ful. 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. 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. A 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 the one undeviating path towards material and intellectual progress. I see them habituating their shoulders to the yoke of daily labour,- as we have all habituated ours in Europe, and I do not doubt the happiness of the result. Nor do I care at present to go into the question of a far distant future. I will not say but that in coming ages a Kafir may make as good a Prime Minister as Lord Beaconsfield. But he cannot do so now, nor in this age,-nor for many ages to come. It will be sufficient for us if we can make up our minds that at least for the next hundred years we shall not choose to be ruled by him. But if so, seeing how greatly preponderating is his number, how are we to deal with him when he shall have come to understand the meaning of his electoral privileges, but shall not yet have reached that intellectual equality with the white man which the more ardent of his friends anticipate for him? Such are the perils and such the political quagmire among which the Southern States of the Union are now floundering. In arranging for the future government of South Africa, whether with, or without, a Confederation, we should I think be on the alert to guard against similar perils and a similar quagmire there. I have now spoken of the Queen's subjects in the Cape Colony. Then come on my list as given above the inhabitants of native districts which are subject to the Cape Colony, either by conquest or by annexation in accordance with their own wishes. These are so various and scattered that I can hardly hope to interest my reader in the tribes individually. The Basutos are probably the most prominent. They are governed by British magistrates, pay direct and indirect taxes,- -are a quiet orderly people, not given to fighting since the days of their great King Moshesh, and are about 127,000 in number. Then there are the Damaras and Namaquas of the Western coast, people allied to the Hottentots, races of whom no great notice is taken because their land has not yet been good enough to tempt colonists. But a small proportion of these people as yet live within electoral districts and therefore at present they have no votes for members of Parliament. But were any scheme of Confederation carried out their position would have to be assimilated to that of the other natives. The Diamond Fields are in a condition very little like that of South Africa generally. They are now, so to say, in the act of being made a portion of the Cape Colony, the bill for this purpose having been passed only during the last Session. They were annexed to the British Dominions in 1871, and have been governed since that time by a resident Sub-Governor under the Governor and High Commissioner of the Cape Colony. The district will now have a certain allotment of members of Parlia ment, but it has not any strong bearing on the question we are considering. The population of the district is of a shifting nature, the greater portion of even the coloured people having been drawn there by the wages offered by capitalists in search of diamonds. The English have got into the way of calling this territory the Diamond Fields, but its present proper geographical name is Griqualand West. We then come to Natal with its little handful of white people,-20,000 Europeans among 320,000 Kafirs and Zulus. Natal at present is under a separate Governor of its own and a separate form of government. There is not a Parliament in our sense of the word, but a Legislative Council. The executive Officers are responsible to the Governor and not to the Council. Natal is therefore a Crown Colony, and is not yet afflicted with any danger from voting natives. I can understand that it should be brought into a Confederation with other Colonies or Territories under the same flag without any alteration in its own Constitution,—but in doing so it must consent to take a very subordinate part. Where there is a Parliament, and the clamour and energy and strife of parliamentary life, there will be the power. If there be a Confederation with a central Congress,--and I presume that such an arrangement is always intended when Confederation is mentioned,-Natal would demand the right to elect members. It would choose its own franchise, and might perhaps continue to shut out the coloured man; but it would be subjected to and dominated by the Institutions of the Cape Colony, which, as I have endeavoured to show, are altogether different from its own. The smaller States are generally those most unwilling to confederate, fearing that they will be driven to the wall. The founders of the American Constitution had |