named as successor to Sir Anthony Musgrave. The general impression in this country was that the objection to Governor Blake was entirely grounded on his tradition as a police-magistrate in Ireland, the Irish being all-powerful in the colony; but this was not the case. The Irish are numerous in Queensland, but are not relatively half as strong as they are in Newfoundland, where Sir Henry Blake had governed with marked success; and although the Irish party at Brisbane boasted that the withdrawal of his nomination was their work, it is doubtful if the agitation would have obtained support, had there not been in Queensland a strong growth of

are now engaged in discussion of the fur- | ministration; in south Australia the wishes
ther division of their respective territories, of the people were quietly acceded to
and in a third the question is certain to when they expressed objection to an un-
arise, the settlements of which will best desirable nominee; but in Queensland an
be made without the interference of the unpleasant agitation arose on the an-
Colonial Office. In Queensland, the in-nouncement that Sir Henry Blake was
dependence of which from New South
Wales was completed under Sir George
Bowen's rule thirty years ago, there is an
active agitation proceeding for the sepa-
ration of the tropical region in the north
from the southern portion which includes
Brisbane the capital. The separatist
movement in North Queensland was
originally based on the "servile labor "
question, the northern people finding it
difficult to cultivate sugar without the aid
of imported laborers who can endure the
climate, while public opinion on the sub-
ject at Brisbane was similar to that which
has found expression in the anti-Chinese
agitation throughout Australia. In west-
ern Australia the point of issue is, whether" national ” sentiment which favors inde-
a handful of settlers, who equal in num-
bers the population of a minor cathedral
town in England, shall administer uncon-
trolled a huge tract of continent of the
area of British India. Although there is
no active movement on foot in south Aus-
tralia for a division of that colony, its
present vast dimensions stretching across
central Australia are anomalous, especially
as Adelaide in the south and Port Darwin
in the north are practically as remote from
one another as was Quebec from Van-
couver Island in the days before the
trans-continental railway. It should be
borne in mind that the powerful colony of
Victoria contains only one thirty-fourth of
the area of the continent, being no larger
than Great Britain; while even New South
Wales, which is three and a half times as
large, is a minute region compared to the
relatively unimportant colonies of south
and western Australia.

The constitution of federated Australia will undoubtedly give the federal govern. ment power to create new provinces, and it is clear that friction between the mother country and her great dependency will be reduced, when the Colonial Office has to deal with a federal council instead of with a number of separate governments. One matter which has recently strained relations between Great Britain and certain of her colonies has been that of the nomination of governors. In Victoria there is comparatively little opposition to the mode of nominating governors, but very decided opinions are expressed by leading politicians as to their relations with the Colonial Office during their ad

pendence from the mother country, and is fostered by those who are eager for opportunities to display jealousy of home interference. Those who have the interests of the empire at heart cannot blind themselves to the existence of separatist feeling in Australia, and it is curious to find its most emphatic expression in Queensland, when we read how Sir George Bowen gave that name to the young colony on his sovereign's behalf as a memorial of the loyalty of the settlers. The demands of the colonial governments to be consulted, prior to the nomination of governors, are sure to be repeated until federation substitutes, as in Canada, provincial lieutenant-governors appointed by the federa! council. The governor-general would, as in the case of the Dominion viceroy, be a personage of such distinction that the home government would always know beforehand the feeling with which the federal council would regard his nomination. The choice of the site of the capital may occasion some difficulty. In America not even the State capitals, excepting that of Massachusetts, are great centres of population, but in the foremost Australian colonies the chief town is likewise the seat of government. Melbourne, with all the attributes of a European city of the first class, will vainly lay claim to the position of federal capital; in vain will the Victo rians protest that they have built a govern. ment house with a ball-room twice the size of that in Buckingham Palace, and that no local lieutenant-governor will be worthy of such magnificence. Melbourne's claims will be scorned by her relatively venerable

rival, Sydney. An Ottawa or a Washington will have to be created. Hobart is spoken of as a possible capital of the United States of Australasia, but though Tasmania is a favorite holiday resort of the inhabitants on the mainland, the long sea-voyage might prove as inconvenient to legislators as the short passage across the Solent to Osborne is occasionally to her Majesty's ministers, and the most probable seat of federal government.is Albury, on the frontier of New South Wales and Victoria.

