THE CAREER OF SIR HERCULES ROBINSON.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2188, 1 March 1881, Page 3

THE CAREER OF SIR HERCULES ROBINSON.

[London “ Daily Telegraph,” Deo. 30th.] Twenty-seven years ago, almost to a day, Sir Hercules Robinson, then in his thirtieth year, sailed from England to undertake the first colonial Governorship entrusted to him by the responsible advisers of Her Majesty. The post to which he was appointed in the January of 1854 by the last Duke of Newcastle but one, was the very smallest and least important trust of the kind that the Colonial Office has it in its power to bestow ; yet even as President of Montserrat —a little island in the West Indies belonging to the Leeward group—Sir Hercules found opportunities for demonstrating of what stuff he was made. Before many mouths had passed he was nominated Lieutenant-Governor of the adjoining island of Bt. Kitt’s, with which he held the dormant commission of Governor-in-Chief of the Leeward and five years later he was promoted by the Home Government to the important office of Governor of Hong Kong, From Montserrat at £SO a a year to St. Kitt’s at £ISOO, and thence at a bound to Hong Kong with a salary of £SOOO per annum, was, it must be admitted, an unusually rapid rise for so young an official to attain within five years; yet subsequent ©vents have proved that the Colonial Office, though administered by different hands, was wise when it discerned unusual merits and qualifications in Sir Heronles Robinson. From his first appointment in 1854 until the present hour he has been constantly trusted and employed by the Colonial Office, and it may already be said of him, in the words used by Lord Macaulay when writing his well-known epitaph to the memory of the first and last Lord Metcalfe, who lies buried in Winkfield Church, near Ascot, that "as a statesman he was tried in many high posts and difficult conjunctures, and was found equal to all.” While still Governor of Hong Kong Sir Hercules was chosen as a member of the Commission appointed in the autumn of 1863 to inquire into the financial condition of the Straits Settlements, and in the May of 1865 ho was transferred to Ceylon. His next move was to New South Wales, in 1872, and thence to New Zealand, in 1879; nor ought it to bo omitted from mention that in 1874 ho was sent upon special service from Sydney, in Now South Wales, to the Fiji Islands, with a view to undertaking and concluding negotiations for their unconditional surrender to the British Orowni It will be seen from this brief recital of the posts connected with the colonies which Sir Hercules Robinson has successfully held and administered that his experience is of the largest and most diversified kind. He is familiar alike with Crown colonies, in which, as at Ceylon, the Governor is an autocrat, and with colonies ruled under representative and selfgoverning institutions, in which, as in NewSouth Wales and New Zealand, the Governor, like the monarch of a constitutional realm, rules without governing. Difficulties of many kinds, and in many different guises, must have crossed his path; but with rare good fortune —or, more properly speaking, with admirable tact, temper, and discretion—he has confronted and surmounted them all. The Colonial Service of Great Britain, rich in men of singular ability and exalted character, has hitherto brought to the front few, if any, abler officials than Sir Hercules Robinson.

