Statement of the Present Cape Case by Charles Bowyer Adderley (1851)
Published in 1851, Statement of the Present Cape Case by Charles Bowyer Adderley (C. B. Adderley, M.P.) is a vital primary document from the crucial period when the Cape Colony was fiercely advocating for its own representative government and resisting direct imperial dictation from London.
The Naming of Adderley Street
The author, Charles Bowyer Adderley (later Lord Norton), was a British Tory politician who became an unlikely champion for the Cape colonists. Just a couple of years before this pamphlet was written, the British Government under Earl Grey attempted to turn the Cape into a penal colony by sending a ship of convicts (the Heerjeebhoy Bhoya) to anchor in Simon's Bay.
The local colonists revolted, forming the Anti-Convict Association and implementing a total boycott of anyone who aided the ship. In the British Parliament, Adderley strenuously took up the colonists' cause, leading the political charge against the penal colony plan. Out of profound gratitude for his advocacy, the residents of Cape Town renamed their principal thoroughfare—Heerengracht—to Adderley Street in 1850.
The Blueprint for Cape Self-Governance
The table of contents underscores exactly what was happening on the ground in 1850–1851. Following the anti-convict crisis, the Cape Colony demanded representative institutions in order to control their own internal affairs and prevent Downing Street from making similar unilateral decisions.
This text documents the intense internal friction of that moment, detailing:
The resignation of elected members of the Council (the famous "Popular Four" including Andries Stockenström and John Fairbairn).
The "Rival Constitutions" (the popular democratic draft vs. the official government draft).
The early debates over whether the Eastern and Western Provinces should have separate governments.
Ultimately, this political pressure bore fruit when the Cape was granted its first representative parliament in 1853.
The Society for Reform of Colonial Government
The pamphlet was addressed to the Society for the Reform of Colonial Government, an influential group founded in London in 1850 by Adderley, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and Lord Lyttelton. The society argued that the only way to retain the British Empire's colonies long-term was to grant them early and full local self-government, rather than governing them via bureaucratic mandates from London. This piece is a classic manifestation of that philosophy applied directly to the escalating political crisis at the Cape.
145mm x 217mm
36 page booklet bound together. Spine faded; pages mellowed.
R1,500
