In 1814 we paid the large sum of six million pounds to the Stadholder for the transference of this and some South American land.
It was a bargain which was probably made rapidly and carelessly in that general redistribution which was going on.

As a house of call upon the way to India the place was seen to be of value, but the country itself was looked upon as unprofitable and desert.

What would Castlereagh or Liverpool have thought could they have seen the items which we were buying for our six million pounds?
The inventory would have been a mixed one of good and of evil; nine fierce Kaffir wars, the greatest diamond mines in the world, the wealthiest gold mines, two costly and humiliating campaigns with men whom we respected even when we fought with them, and now at last, we hope, a South Africa of peace and prosperity, with equal rights and equal duties for all men.

The future should hold something very good for us in that land, for if we merely count the past we should be compelled to say that we should have been stronger, richer, and higher in the world's esteem had our possessions there never passed beyond the range of the guns of our men-of-war.

But surely the most arduous is the most honourable, and, looking back from the end of their journey, our descendants may see that our long record of struggle, with its mixture of disaster and success, its outpouring of blood and of treasure, has always tended to some great and enduring goal.
The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said, good ones, but there is one singular and ominous flaw in their provisions.