ABSTRACT
Public opinion in England, however, was not so ready to face unpleasant facts. Critics in Press and Parliament lost no time in proclaiming the policy of Lord Grey and Sir Harry Smith, which had been warmly welcomed in 1848, as a hopeless failure. It now appeared that the policy which had been put forward as not merely the best but the cheapest and the safest was no cheaper and no safer than the policy it had replaced. The search for such a policy must continue, and this war like the wars of 1835 and 1846 must be followed by a new departure. Along what lines? The events of the last few years supplied the answer. The Cape thought herself entitled to deny the argument of Imperial necessity, and to refuse to receive convicts. Very well. The argument cut both ways, said ~he ~imes: 'a private and peculiar war, like that now raging at the Cape, seems to fall fairly within the province of the local government to manage and of the local exchequer to support.'I ~he Spectator, though holding unlike ~he ~imes that the present war was purely Imperial and that the Mother Country must bear the brunt of it, drew a similar conclusion as to future policy: it trusted that 1851 would see the grant of responsible government to the Cape.z In Parliament, Sir William Molesworth attributed the war to Sir Harry Smith's mismanagement and selfdeception. 'By alternately coaxing and threatening the Kaffirs, by alternately praising and reviling them, by playing up all manner of fantastic and mountebank tricks, by aping the manners of the savage, Sir Harry thought to civilize the Kaffirs and to impose upon them; but the Kaffirs laughed at him, turned him to ridicule, and imposed upon him.'3
