-nor for

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,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 promi

nent. 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 Parliament, 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 to give Rhode Island as many Senators as New York before she would consent to Federation.

There remains the Transvaal, which we have just annexed with its 40,000 Dutchmen and its quarter of a million of native population, a number which can only be taken as a rough average and one which will certainly be greatly

exceeded as our borders stretch themselves in their accustomed fashion. Here again we have for the moment a Crown Colony, and one which can hardly get itself into working order for Confederation within the period allowed by the Permissive Bill of last Session. The other day there was a Dutch Parliament,-or Volksraad,-in which the Dutchman had protected himself altogether from any voting interference on the part of the native. Downing Street can make the Transvaal confederate if she so please, but can hardly do so without causing Dutch members to be sent up to the general Parliament. Now these Dutchmen do not talk English, and are supposed to be unwilling to mix with Englishmen. I fear that many years must pass by before the Transvaal can become an operative part of an AngloSouth African Confederation.

I have here simply endeavoured to point at the condition of things as they may affect the question of Confederation; -not as intending to express an opinion against Confederation generally. I am in doubt whether a Confederation of the South African States can be carried in the manner proposed by the Bill. But I feel sure that if such a measure be carried the chief object in view should be the amelioration of the coloured races, and that that object cannot be effected by inviting the coloured races to come to the polls. Voting under a low suffrage would be quite as appropriate to the people of the Indian Provinces and of Ceylon as it is at the present moment to the people of South Africa. The same evil arose in Jamaica and we know what came from it there.