Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VI

"I know what it is to be Governor of a self-governing colony, with the disaffected element in the ascendant. I was bitterly attacked for not being sufficiently submissive under the circumstances. Yet, even with the least submissive Governor, the position is so weak that strange things happen. It was under responsible government, and in the normal working of responsible government, that 1,000,000 cartridges were passed through Cape Colony, on the eve of the war, to arm the people who were just going to attack us, and that some necessary cannon were stopped from being sent to a defenceless border town,[170] which directly afterwards was besieged, and which, from want of these cannon, was nearly taken."[171]