quoted in the share lists. There have been causes for doubt, but I do not remember an instance of failure. This has been so universally the result that the British Government at home have become averse to Crown Colonies, and has of late invited her children to go out alone into the world, to enjoy their own earnings, and pay their own bills, and do as may seem good to them each in his own sight. I find that there are many in the Cape Colony who say that she undertook to govern herself in the proper parliamentary way not because she especially desired the independence to be thus obtained, but because the Colonial Office at home was anxious on the subject and put pressure on the Colony.
At any rate in 1872 the Cape began to rule itself. The process of ruling themselves rarely begins with Colonies all at once. The acme of independence is reached when a Colony levies and spends its own taxes and when the country is ruled by Ministers who are appointed because they have a parliamentary majority at their back and who go out of office when they are no longer so supported. There are various preliminary steps before this state of perfection be reached and in no Colony, I think, have these various steps been more elaborated than at the Cape. In 1825 the Governor ruled almost as a despot. He was of course subject to the Secretary of State at home,—by whom he might be dismissed or, if competent, would be promoted; but he was expected to be autocratic and imperious. I may say that he rarely fell short of the expectation. Lord Charles Somerset, who was the last of those Governors at the Cape, did and said things which are charming in the simplicity of their
