FAILURE OF SIR HARRY SMITH'S SUCCESSOR.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 711, 5 February 1853, Page 3

FAILURE OF SIR HARRY SMITH'S SUCCESSOR.

[From the " Examiner."] When General Sir Harry Smith was removed from the military command in the Cape, and his successor appointed, we entertained great misgivings as to the result. We should have had greater faith in the selection of a younger officer than General Cathcart, —for example an officer like the Governor of New Zealand, unfettered by routine, and the more able as well as likely to form some new plan, political and military, and follow it out with determination. We did not at that time, however, express what we felt. Sir Harry Smith's failure had been twofold. He had failed as a civilian governor to conciliate any race or tribe of the natives of South Africa; and he had failed as a general by making offensive operations the main object of'his efforts. We were willing to suppose that an older, more careful, and less enterprising officer than Sir Harry would at least confine himself to the defensive, would give up making expeditions to the Amatola mountains, and busy himself at once in rendering his defensive line more secure. Assuming that the existing forts could have been so tied and connected together that the enemy should no longer have been able to pass between them without giving the alarm and receiving punishment from the additional reserves then brought into the field, something like effectual protection against further inroads would at least have been obtained, and the Caffrcs been convinced at last that the colonial settlers would cease to suffer most by any prolongation of the war. No such anticipations, we regret to say, have been fulfilled. The bi illiant but idle offensive by which Sir Harry Smith so unavailingly promised every month to annihilate his antagonists has indeed been abandoned, but notwithstanding the great increase of force at General Cathcart's command, the inlying provinces have not beenin the least more protected against the enemy's inroads. The seat of war has simply been transferred from without and around the line of forts to the country behind them. No convoys are safe, no expeditionary columns free from attack ; stores and ammunition ai-e intercepted, and even a number of Minie rifles, which were to give such advantages at long shots over the Caffres, haye been allowed to fall into their hands, One

might almost lie tempted to say that the chief anxiety of our new commander,has been a chivalrous desire to place the Caffres in a military sense on a par with the British. Of all the natives and barbarous races encountered by Englishmen in their attempts to colonise and conquer, tlte Caffres have given us most trouble, and are likely still to do so. And yet if we examine the character of that race, and its alleged grievances against us, we shall find reasons to be more than ever surprised at the inveteracy of the war and at the utter absence of even a proposal how to bring it to a close. One of the bitterest causes of insistence in native tribes is religious hatred; no doubt it is that which has animated chiefly the tribes of North Africa against the French. The Caffres have no such elements of hate. Neither are they a remarkably proud and sensitive race like the New Zealanders—whose pride and sensibility, we may take the opportunity of remarking, have mainly led to our existing friendship with them. For we have learned to respect them and they us; and out of this mutual good will, well understood and developed by an able governor, has sprung a state of peace, amity, and progress, apparently hopeless elsewhere. There is no doubt the great difference, in the case we are considering, that the Caffres are essentially a pastoral race, scorning to be anything else; while in such races, more than in any other, exists the inveterate tendency to predatory and warlike modes of living. Nevertheless, they are singularly amenable to chiefs, and if these were contented, we might expect to find general contentment. It is difficult to understand, therefore, why the Caffres should be such implacable enemies to English rule. Perhaps if the cause were thoroughly sifted, it might be found in the circumstance of our having precipitately rendered their means of subsistence too difficult, of our having impoverished tribes and chieftains without duly considering consequences, nay, without even the selfish precaution of favouring and paying handsomely some certain of the tribes disposed to turn and fight against their brethren. The one remarkable and consolatory feature in the present war, that it is certainly not undertaken by all the Caffres, and that the tribes beyond the Kei do not appear to take any active or combined part in it, seems to point to some such cause as we have suggested, as it certainly rebuts the supposition of its being a war of religion or of race. The war we hold to be mainly carried on by those dispossessed tribes which have had their grazing grounds narrowed, and whose chiefs are no longer paid the annual compensation which it was the policy of former years to pay them. Our recent treatment of the tribes, it is not to be denied, has been altogether marked by niggardliness and harshness. Sir Harry Smith had the unfortunate idea of levying a capitation tax on the very Hottentots whom he had located at the Kat river and elsewhere ; and we seem generally to have striven to make it the interest of all the native-born to find more profit in quarrelling with, fighting and robbing us, than in remaining at peace and getting nothing by it. Had we treated the New Zealanders in the same way, had we favoured them by sending out large forces, and a succession of British veterans and Commanders of the Bath to direct operations, we should be precisely in the same predicament in that colony. Fortunately, there were never soldiers enough in New Zealand to tempt any Governor to swerve from fair and conciliatory conduct, and the consequence has been that the seeds of permanent peace were laid. The Maories were early made to feel the advantages of British connexion, and they now consult their interest by cultivating our friendship, as the Caffres their'sby defying our enmity. The question avisos on all hands. How did the Dutch manage ? In the first place the Dutch never indulged in "wholesale colonization, not at least until wc forced them to it the other day. The Boers extended their holdings and their stations gradually. It is true that they had Commandos for recovering cattle and punishing stray robbers ; but at the same time on one side they had a better understanding with the Caffre chiefs, on another side they oilered fewer objects for their cupidity, and lastly their inroads were but the act of individuals. The Dutch were feudally organized for mutual and self-defence; and though they made slaves of the Hottentots these very Hottentots became more attached to them than the free Hottentots to that English Government which had given them arms and lands. Moreover, any compression of territory and pasture that the Caffres may have suffered north of the colony and towards the interior of the country, at the hands of the Dutch, did not straighten or distress them n any degreeso much as our encroachments upon those regions which lie between the Amatola Mountains and the sea. However, the immediate consideration now unfortunately is, not how best to do justice to the Caffres, but how most quickly to reduce them to a condition in which they will be likely to consent to just terms and be grateful for fair concessions. At present they are exultant and unmanageable from success, and their now proved ability to keep an army at bay. What military resources might be employed by an officer of genius it is uot for us to imagine ; but it is at least evident that General Cathcart is not destined, any more than Sir Harry Smith, to prove himself the Ctusar of South Africa. To revert to the remarks with which we began —since the war cannot be terminated by a pitched battle or coup de main, might it not be the next best thing to place matters in such a state that the Caffres at least, should no longergainby prolonging it ? The system of sending convoys of arms and stores, even Minie rifles, guarded by small detachments, is simply a premium offered for the continuance of the war. Sir Harry Smith himself took better care, for he moved in more formidable columns. It is also clear to us that the settlers of Albany and Uitenhage must be made to give up their amiable custom of open holdings. The farmers must be fortified and stockaded, as the frontier farmers of the Dutch used to be, with feudal garrisons, capable of keeping an enemy at bay for a time, and defying his devastations. Thia may be very onerous, especially to the smaller holders, whom it would probably oblige to group in villages. But such must be the last resource of every civilised people exposed to pastoral marauders. Europe itself, even Western Europe, was driven to have recourse to this system of defence, which corered its surface with walled places of refuge. Whoever cannot beat his foe in arms, or stop his ingress into the country, has but the alternative of making his house his castle, and empowering himself to° stand a siege. A frontier lord must no longer expect to exist without the cares of a frontier lord; and as to this class to have an army kept up specially and quite vainly for their sole protection against predatory pastoral tribes, this is become quite preposterous, and impossible much longer to be sustained, in i >i in i <in i 'i m