D1.8.27: [Untitled]

D1.8.27: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek writes that despite Wodehouse's eloquence, his speech failed to understand the position of the Cape colonists concerning the forced transfer of the financial imperial burden of frontier defence, where a 'Kafir war' may arise. The unpopularity of colonial expenditure and affairs with the British public may soon cause the Queen's troops to withdraw. Wodehouse's administration has side-stepped the Colonial Legislature by appealing directly to the Imperial Parliament for a bill overriding (undermining) the former's decision without means for appeal. Such behaviour necessitates a Responsible Government. Entrusting frontier affairs to an unaccountable Governor-cum-High Commissioner would achieve no imperial intervention, as the Home Government already intends to saddle the Cape Colony with this burden. Costs will be hard to predict as the Cape has no agency in frontier affairs. Wodehouse would fail in one regard if he transferred control to the Cape Legislature and may rightly ask how far Responsible Government could go in a territory so large and demographically diverse.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

29 April 1865

A half-folded slip of paper separating mounted Het Volksblad columns.

Governor Wodehouse (his incomprehension), British Kaffraria (Wodehouse's speech), Responsible Government (Wodehouse does not support), Mr Painter (the Eastern party leader), annexation (a matter of frontier defence), war (Kafir war)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. The campaign for Responsible Government seeks to remedy the idea of a colonial administration not of the people nor responsible/answerable to them. Governor Wodehouse was also the High Commissioner of Southern Africa (1862-1870). The British Government deliberated on whether the annexation of British Kaffraria was viable given the imperial cost which didn't receive popular support in England with the prospect of another so-called 'Kafir war' breaking out. 'Mr Painter' refers to Richard Joseph Painter of Fort Beaufort. Here, 'Premier' does not refer to the present-day office of the same name, but may instead refer to Painter's seniority as party leader.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.