It is gratifying to bear these reassuring thoughts in mind on the eve of the departure of Sir Hercules to embark upon the duties of his new office os Governor of Cape Colony, To-day he sets eail t from our shores for Cape Town, and upon arriving he will find the of South Africa in a condition to put his best qualifications for governing to the test. Ever since the day when, in 1795, Great Britain first interfered in the political affairs of the Dutch and Portuguese settlers at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa has been a word of ill omen to the British taxpayer. It was the object of our forefathers in 1795 to preserve the Dutch colony at the Cape from falling into the hands of the French Revolutionary Government, to which the mother country of Holland had yielded in Europe. But the Dutchmen at the Cape refused to obey the mandate of the Prince of Orange, conveyed to them through the commander of the British forces, which, in the end, had to take possession of the country in order to keep out the French. The Peace of Amiens in 1803 restored the Capo of Good Hope to the Dutch Republic, but in 1806, upon the resumption of hostilities between Great Britain and France, the Cape, which had again failed into the power of Napoleon, was once more seized by the former power, and at the general peace in 1814 it was ceded in' perpetuity to the British Crown. The new colony thus added to the British Empire was at first a small affair, but successive annexations, made in some cases with reluctance, and, as it were, under protest, 1 have extended the dominions of Great Britain in South Africa over an immense area. The Cape Colony, in which Sir Hercules Robinson is about to take command, covers a territory of nearly two hundred and twenty-five thousand square miles, which are 'sparsely occupied by many races of men. Among European nations, the Dutch, the Portuguese, the French and the English are most largely represented, and they have all come at different times into contact with the fiercest and bravest races of black aborigines that hitherto European arms have anywhere encountered. In each of these black tribes or races a strong and ineradicable attachment to their native soil has again and again made itself apparent, and the expulsion in 1809 of the Kaffirs from theZuurveldt laid the foundation of those three costly Kaffir wars which entailed such obligations on the home Governments charged with the responsibility either of stopping or of paying for them. Even during the first Kaffir war, which commenced in 1836, Lord Glenelg, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, had so much sympathy with the Natives that he refused, after they had been defeated, to allow their lands up to the Kei River to b» absorbed into British territory. Another Kaffir war, commencing in 1816, was the consequence of Lord Glenelg’s well-meaning philanthropy towards the Natives, and upon its speedy conclusion the colonial border was carried forward to the Kei River by Sir Benjamin D’Urban. On Christmas Day, 1850, commenced the third and most protracted of our struggles with the Kaffirs, which was additionally complicated, during the three years for which it lasted, by a formidable Hottentot rebellion.

The colony, to assume command of which Sir Hercules Robinson has been specially recalled by Lord Kimberley from New Zeeland, has grown so enormously since the conclusion of the last Kaffir war in 1853, that it presents no analogy to the small Grown colony over which Sir Philip Wodehouse began to preside in 1861. So great, indeed, are the difficulties resulting from the rapid annexations, consequent on immigration and enterprise, that Sir Hercules Robinson might well have been excused if, after an honorable and successful colonial career extending over more than a quarter of a century, he had turned a deaf ear 10 the colonial Minister's offer of further advancement, and if, in view of the many perplexities with which the governorship of South Africa is surrounded, he had refused to leave his secure and tranquil berth in New Zealand. The electric message sent to him by Lord Kimberley was, however, couched in such flittering terms as practically left Sir Hercules no option but to undertake the duty imposed upon him. Lora Kimberley did not disguise the grave complications into which politifvl affaire at the Gape had got, but frankly sought the am of Sir Hercules Robinson, as bring a governor well fitted by his past experience n <ma raefer to assist in solving the knotty P'. ''m® which await him in South Africa. " will carry out with him, wfi-tt ♦

to-day, the beet wishes of hi* countrymen, who know that the task with which the new Governor of the Capo is charged, is one which will te*t hi* ability to the utmost. If possible, he has to induce the colonists to look at their own affairs through our spectacles, and while urging federation upon them to make them sink the difference* which repel them and keep them apart. In the existing troubles with the Basutoe and the Boors, Sir Hercules will have to give advice as the representative of a power which will perhaps have occasion to send Imperial troops upon a large scale beyond the Voa], If, again, the colonists shall succeed in putting down the insurgent forces without any aid from the mother country, it is obvious that they will feel but little disposition to follow advice emanating from a European source. The extreme difficulty of directing the government of a colony to which Sir Henry Barkly gave representative institutions in 1872, in which the white population is largely outnumbered by the black, and which, finally, lies in close juxtaposition to two neighboring Crown colonies, cannot be over-estimated in words. The troubles in the Transvaal lie outside his jurisdiction, but even in dealing with the Boers he may lend some help to Sir George Colley. Already a demand has been made at Cape Town for the appointment of a Commissioner to the Transvaal, and it cannot be denied that the entire colony has a distinct and pressing interest in a decisive settlement of the question. Sir Hercules Robinson, who must bo fully alive to the emergency, carries with him the confidence, not only of the Colonial Office, but also of his fellow-country, men at home, who are never slack, except when party passion blinds their judgment, to recognise merit in long-tried and faithful public service.