"ripe itopectator:' finptember 20tb, 1851 WE have received a voluminous
mass of correspondence and papers from the Cape colony, on the alarmingly critical state of affairs there. Time and space are net left us for any attempt at giving even the substance of the whole budget, but their bearing may be conveyed to our readers by a single extract from one letter, written to us by a colonist having the very best sources of information the colony supplies. His 'tone is despairing.
" My own opinion is that the colony is lost. The British Government has lost the affections, the confidence, and the fear of all parties, Dutch and English, Christian and Heathen, Black and White.. . . The native tribes are thoroughly roused, and evidently acting in concert with one another, and with the hitherto humble and faithful natives within the colony. The Dutch Boers and older colonists speak openly of 'trekking' to join their friends, who now form an independent republic in the interior, where they may defy the whole British army ; and the English on the frontier were speaking of abandoning their_lands and moving to New South Wales, even before the late news of the gold-mines had reached them. That news will decide the case. . . . It breaks the heart to think of what an empire Great Britain is losing—losing with disgrace not only lo her policy but to her arms—through the crimes of a Minister and the apathy of Parliament."
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