dence, it would be well-nigh impossible for England to interfere; but under federation it would be difficult for the Australasian colonies to admit that a single colony might secede, and possibly establish a government based on servile labor, hostile to the others, and in alliance with their enemies. Supposing, for example, that Queensland were established as a separate republic, the passage by Torres Straits might be lost to all the colonies, and Moreton Bay itself might become a station from which hostile fleets could prey upon the trade of Sydney and of Auckland. Short of the secession of a colony, the difficulty the imperial government has in dealing with Australasia as a number of disunited States is great, as for example in the case of the refusal of Queensland to ratify the compact made at the colonial conference with regard to the Australian Naval Squadron.

We have pointed out the important characteristic of the provincial system, wherein the colonization of New Zealand differs from that of Australia. In its political history it likewise stands alone in the Australasian group, in that its settlement has only been effected after severe warfare with the brave native race, and the comparatively unsatisfactory financial condition of the country is a legacy from With the increase of population on the the years of conflict. The most conspic- east and north-east coast of Australia, a uous difference, however, between these feeling has arisen that the inhabitants islands and our other possessions in the have a right to control the settlement of southern seas is one which has existed all the islands of the ocean which washes from all time. Australia, as a whole, is their shores. The proximity of the French one of the most unlovely tracts of the convict settlement of New Caledonia has earth's surface, whereas New Zealand been a constant grievance to the colonists contains more beautiful scenery and more on the eastern littoral, and the British anmagnificent variety than any other equal nexation of Fiji has brought La Nouvelle area in the temperate zones. Weird more closely into the Australian system, melancholy is the dominant note of Aus- as it lies just half-way between Brisbane tralian scenery, in contrast to the bold and the Fiji group. The vigorous protest severity of New Zealand in the south, made by the colonies, including Victoria, and the bright Polynesian picturesqueness against the French claims to the New of the northern island. There is, how- Hebrides, and the hoisting of the British ever, a general resemblance in legislative flag on New Guinea by Queensland, are and political tendencies between Australia expressions of the prevailing sentiment, and New Zealand. Australasian federa- which often finds voice in a complaint tion without the adhesion of the land of that the mother country is willing to sacrithe Maori would not only be incomplete, fice the interests of her children to the but probably also abortive. The views on pretensions of France or of Germany. It the subject expressed by the leading pub-is evident that a federated Australasia will lic men of New Zealand are sagacious. It be a much more redoubtable power to is natural that this important colony should carry out what Sir Charles Dilke calls be unwilling to enter any arrangement the "Australasian Munroe doctrine." which would place it in the position of a dependency of the neighboring continent. The inclusion of New Zealand in the Australasian federation will be of advantage to the empire, inasmuch as she will strengthen Victoria in resisting the principle of the right and power of a single colony to secede. This is one of the most important points wherein the federation of Australasia will guard imperial interests. Supposing that the separatist party in Queensland were, in the present position of the colony, to become absolutely predominant, and to declare for indepen

The voyage from Australia to the Cape takes us once again to a colony which had a history before its settlement or possession by the British. In some of the older Dutch towns of South Africa we find a picturesqueness as striking as that which characterizes French Canada, and which is sought in vain, from Chicago to Melbourne, in any city or village of Greater Britain which owes its architecture to Anglo-Saxon genius. The questions which concerned Cape Colony only yesterday are no longer of importance; the power of the Africander Bond; the rise and deca

throw off the Boer yoke by violent revolution, and reclaim the territory for England. The reason is twofold. In the first place the precious spoil is the chief object of every man who comes to Johannesburg, to the exclusion of all political or patriotic sentiment; in the second, there is in South Africa a bugbear of which the tradition is so strong, that even new-comers are affected by it, the dread of Downing Street. No Transvaaler, English or Dutch, would consent to be subject to Cape Colony; and as the British alternative is Downing Street, the diggers and speculators submit to the exactions, the irksome regulations, and the jobbery, of the rustic government under which they possess no franchise.

