The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3082, 13 May 1881, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, MAY 13, 1881.

That the annexation of the Transvaal to the British dominions was a mistake is an opinion which is becoming widely accepted in England. At the time the annexation was proposed the leaders of the party at present in power denounced it as a blunder if not a crime, and many eminent politicians who at that time were silent, and a portion of the press which acquiesced in the annexation, now confess it to have been a gigantic mistake, and that it has borne the only fruit that might have been expected of it. That a people, who have at one time enjoyed political independence, attach a value to that independence should not surprise people living under British rule. The cry that, because the British arms have eufiered a defeat, through the incompetence of commanders, or the overweening confidence of the British soldiery in their own immobility, no terms can be made with a people, whom the English commander himself referred to as a brave and gallant enemy, until the imaginary disgrace has been wiped out by a furtber shedding of blood, is a monstrous and cruel cry, and one that we feel sure the better sense of the English people will reprobate. That the generally received opinion in reference to the Boers and their views ban hitherto been an erroneous one will be seen from the following extracts from a letter printed in one of the Natal papers, and copied in some of the principal English journals. The writer is an Englishman, and having been long resident in South Africa his views are worth attention. He saye : —It is specially notable that although the possession by England of Delagoa B, ay was of far greater importance in every sense, in the interests of the empire, than that of the Transvaal, in the former instance no force has been employed, but submission to arbitration adopted ; while in the latter whole regiments were at had to destroy the Boers when contending for their Convention. Puny Portugal, though a debtor to England, being 6een to be an integral part of jealous Europe, was treated with according to international law ; the Boers, unsupported by great potentates, and helpless, are handed over to armed occupancy of their country; in other words, to the sword or forced allegiance. Let us, as Englishmen, pity those people who are now by the dictum of England doomed to be pitied in unequal conflict against her mighty arm; a people—who after clearing the country of wild beasts and rendering iw habitable—have freely admitted trade! I within its boundaries, and wereproYid*\

ing a "rough and ready," perhaps but nevertheless a real preparation to be utilised in due time for the compWer form of civilisation and for a more elaborate system of government than they just now required. They now find themselves suddenly deposed, their laws and institutions displaced, and their cherished forms and usages ignored. Of the importance of the present struggle scarcely too much can be said. If the struggle goes on, I doubt much if any person realizes how much it will affect Africa. The lives of soldiers aie unquestionably as dear to them as is the Boer's life to himself; but, considered in relation to South Africa, the value of the latter far exceeds that of the former. Amidst the hordes of barbarians surrounding us, every permanent white resident, such as the Boer, when lost is an almost irreparable loss. For whites to shoot whites under the conditions of this country is a terrible disaster. Credit given to the Transvaal by Natal, as well as by Port Elizabeth, must lose its value; trade and commerce languish. The blacks, astonished at the unseemly strife, will loudly decry the vaunted peace of the settlers. The importance of the conflict assumes large proportions when we regard the difficulties of its rational settlement. Then, if the country is retained by force for a quarter of a century at least, animosity cowards England and the English will imbue the minds of half the Cape people, of nearly all the Free State, and of many in Natal. The true cause of diolike of the Boers to the English lies in the fact that so soon as the Boers have from time to time settled a territory as free men, powerful England pursues them with its unwelcome flag, and impounds their improvements; and cnuld you hear the maledictions against tbeßoera publicly uttered in our market places, and published in the local press by Englishmen, and the personal violence threatened against'any one saying a good word for a Boer, you would feel that the antipathy alluded to is not all on one side. Now has come the tug of war ; and the Boers, having no other territory left to fly to where they can enjoy their own customs and government, say they will rather die than submit; and so have Englishmen oft acted in the past, with marvellous good results to themselves and their posterity as well as to the world at large. England can, of course, declare that it will subjugate. Its powers against a " feeble folk " are immense. Very well , ; some of the results which mast attend subjugation have been touched upon. But England can also afiord to restore or arbitrate under certain safeguards. And what thenP Subdued animosity, a united South Africa within a moderate period, united in heart not in name, development of trade, welding of English and Dutch into " colonists," and general progress. Is the realization of these blessings not worth striving for ? And is not the promotion of them far more noble and worthy of England than the questionable honor of retaining a country at the point of the bayonet, consigning the bodies of patriots by scores to the tender mercies of rockets and shrapnel, or raising from " bank and brae " the wail of the wretched widows and orphans of those whose crime has been to defend the rights of self-government, conferred by their Convention or Charter of Privileges—which government is more suitable both to the country itself and their patriarchal habits than an elaborate one?