Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, while complimenting Mr. Chamber- lain on his
speech, threw his shield, as usual, over Sir Bartle Frere, whom the Government appear always to reprove when they write despatches, and always to defend when they make speeches in answer to any other critic. Sir Michael declared that the reiterated wars in South Africa were due to the constant tide of white migration northward, meeting a far more powerful wave of black migration southward. But his only remedies were Confederation, the organisation by the Confederated Colonies of a proper and well-disciplined force for their own defence, which would save them from panics, and which, by dis- couraging the great southward migration of the black races, and accustoming those within the colonial limits to civilised labour and pastoral or agricultural tastes, would prevent the collisions which had given rise to so many wars. He had per- fect confidence in Sir Bartle Frere,—in spite of all the official snubs he has had to administer to hiro,—and he exhorted the House to have perfect confidence in himself ; which, whether it feels it or not, it is of course ready to express. Mr. Chamber- lain did not succeed in eliciting from the Government that any change of policy was about to be adopted, or any effectual check administered to Sir Bartle Frere's pertinacious Im- perialism.
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