the world. We have just annexed the Transvaal,--with the approbation of both sides in the House of Commons. Our excuse is that though the Transvaal was an independent State she was so little able to take care of herself that we were obliged to enter in upon her, as the law does on the estate of a lunatic. But how would it have been if the Transvaal instead of the Orange Free State had been our competitor for the government of the Diamond Fields? If we can justify ourselves in annexing a whole Republic surely we should not have scrupled to take the assumed dependency of a Republic. In such doings we have to reconcile ourselves to expedience, however abhorrent such a doctrine may be to us in our own private affairs. Here it was expedient that a large body, chiefly of Englishmen, should, for their own comfort and well being, be brought under rule. If in following out the doctrine any abstract injustice was done, it was not against the Orange Free State, but against the tribes whom no Waterboer and no Adam Kok could in truth be authorized to hand over either to British or to Dutch Republican rule.