from all public offices, and even now Roman Catholics are under some disability. In the Orange Free State the Dutch Reformed Church receives public aid, but I think this is given, to a smaller extent, to some other denominations also, and no legal inequalities based on religion exist. In these two republics nearly the whole of the Boer population, and in the Free State a part even of the English population, belong to the Dutch Reformed communion, which is Presbyterian in government and Calvinistic in theology. In the British colonies the Protestant Episcopal Church (Church of England) comes next after the Dutch Reformed, which is much the strongest denomination; but the Wesleyans are also an important body, and there are, of course, also Congregational and Baptist churches. The Presbyterians seem to be less numerous (in proportion to the population) than in Canada or Australia, not merely because the Scottish element is less numerous, but also because many of the Scottish settlers joined the Dutch Reformed Church as being akin to their own in polity and doctrine. The comparative paucity of Roman Catholics is due to the paucity of Irish immigrants. These bodies live in perfect harmony and good feeling one with another, all frankly accepting the principle of equality, none claiming any social pre-eminence, and none,

1 The census of 1891 gives the numbers as follows: Dutch Reformed Church, 306,000; Church of England, 139,000; Wesleyans, 106,000; Congregationalists, 69,000; Presbyterians, 37,000; Roman Catholics, 17,000; Mohammedans, 15,000.

so far as I could learn, attempting to interfere in politics. Both the bishops and the clergy of the Church of England (among whom there are many gifted men) are, with few exceptions, of marked High-church proclivities, which, however, do not appear to prevail equally among the laity. The Dutch Reformed Church has been troubled by doubts as to the orthodoxy of many of its younger pastors who have been educated at Leyden or Utrecht, and for a time it preferred to send candidates for the ministry to be trained at Edinburgh, whose theological schools inspired less distrust. It is itself in its turn distrusted, apparently without reason, by the still more rigid Calvinists of the Transvaal.

One curious feature of South African society remains to be mentioned, which impressed me the more the longer I remained in the country. The upper stratum of that society, consisting of the well-to-do and best educated people, is naturally small, because the whole white population of the towns is small, there being only four towns that have more than ten thousand white residents. But this little society is virtually one society, though dispersed in spots hundreds of miles from one another. Natal stands rather apart, and has very little to do either socially or in the way of business with Cape Colony, and not a great deal even with the Transvaal. So too the four or five towns of the eastern province of Cape Colony form a group somewhat detached, and though the "best people" in each of them know all about the "best people" in Cape Town, they are not

in close touch with the latter. But Cape Town, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, and Pretoria, the five most important places (excluding the Natal towns), are for social purposes almost one city, though it is six hundred and fifty miles from Cape Town to Kimberley and one thousand miles from Cape Town to Johannesburg. All the persons of consequence in these places know one another and follow one another's doings. All mix frequently, because the Cape Town people are apt to be called by business to the inland cities, and the residents of the inland cities come to Cape Town for sea air in the summer, or to embark thence for Europe. Where distances are great, men think little of long journeys, and the fact that Cape Town is practically the one port of entrance and departure for the interior, so far as passengers are concerned, keeps it in constant relations with the leading men of the interior, and gives a sort of unity to the upper society of the whole country, which finds few parallels in any other part of the world. Johannesburg and Cape Town in particular are, for social purposes, in closer touch with each other than Liverpool is with Manchester or New York with Philadelphia. When one turns to the map it looks a long way from the Cape to the Witwatersrand; but between these places most of the country is a desert, and there is only one spot, Bloemfontein, that deserves to be called a town. So I will once more beg the reader to remember that though South Africa is more than half as large as Europe, it is, measured by population, a very small country.

CHAPTER XXIV

POLITICS IN THE TWO BRITISH COLONIES

THE circumstances of the two South African colonies are so dissimilar from those of the British colonies in North America and in Australasia as to have impressed upon their politics a very different character. I do not propose to describe the present political situation, for it may have changed before these pages are published. It is only of the permanent causes which give their colour to the questions and the movements of the country that I shall speak, and that concisely.

The frame of government is, in Cape Colony as well as in Natal, essentially the same as in the other self-governing British colonies. There is a Governor, appointed by the home Government, and responsible to it only, who plays the part which belongs to the Crown in Great Britain. He is the nominal head of the executive, summoning and proroguing the Legislature, appointing and dismissing ministers, and exercising, upon the advice of his ministers, the prerogative of pardon. There is a cabinet of five persons, including the heads of the chief administra

tive departments, who are the practical executive of the Colony, and are responsible to the Legislature, in which they sit, and at whose pleasure they hold their offices. There is a Legislature consisting of two houses-an Assembly, with seventy-nine, and a Legislative Council, with twenty-three, members. In Cape Colony (for of the arrangements in Natal I have spoken in a previous chapter) both houses are elected on the same franchise-a low one; but the districts for the election of members of the Council are much larger, and therefore fewer, than the Assembly districts, so the former body is a small and the latter a comparatively numerous one.1 The rights and powers of both houses are theoretically the same, save that money bills originate in the Assembly; but the Assembly is far more powerful, for the ministry holds office only so long as it has the support of a majority in that body, whereas it need not regard a hostile vote in the Council. Ministers have the right of speaking in both houses, but can, of course, vote only in the one of which they are members by popular election. If there happens not to be a minister who has a seat in the Council (as is the case at present), it is usual for the cabinet to allot one to be present in and look after that chamber for the day.

This cabinet system, as it is called, works pretty smoothly, on lines similar to that English original whence it is copied. The most interesting pecu

1 There are for the Council seven electoral provinces, each of which returns three members to the Council, besides one for Griqualand West and one for British Bechuanaland.