dence of ostrich-farming; the pacification | not the rulers in the land, for this great
of the natives beyond the Kei; and even commercial city has been built by British
the development of the diamond-mines at hands in the midst of the African wilder-
Kimberley, are all overshadowed by the ness in the last years of the nineteenth
gold-discoveries in the Transvaal, and the century without the approach of a railway
rage thereby engendered for the conquest within hundreds of miles. The English-
of fresh lands which may possibly contain speaking population of the Transvaal,
the precious metal.
though centred in small areas, now un-
At the conclusion of the disastrous Boer doubtedly outnumbers the Dutch; and as
war nine years ago, we were thought to the Boers have enormous families, while
have lost with discredit a province of the most of the diggers are single men, it is
area of France, as the penalty of its pre-calculated that the adult male English are
vious premature annexation. The condi- to the burghers in the proportion of seven
tion of Cape Colony was precarious; the to one. Nevertheless there are no real
Dutch party was strong and aggressive; symptoms that the British gold-seekers will
the Africander Bond was a formidable
organization; predictions were confidently
uttered that the days of British rule in
South Africa were numbered; and sober-
minded Englishmen were calculating how
we might retain a place of arms on Table
Bay or Simon's Bay to guard our alterna-
tive route to India. The sagacious rule
of Sir Hercules Robinson aimed at a con-
ciliation, based on community of interest,
between Englishmen and Boers; and in
his endeavor he was aided by certain
prominent Dutchmen, notably Sir John
Brand, the lamented president of the
Orange Free State, the best friend En-
gland ever had in South Africa; Sir
Henry de Villiers, the distinguished chief
justice of the Cape; and Mr. Hofmeyr, The most interesting figure in South
the Parliamentary leader of the Africander Africa at the present time is an elderly,
party, the maker and unmaker of colonial uncouth, half-educated farmer, Paul Kru
ministries. The financial condition of the ger, the autocrat of the Transvaal. His
South African republic was insecure; success in resisting the introduction of
there were indeed gold-mines at Barber- railways into his domain is one of the most
ton, but their output would not have remarkable incidents in the history of col-
warded off for a year the public bank-onization. The motives for his policy are
ruptcy, which was imminent. All the manifold. There is the old story of his
blunders committed by successive home
governments were about to be retrieved
by the peaceful falling into our hands
again of the abandoned Transvaal, when
suddenly the destiny of South Africa was
changed by the discovery of a reef on
Witwatersrand, thirty miles from Pretoria.
The effects of this discovery have been
both paradoxical and phenomenal. Where
on the high veldt four years ago the only
signs of human life were a few scattered
Boer farms, whither came occasionally a
crawling ox-wagon, now stands a city
greater than any in Africa south of Zanzi-
bar. It bears no likeness to the quaint
Dutch and Huguenot towns of the old col-
ony, but rather resembles the populous
places of America or Australia. It is an
entirely English-speaking centre of popu-
lation; but there is one conspicuous sign
to denote that the Anglo-Saxon race are

resentment against the short-sighted gov. ernment at the Cape, which refused the exclusive concession to construct a line across the republic in return for the abatement of the paltry duty on Transvaal tobacco entering the colony. Then, when the gold on the Rand was discovered, it was not unnatural that the president should favor his compatriots of the "oxwagon party," who would have ceased to profit from the influx of population had the fields been connected by rail with British territory and the sea. The steamengine is at last approaching the Transvaal boundaries; while the Cape government has been leisurely projecting its line through the Free State, the little colony of Natal has displayed an energy rarely found in a sub-tropical climate, and has pushed its railway close up to the Dutch frontier, beneath the shadow of Majuba

Hill of sorrowful memory. It is remark | able how Paul Kruger should have been able, through these years of change, to cling to his resolve, that, until the road to Delagoa Bay is laid, none other shall enter the territory. Obstinate he may be, but his perversity has had a purpose, and it is not supposed that his prolonged adherence to his alliance with the Netherlands Railway Company has been actuated by merely sentimental motives of revenge upon the Cape government, or of devotion to the interests of the Boer transport riders.

