own poor ten members of a common Congress to be annihilated by the votes of members who may not improbably be returned by coloured persons, and who may not impossibly be coloured persons themselves.
With the Transvaal the Government at home may do as it pleases. At the present moment it is altogether at the disposal of the Crown. If the Cape Colony would consent to take it the Transvaal can be annexed to-morrow without any ceremony of Confederation. The Cape Colony would in the first place probably desire to be secured from any repayment of the debts of the late Republic. This would not be Confederation, though in this way the Cape Colony, which will soon have swallowed up Griqualand West, would be enabled to walk round the Free State. But the Boers of the Transvaal would, if consulted, be as little inclined to submit themselves to the coloured political influence of the Cape as would the people of Natal. What should they do in a Parliament of which they do not understand the language? Therefore I think Confederation to be inexpedient.
But though the Cape Colony were to walk round the Free State so as to join the Transvaal,—though it were even to walk on and reach the Eastern Sea by including Natal,—still it would only have gone round the Free State and not have absorbed it. I understand that Confederation without the Free State would not be thought sufficiently complete to answer the purpose of the Colonial Office at home. And as I think that the Free State will not confederate, for reasons which I have given when writing about the Free State, I think that Confederation is impracticable.
