The confederation question--The difficulty of obtaining desirable
immigrants--The only real key to the Natal native question--Folly of
accepting self-government till it is solved._

Natal has an area of about 18,000 square miles, and its present
population is, roughly, 25,000 whites and 400,000 natives of the Zulu
race. When, in 1843, it first became a British colony, the number of
natives living within its borders was very small, and they were for the
most part wanderers, fragmentary remnants of the tribes that Chaka had
destroyed. I shall probably be under, rather than over the mark, if I
say, that the Zulu population of the colony has multiplied itself by ten
during the last thirty years. Two causes have combined to bring about
this extraordinary increase; firstly, wholesale immigration from the
surrounding territories; and secondly, the practice of polygamy.

This immigration has been due to a great want of foresight, or want of
knowledge, on the part of the Home authorities, who have allowed it to
go on without check or hindrance till it has, in conjunction with its
twin evil polygamy, produced the state of affairs it is my object to
describe. Ever since its first establishment as a colony Natal has been
turned into a city of refuge for the native inhabitants of Zululand, the
Transvaal, Swaziland, and elsewhere. If news came to a Zulu chief that
his king purposed to eat him up, he at once fled across the Tugela with
his wives and followers and settled in Natal. If the Boers or Swazis
destroyed a tribe, the remnant found its way to Natal.

That country, indeed, is to the South African native a modern Isles of
the Blest. Once across the border line, and, whatever his crime, he
is in a position to defy his worst enemy, and can rest secure in the
protection of the Home and local Governments, and of the enactments