The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-01-16 00:00:00

M`Nt,
of 1,000 t.
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MR. FROUDE ON SOUTH AFRICA.

The Diamond News prints a speech delivered by Mr.
Fronde at a dinner given to him at Kimberley, in which he
observed
"I have been in the Free State and the Transvaal
I have seen a great variety of things and people, and
have been everywhere most kindly entertained. One
observation only I have made, which to me,
as a historian, has been peculiarly interesting,
and which I wish to mention. You know what
it is to find in a late geological formation the
remains embedded of earlier structures. I have
seen in the families of the Boers in South Africa
representatives of what their ancestors were in
Holland two centuries ago, and what, for that
matter, our own people were in Scotland and Eng-
land at the same time. I saw young women who
might have stepped down out of the canvas of Van
Eyck. I saw young men who might have sat to
Teniers. There were the big family Bible with the
family registers for half a dozen generations.
There was the long solemn grace before and after
supper. The hymn woke us in the morning, with
which the day's work is begun. These are matters
which have not lain much in any line in my own
life; but historically they are perfectly familar to
me. (Laughter and applause.) I had before me
the very same kind of men who had played so
splendid a part in European history; who had wrested
Holland from the Spanish; whose qualities we had
reason to know when they sailed up the Thames and
burnt Chatham: who gave us afterwards our own
William, and the Constitution from which we date our
liberties ; who were the first founders of this colony, and
whose footprints you can still trace in the various
buildings and magnificent plantations at Cape Town.
These people, gentlemen, were most profoundly in-,
teresting to me. They may be unprogressive, but there
are many fine qualities which do not belong to what is
now called progress; and this leads me to the toast
which I have been invited to propose to you this even-
ing, "Prosperity to South Africa." Prosperity to
South Africa, gentlemen, is a general word. Every one
will agree in wishing you prosperity; but when I am
asked in what your prosperity is to consist, amidst the
many interests which at present divide this country, I
feel like the sage, who, when asked a difficult question,
said, Come to me to-morrow; when to-morrow came,
he said, Come to me next week. Next week, it was
next year. The longer he pondered the less he could
arrive at a conclusion, and never gave any answer at
all. There are things which may benefit the living
generation, and be an injury to their children. I can
desire only for you what time shall show to be best for
you in all the long rim, and then I will say that the
best of national prosperity does not lie in the diamonds
you produce, or your gold, or all the wealth, as it is
called, of which you have the means of raising such
• abundance. It lies in the character of the'men whom
your country produces. This is the only wealth of
real consequence. This is the criterion whether you
-are to grow hereafter to-be a people of weight and con-
sequence in the world. (Cheers). Under this aspect,
which will now be best for you, it is for me impossible
to say. When I think of my own country, of Germany,
or of America, I should wish to see the several States
of which you are composediconfederated into one. (Ap-
plause). When I remember the Greak and Italian
Republics, the splendid nations which have been gene-
rated in the struggles of small separate States to main-
tain their own independence then I incline to wishthat
each Province of South Africa may develop its own
fortunes after its own fashion. How all this will be,
time, and time only, can show. The only definite
hope which I will express for you is that two nations,
now living side by side in South Africa, may remem-
ber always that each have a history which does im-
mortal honour to them; that they may respect each
other's rights, and value one another's excellences,
and that in the future of South Africa may be found
worthy representatives of each of the illustrious rac
from whom they are privileged to descend. Prosperi
to South Africa.