It is a strange anomaly that the centre of Greater Britain in South Africa should now be, not the capital of either of our colonies; not the diamond city, of the priceless site of which we adroitly deprived the Orange Free State; but a mushroom town, which has sprung up in the heart of the land which, after many blunders and disasters, we restored to the emigrant Boers as their independent territory. Cape Town, its remaining inhabitants lament, has returned to the days of village life. Sir Gordon Sprigg has become, like Sir John Macdonald, a perpetual prime minister; but for the dissimilar and singular reason that the leaders of the opposition have "trekked" to the Transvaal; and even his ministry, with its substantial attractions of salary, is being depleted by the same cause. Kimberley, in spite of its double railway connection with the sea, is already outstripped by the upstart Johannesburg, which in four years has become an imposing city; while the diamond town, which has attained its majority, remains a mining camp- a condition which is not likely to be bettered now that the companies are amalgamated, and the diamond industry practically in the hands of a monopoly. Natal owes its accession of prosperity to its geographical proximity to the Transvaal, which has been taken advantage of by its enterprising white population, a little community of thirty thousand people of English origin, who share the country with the same number of Indian coolies whom they have to import for labor, and an overwhelming and everincreasing mass of unserviceable natives, who number at least half a million, within the boundaries of the colony.

The South African Company which by virtue of its charter is commissioned to bear the British flag up to and beyond the Zambesi towards the equatorial lakes, is the offspring of the mineral discoveries in the Transvaal. The possibility of abun dant treasure lying beneath the lands of

Khama and of Lo Benguela is sufficient reason for England to declare a protectorate over the country north of Bechuanaland, lest in the scramble for Africa some European power stronger than Portugal should lay a claim to it, or lest the Boers of the Transvaal should leave their country to the English incomers and make a further northward migration, just as their fathers "trekked" from Cape Colony across the Orange River and the Vaal. It is probable that Mashonaland and Matabeleland are rich in minerals; but though the new enterprise has our warm approval Las likely to expedite the destiny of Africa south of the equator, which we profoundly believe will one day be a vast Englishspeaking continent, we must enter a mild protest against the high-flown descriptions which are current concerning this last addition to the British Empire. The recently founded association has been compared to the East India Company, and the region between the Transvaal frontier and the Zambesi has been spoken of as if it rivalled in wealth the empire of the Moguls; but we feel constrained to point out that Lo Benguela is not precisely an Aurungzebe, nor are the dazzling splendors of Delhi to be found at his kraal at Buluwayo. The sooner that English people realize that South Africa is a wilderness, the better; a magnificent desert, the wealth of which lies beneath its surface. Hitherto its vegetable products have only supported its hordes of savage inhabitants by reason of their constant migrations, and its most successful European settlers, the Dutch, have succeeded in sustaining themselves by apportioning innumerable acres to each inhabitant. Undoubtedly, the high table land included in the British protectorate is remarkably favored by climate, considering its situation within the tropics; but only a visionary or a prospectus writer believes that this territory can be serviceable for agricultural emigrants in the sense that Manitoba and the Dakotas are. The maps with which Sir Charles Dilke has illustrated his volumes are unusually accurate; but his draughtsman's representation of South Africa gives the impression that the land is irrigated by rivers as noble as those of France or of the Eastern States of America; while in reality there is not a navigable waterway south of the Zambesi, and some of the streams which give their names to provinces are in the dry seasons arid beds of stone.

