" How also the prospect
of the election of a new President, instead of being looked forward to
with hope, would, in the opinion of all parties, be the signal for civil
war, anarchy, and bloodshed. How that this state of things affords the
very strongest temptation to the great neighbouring native powers to
attack the country, a temptation that they were only too ready and
anxious to yield to, and that the State was in far too feeble a
condition to repel such attacks, from which it had hitherto only been
saved by the repeated representations of the Government of Natal. The
next paragraphs I will quote as they stand, for they sum up the reasons
for the Annexation.
"That the Secocoeni war, which would have produced but little effect
on a healthy constitution, has not only proved suddenly fatal to the
resources and reputation of the Republic, but has shown itself to be a
culminating point in the history of South Africa, in that a Makatee
or Basutu tribe, unwarlike and of no account in Zulu estimation,
successfully withstood the strength of the State, and disclosed for the
first time to the native powers outside the Republic, from the Zambesi
to the Cape, the great change that had taken place in the relative
strength of the white and black races, that this disclosure at once
shook the prestige of the white man in South Africa, and placed
every European community in peril, that this common danger has caused
universal anxiety, has given to all concerned the right to investigate
its cause, and to protect themselves from its consequences, and has
imposed the duty upon those who have the power to shield enfeebled
civilisation from the encroachments of barbarism and inhumanity.
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