D1.8.51: [Untitled]

D1.8.51: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek revisits the High Church party's Bishop Gray and Dean Douglas, who desire a return to the ritualism of the Romish tradition (its liturgical practices). Gray's fixation on Rome indirectly recognises papal primacy (as 'an authoritative expositor of truth'), constituting a sort of denominational betrayal for certain Protestants. As the common expression implies, truth can be arrived at through other less disruptive means. The Cape Standard and Mail (founded 1866) exists to oppose demands for Responsible Government and enforce the metropole's top-down status quo. Bleek disagrees with a contemporary at the Standard's use of New Zealand as a counter-argument, given that General Duncan Cameron's poor performance arose from contradictory Imperial instructions and the exclusion of their responsible government from managing native affairs. 'anti-Responsible Government' is the title Bleek wrote on the mount. despotically indifferent and jeopardises the colonists' well-being while denying them agency in vital affairs. Such a system can even disregard the wisdom of Governors, who offer no allegiance to the colonial parliament. The metropole is profoundly ignorant of 'South African affairs' and, in their 'omnipotence', will cause some costly irreversible mischief. The Imperial Government forced the incorporation of British Kaffraria to eliminate a cost burden, and even with a Responsible Government in New Zealand, the Executive Government or its military officials mismanaged or interfered with native affairs. New Zealand, therefore, replaced the disavowed ministry. Constitutional government fails because it has too many working parts. Which form of government carries more risk, anti-Responsible or Representative Government? In contradicting itself, the Standard proves Bleek's argument.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

06 February 1866

Two cut-out columns of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Cape Standard, Responsible Government (in Native Affairs), Sir George Grey, General Cameron (Duncan Alexander Cameron), New Zealand, Maori, anti-Responsible Government, Transkeian territory, Kafir wars (the expense of)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. The date was misprinted as 1865 and hand-corrected (by Bleek?) to 1866 post-publication. Bleek's previous statement that South Africa is a Protestant land is reinforced by his belief that the majority of his readership is Protestant and likely to be offended by indulging the assertions of Roman Catholicism.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.