South Africa, we repeat, is a desert, dotted with fruitful oases. One of the

most genial tracts is the country round | France would take good care that Gerabout Cape Town. For more than two many did not establish herself at the centuries it has been cultivated by Boers entrance of Mozambique Channel, in danand Huguenots, and their successors; it gerous proximity to Madagascar. At the has been most accessible to immigrants; same time we deeply deplore that the the soil is fertile and the climate perfect; exigencies of European politics have comand after two hundred years of history the pelled successive English governments commercial port of this region, the capital to consent to German annexation on the of a great colony, has grown to half the west and on the east coasts of Africa. size of an English country town like Nor- The Germans are the best settlers in the wich; while in a quarter of that period world, and the worst colonists. German Melbourne is approaching the proportions colonization schemes are a sham, which of Glasgow or of Liverpool. Supposing are believed in as little by the German that the plains of Matabeleland are as people as they were by Prince Bismarck, fertile as the region around the Cape, it who unwillingly yielded to the pressure of must be borne in mind that even a railway certain mercantile circles in Hamburg and towards the Zambesi will not entirely dis-other commercial centres. If the German sipate the thousand miles which lie be- people settled in the so-called colonies of tween that district and the immigrants' the fatherland, England, as the great pioport of landing. The future of the interior neer of civilization throughout the world, of South Africa depends entirely on its might rejoice in the co-operation in Africa mineral wealth; and though abundance of of her European ally; but German emiprecious metal attracts crowds of settlers, grants decline to settle under their counthey will amass their wealth deprived of try's flag. Millions of them have become the amenities of life. Johannesburg, most serviceable citizens of the United though not destitute of verdure, is subject States; thousands of them are pouring to seasons of disastrous drought. Kim- into the British colonies; while the reberley, though provided with effective waterworks, is a desolate encampment in the desert, in which no one could endure existence for a year save for the hope of great gain. We do not anticipate in the new protectorate any difficulty with the Boers; their anxiety for Swaziland demonstrates that they will no more set their faces northwards, and, moreover, with the depletion of Africa of its game, the Dutch are ceasing to be formidable riflemen. With the natives there may be difficulties, because British settlement puts an end to internecine wars, which in Africa have been the chief means of keeping down the black population. The position of the people of Natal among the Zulus, who have been disorganized as a military nation, is not altogether comfortable; and the settlers in the new protectorate, who will not at first be numerous, may find formidable foes in the warrior tribes they are supplanting.

We are not among those who believe in German intrigue in South Africa. All who know that country are aware that the Boer farmers and German squatters are so unsympathetic to one another as to put beyond the bounds of possibility any combination between the two peoples against English predominance. Nor have we any faith in rumors as to German designs upon Delagoa Bay. It was the president of the French republic who decided against British claims to that fine roadstead, and VOL. LXX. 3638

LIVING AGE.

gions which Germany has annexed are occupied by a handful of officials and military police. When Lord Derby permitted Germany to take Namaqualand and Da maraland on the coast north-west of the Cape, German inhabitants of that colony were frequently asked when they were going to move up into their national territory, and the reply invariably was, that they had not left their native land in order to find new homes at the other end of the world, under the restrictive discipline of the German flag. Consequently there are German colonies on the shores of Africa in which there is no other sign of German possession than a flag run up on the house of a Moravian missionary, who is thus invested with official status. On the west coast the Germans will probably disappear, but our partition with them of the littoral which runs from the Mozambique boundary to north of Zanzibar is unfortunate. The trade of all the east coast between Delagoa Bay and the equator is in the hands of Indians who are British subjects, and from an imperial point of view the bombardment of certain villages by German gunboats, and the destruction there of the property of Bombay mer chants, is more prejudicial to our interests than the demonstrations of the Portuguese against the Scottish missionaries on Lake Nyassa - which region, hemmed in as it is by the Mozambique coast, to which Portugal has unhappily an unim