though comparatively large, something over a quarter of a million,-is less in number than the inhabitants of the single city of Melbourne. One colonial town in Australia, and that a town not more than a quarter of a century old, gives a home to more white people than the whole of the Cape Colony, which was colonized with white people two hundred years before Melbourne was founded. And on looking at the white population of the Cape Colony a further division must be made in order to give the English reader a true idea of the Colony in reference to England. A British colony to the British mind is a land away from home to which the swarming multitudes of Great Britain may go and earn a comfortable sustenance, denied to them in the land of their birth by the narrowness of its limits and the greatness of its population, and may do so with the use of their own language, and in subjection to their own laws. We have other senses of the word Colony, for we call military garrisons Colonies, such as Malta, and Gibraltar, and Bermuda. But the true Colony has, I think, above been truly described; and thus the United States of America have answered to us the purpose of a Colony as well as though they had remained under British rule. We should, therefore, endeavour to see how far the Cape Colony has answered the desired purpose.

The settlement was Dutch in its origin, and was peopled by Dutchmen, with a salutary sprinkling of Protestant French who assimilated themselves after a time to the Dutch in language and religion. It is only by their religion that we can now divide the Dutch and the English;

and on enquiry I find that about 150,000 souls belong to the Dutch Reformed and Lutheran Churches, leaving 85,000 of English descent in the Colony. If to these we add the 20,000 white persons inhabiting Natal, and 15,000 at the Diamond Fields, we shall have the total English population of South Africa ;-for the Europeans of the Transvaal, as of the Orange Free State, are a Dutch people. There are therefore about 120,000 persons of British descent in these South African districts,-the number being little more than that of the people of the small unobtrusive Colony which we call Tasmania.

I hope that nobody will suppose from this that I regard a Dutch subject of the British Crown as being less worthy of regard than an English subject. My remarks are not intended to point in that direction, but to show what is the nature of our duties in South Africa. Thus are there about 220,000* persons of Dutch descent, though the emigrants from Holland to that land during the present century have been but few ;- -so few that I have found no trace of any batch of such emigrants; and there are but 120,000 of English descent although the country has belonged to England for three-quarters of a century! The enquirer is thus driven to the conclusion that South Africa has hardly answered the purpose of a British Colony.

And I hope that nobody will suppose from this that I regard the coloured population of Africa as being unworthy

of consideration. My remarks, on the other hand, are made with the object of showing that in dealing with South Africa the British Parliament and the British Ministers should think,—not indeed exclusively, but chiefly of the coloured people. When we speak of Confederation among these Colonies and districts we should enquire whether such Confederation will be good for those races whom at home we lump under the name of Kafirs. As a Colony, in the proper sense of the word, the Cape Colony has not been successful. Englishmen have not flocked there in proportion to its area or to its capabilities for producing the things necessary for life. The working Englishman, and it is he who populates the new lands,-prefers a country in which he shall not have to compete with a black man or a red man. He learns from some only partially correct source that in one country the natives will interfere with him and that in another they will not; and he prefers the country in which their presence will not annoy him,

But then neither have Englishmen flocked to India, which of all our possessions is the most important, or to Ceylon, which as being called a Colony and governed from the Colonial Office at home may afford us the nearest parallel we can find to South Africa. No doubt they are in many things unlike. No English workman takes his family to Ceylon because the tropical sun is too hot for a European to work beneath it. South Africa is often hot, but it is not tropical, and an Englishman can work there. And again in Ceylon the coloured population have from the first British occupation of the island been recognised as "the people,"-

an interesting and submissive but still foreign and coloured people, whom she should not dream of inviting to govern themselves. It is a matter of course that Ceylon should be governed as a Crown Colony,-with edicts and laws from Downing Street, administered by the hand of a Governor. A Cingalee Parliament would be an absurdity in our eyes. But in the Cape Colony we have, as I shall explain in another chapter, all the circumstances of parliamentary government. The real Governor is the Colonial Prime Minister for the time, with just such restraints as control our Prime Minister at home. Therefore Ceylon and the Cape Colony are very unlike in their circumstances.

But the likeness is much more potential than the unlikeness. In each country there is a vast coloured population subject to British rule, and a population which is menaced by no danger of coming extermination. It must always be remembered that the Kafirs are not as the Maoris. They are increasing now more quickly than ever because, under our rule, they do not kill each other off in tribal wars. No doubt the white men are increasing too,-but very slowly; so that it is impossible not to accept the fact a few white men have to rule a great number of coloured men, and that that proportion must remain.

A coloured subject of the Queen in the Cape Colony has all the privileges possessed by a white subject,-all the political privileges. The elective franchise under which the constituencies elect their members of Parliament is given under a certain low property qualification. A labourer who for a year shall have earned £25 in wages and his diet may

be registered as a voter, or if a man shall have held for a year a house, or land, or land and house conjointly, worth £50, he may be registered. It is certainly the case that even at present a very large number of Kafirs might be registered. It has already been threatened in more than one case that a crowd of Kafirs should be taken to the poll to carry an election in this or that direction. The Kafirs themselves understand but little about it, as yet; but they will come to understand. The franchise is one which easily admits of a simulated qualification. It depends on the value of land,-and who is to value it? If one Kafir were now to swear that he paid another Kafir 10s. a week and fed him; no registrar would perhaps believe the oath. But it will not be long before such oath might probably be true, or at any rate impossible of rejection. The Registrar may himself be a Kafir, as may also be the member of Parliament. We have only to look at the Southern States of the American Union to see how quickly the thing may run when once it shall have begun to move. With two million and a quarter of coloured people as against 340,000 white, all endowed with equal political privileges, why should we not have a Kafir Prime Minister at Capetown, and a Kafir Parliament refusing to pay salary to any but a Kafir Governor ?

There may be those who think that a Kafir Parliament and a Kafir Governor would be very good for a Kafir country. I own that I am not one of them. I look to the civilization of these people, and think that I see it now being effected by the creation of those wants the desire for supplying which has since the creation of the world been