EMIGRATION AND THE COLONIES 853
school argued that it would be wise to cut the colonies adrift A.D. 1776
and leave them to work out their own destiny. 0
This attitude of lofty indifference in regard to Colonial 2.
possessions was sufficiently irritating to the Englishmen who th.
had made their "homes in distant parts of the Empire; but ’
occasional interference proved even more galling than habitual while the
neglect. In one way or another dominant British senti- were imi
ments,—philanthropic and economic,—made themselves felt, iii
and influenced the Colonial authorities to give effect to ee,
measures which were deeply resented by the men whose
interests were immediately affected, at the Cape, in the West
Indies, and Canada. The strong objection which was officially
taken to any extension of our Colonial responsibilities was
re-enforced by a desire to mete out fair treatment to the on behalf
native races. To the Home Government, it seemed important of Rati
to refrain from encroaching upon them in any way’. The pri
invasions of the Kaffirs, who were immigrating southwards,
exposed Cape Colony to great danger, and an attempt was
made to raise a barrier by planting the neighbourhood of
Port Elizabeth with English and Scotch settlers, and for
a time to maintain a belt of unoccupied area. As the white
population in South Africa increased troubles ensued, for
which English public opinion, stirred by the representations
of a Congregational missionary? was inclined to lay the entire
blame upon the Dutch element in the population. According
to the theory of the Home Government the Kaffirs were re-
garded as forming a civilised state, which could be relied on
larger towns on the two sides that we shall find the best evidence of our own
inferiority. That painful but undeniable truth is most manifest in the country
districts through which the line of national separation passes for 1,000 miles.
There, on the side of both the Canadas, and also of New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia, a widely scattered population, poor, and apparently unenterprising, though
hardy and industrious, separated from each other by tracts of intervening forest,
without towns and markets, almost without roads, living in mean houses, drawing
little more than a rude subsistence from ill-cultivated land, and seemingly in-
apable of improving their condition, present the most instructive contrast to
their enterprising and thriving neighbours on the American side.” Reports,
1839, xvir. 75.
* This had been the American policy recommended by the Home Government
immediately after the conquest of Canada from the French. Attempts “vere made
io prevent the plantation of the plains west of the Alleghanies.
2 Rev. J. Philip, whose Researches in South Africa gave a very one-sided
representation of affairs.
