THE CAPE COLONISTS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 488, 27 July 1850, Page 88

THE CAPE COLONISTS.

To the Editor of the Timet.

Sir — Will you permit me in the same columns in which your powerful articles have censured the conduct of your Cape fellow subjects, to enter ray protest against your verdict ? Their defence may be reduced to a syllogism. Their consent has been throughout acknowledged as essential to the justice of their recent treatment; therefore their refusal having been unanimous— it matters nothing what you may think of its wisdom, or how you may call it "prudery" — the continued pressure for an unwilling submission was avowed tyranny, and the resistance a British right. In censuring the Cape, then, you are reduced to the necessity of abnegating British rights as unaffected by tyranny, and in so doing you implicate your own liberties at horne — by do means a visionary danger in these days of easy acquiescence in official Government. Your only alternative is to show some milder resource for Englishmen against tyranny than that of which the Cape has availed itself—passive resistance.

Your influence is great in the country, but will they not stare at your advocacy of nonresistance, as at Saul among the prophets ? I defy you to justify our own resolution, or ever again to admire Hampden, or say one woid in appreciation of the spirit of American independence, if you so display the standard of indefensible power and passive obedience. Recollect, also, that the tyranny of a free country over a dependency is far more galling than the comparatively paternal thraldom of an arbitrary monarch, and its justification would argue a more abject spirit of submissiveness. Should any excesses unhappily occur in the process of the Cape's vindication of its rights, where should the censure lie ?

If a father makes unjust demands upon his children, and meets their temperate refusal with a petulance which ultimately goads them into frenzy, should self-defence at length exceed the bounds of strict moderation and necessity, who but a stark fool would blame any one but the father ?

But you say the Cape had no reason to be alarmed — much as the absentee Irish landlord assured his threatened agent that lie despised the threats which so alarmed him. Yet it is clear that the dogged persistence in demanding the first ship's reception, whatever might be afterwards intended, was only defeated by the equally dogged refusal ; and nothing short of it would have succeeded.

You already foreshadow the revenge which is meditated in depriving the colony of its needed suply of free labour. Emigration, which should be the loftiest and most invigorating of England's enterprises, is to serve as the bait for a minister's experiments or to be withheld as a mulct for non-compliance. It is a matter of deep regret that your command of talent and of influence should be enlisted in such a cause. Its repugnance to your habitual advocacy of large constitutional views is evinced by contradictions and discrepancies unusual in your arguments. Your "facts" in a November article are incorrect, as, for instance, that "the 14th of March last was the first time the Government heard of the objections of the Cape." Your gratuitous suggestion of a connection between the death of Dr. Deas and these occurrences, any further than as contemporaneous, 18 unfair. It looks like anger blindly imputing every surrounding mischief to the sole agency of its obnoxious object. Your omissions are still more deceptive, as, for instance, your never once alluding to the Cape's consent having been asked and never waited for,— the gravamen of the whole case.

Again, you constantly refer to a promise "to send no more convicts," as if it were equivalent to a concession that the convicts sent should not be landed ; and,' for a sample of contradiction one has only to refer to the last article (December 4), which opens by attributing the resistance of the colony to "respectable antipathies," and closes by an insinuation of a servile dictation to which the proprietors must have timidly submitted. I will not venture to ask for longer space to enter into more detail. I appeal to your candour and independence to allow this remonstrance, dictated by a' sense of your extensive influence over the public mind, to appear in juxtaposition with your unusual advocacy of power against right. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, C. B. Adderly. Hams, Dec. 13. THE CAPE AND THE CONVICTS.

The well known missionary, Rev. J. J. Freeman, writes as follows respecting the feeling in the Cape Colony respecting convicts.

The letter from which we quote is to; be found in the British Banner : —

For a few momentß I may just advert to this question of convicts. I have never seen or heard of a people so united in any measure as the people of this colony are against the introduction of convicts in any form and to any extent. The united voice of Great Britain, some years ago, on the question of the emancipation of our slaves, was not more earnest and unequivocal than the voice of this colony not to admit a convict. Nothing can enable the government to carry the measure, of making this in any way a penal settlement but martial law and a Btrong military force. Europeans, Africans, and all the coloured classes, make a dead stand against it, for their lives. The manifestation of feeling is everywhere most decided. Popular meetings, crowded assemblies, riveted auditories, impatience for news, bells tolled, shops closed, newspapers bordered with black lines, black flag hoisted, all possible indications of the public sentiment on the subject are displayed, and Lord Grey has gone down to very lowest grade of distrust, aversion, and contempt to which a public man can be reduced. I think he will never succeed in regaining the confidence or respect of this colony, whatever measures he may now adopt. He is considered as having broken faith with the colony, and that in a very dishonourable manner, and as having shown himself ready to sacrifice the moral interests of the colony, while professing that he would do nothing in the matter of sending convicts here without ascertaining first the sentiments of the colonists themselves. His intimation that the general interests of the empire required the adoption of the measures is felt to be unsound, unjust, and cruel ; and the threat that the Cape should be left at the mercy of the Caffres in the event of another war has made an indelible impression on the hearts of the colonists of the utter unfitness of the man that could hold or utter such a sentiment to be intrusted with the reins of the colonial administration of our empire. The colonists are forced by the authorities at home into the adoption of measures dangerous to their interests, and then coolly told that when the danger comes they must help themselves out of it !