The Secretary of State goes on to explain the circumstances under which the £90,000 are to be given. I will confess for myself that I should almost have preferred to have stuck to the territory without paying the money. If it be our “destiny” to rule people I do not think that we ought to pay for assuming an office which we cannot avoid. The Secretary of State in this report strongly reasserts the British right to Griqualand West,--though he acknowledges that he cannot hope by mere eloquence to convince President Brand of that right. “As you think you are wronged,” the Secretary goes on to argue, “we will consent to compensate the wrong which we feel sure you have not suffered, but which you think you have endured, so that there need be no quarrel between us.” Probably it was the easiest way out of the difficulty; but there is something in it to regret. It must of course be understood that the £90,000 will not be paid by the British taxpayer, but will be gathered from the riches of Griqualand West herself. On the 27 October 1871 the Diamond Fields were declared to be British territory. But such a declaration, even had it not been opposed by the Free State and the friends of the Free State, would by no means have made the course of British rule plain and simple. There have, from that day to this, arisen a series of questions to settle and difficulties to solve which, as they crop up to the enquirer’s mind, would seem to have been sufficient to have overcome the patience of any Colonial Secretary even though he had not another Colony on his shoulders. If there was any Colonial sinner,--Secretary, Governor, or subordinate,--who carried away by the lust of empire had sought to gratify his ambition by annexing Griqualand West, he must certainly have repented himself in sackcloth and ashes before this time (the end of 1877) when the vexed question of annexation or non-annexation to the Cape Colony is hardly yet settled. When the territory was first accepted by Great Britain it was done on an understanding that the Cape Colony should take it and rule it, and pay for it,--or make it pay for itself. The Colonial Secretary of the day declared in an official dispatch that he would not consent to the annexation unless, “the Cape Parliament would personally bind itself to accept the responsibility of governing the territory which was to be united to it, together with the entire maintenance of any force which might be necessary for the preservation of order.” It must be presumed therefore that the lust for empire did not exist in Downing Street. The Cape Parliament did so far accede to the stipulation made by the Secretary of State, as to pass a resolution of assent. They would agree,--seeing that British rule could not in any other way be obtained. But an intermediate moment was necessary,--a moment which should admit of the arrangement of terms,--between the absolute act of assumption by Great Britain and the annexation by the Colony.