In certain of our rulers this quality has manifested itself powerfully, and has led to the most enormous and catastrophic effects. Among such men was Lord Charles Somerset. While he was an energetic man of unusual ability, as far as can be judged across the uncertain historical shadows of seventy years (we are far from accepting as proved all the charges of extortion and corruption made against him); it was yet during his rule that one of the most disastrous mistakes made during England's rule in South Africa took place; and, in truth, his rule in South Africa may be said to have been one long blunder.
Gracious and obliging to those who submitted absolutely to his own will, he was a man oppressive and overbearing to all who resisted his own views. Devoid of imagination and wide human sympathies, he, in common with certain later representatives of England in South Africa, failed entirely to understand the nature of the people he came to govern, the land they lived in, or the conditions evoked by the unique combination of land and people; and the results of his rule were evil for South Africa, and yet more disastrous for England.
The mental attitude of the brave free-men who had peopled the untrodden land and made themselves a home in our African wilderness was for him, as for some who have succeeded him, a region he was never able by his mental constitution to penetrate.
Many things had produced pain among this free-folk. The mere fact that without their consent or desire their land had been placed in the hands of England; that there were no representative institutions through which the people could make their voice heard; that the Dutch language spoken by all the white inhabitants with the exception of a few English officials was not recognized by the Government; that the Governor received ten thousand pounds a year and four residences out of the small revenue, and that he with a few officials absorbed one-fourth of the entire revenue of the land; that he ruled with the same autocratic absoluteness with which the Czar of all the Russias is supposed to control his subjects--all these were sources of friction. But all these smaller matters might have been removed into the background and made of little account, had more tact and judgment been shown. But this man moved along his own course, apparently as oblivious of the thoughts and affections of the people whom he had to deal with as a dull menagerie keeper is of the thought and dispositions of his lions.