envy by their possession of a profitable monopoly. If any controversy regarding natural resources arises, ✓ it will probably turn on the taxation of minerals. Some have suggested that the State should appropriate to itself a substantial share of the profits made out of the diamond and other mines, and the fact that most of those profits are sent home to shareholders in Europe might be expected to make the suggestion popular. Nevertheless, the suggestion has not, so far, "caught on," to use a familiar expression, partly, perhaps, because Cape Colony, drawing sufficient income from its tariff and its railways, has not found it necessary to hunt for other sources of revenue.

Lastly, there are no constitutional questions. The suffrage is so wide as to admit nearly all the whites, and there is, of course, no desire to go lower and I admit more blacks. The machinery of government is deemed satisfactory; at any rate, one hears of no proposals to change it, and, as will be seen presently, there is not in either colony a wish to alter the relations now subsisting between it and the mother country.

The reader may suppose that if all these grounds of controversy, familiar to Europe, and some of them now unhappily familiar to the new democracies also, are absent, South Africa enjoys the political tranquillity of a country where there are no factions, and the only question is how to find the men best able to promote that economic development which all unite in desiring. This is by no means the case.

In South Africa the part filled elsewhere by constitutional questions, and industrial questions, and ecclesiastical questions, and currency questions, is filled by race questions and colour questions. Colour questions have been discussed in a previous chapter. They turn not, as in the Southern States of America, upon the political rights of the black man (for on this subject the ruling whites are in both colonies unanimous), but upon land rights and the regulation of native labour. They are not at this moment actual and pungent issues, but they are in the background of every one's mind, and the attitude of each man to them goes far to determine his political sympathies. One cannot say that there exist pronative or anti-native parties, but the Dutch are by tradition more disposed than the English to treat the native severely and, as they express it, keep him. in his place. Many Englishmen share the Dutch feeling, yet it is always by Englishmen that the advocacy of the native case is undertaken. In Natal both races are equally anti-Indian.

The race question among the whites, that is to say, the rivalry of Dutch and English, would raise no practical issue were Cape Colony an island in the ocean, for there is complete political and social equality between the two stocks, and the material interests of the Dutch farmer are the same as those of his English neighbour. It is the existence of a contiguous foreign State, the South African Republic, that sharpens Dutch feeling. The Boers who remained in Cape Colony and in Natal have always

Many of

retained their sentiment of kinship with those
who went out in the Great Trek of 1836, or who
moved northward from Natal into the Transvaal
after the annexation of Natal in 1842.
them are connected by family ties with the inhabi-
tants of the two republics, and are proud of the
achievements of their kinsfolk against Dingaan
and Mosilikatze, and of the courage displayed at
Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill against the British.
They resent keenly any attempt to trench upon the
independence of the Transvaal, while most of the
English do not conceal their wish to bring that State
into a South African Confederation, if possible under
the British flag. The ministries and legislatures
of the two British colonies, it need hardly be said,
have no official relations with the two Dutch re-
publics, because, according to the constitution of the
British empire, such relations, like all other foreign
relations, belong to the Crown, and the Crown is
advised by the British Cabinet at home. In South
Africa the Crown is represented for the purpose of
these relations by the High Commissioner, who is
not responsible in any way to the colonial legisla-
tures, and is not even bound to consult the colonial
cabinet, for his functions as High Commissioner for
South Africa are deemed to be distinct from those
which he has as Governor of Cape Colony. Matters
relating to the two republics and their relation to
the colonies are, accordingly, outside the sphere of
action of the colonial legislatures, which have, in
strict theory, no right to pass resolutions regarding

them. In point of fact, however, the Cape Assembly frequently does debate, and pass resolutions on, these v matters; nor is this practice disapproved, for, as the sentiments of the Colony are an important factor in determining the action of the home Government, it is well that the British Cabinet and the High Commissioner should possess such a means of gauging those sentiments. The same thing happens with regard to any other question between Britain and a foreign Power which affects the two colonies. Questions with Germany or Portugal, questions as to the acquisition of territory in South Central Africa, would also be discussed in the colonial legislatures, just as those of Australia some years ago complained warmly of the action of France in the New Hebrides. And thus it comes to pass that though the Governments and Legislatures of the colonies have in strictness nothing to do with foreign policy, foreign policy has had much to do with the formation of parties at the Cape.

Hitherto I

Now as to the parties themselves. have spoken of Natal and the Cape together, because their conditions are generally similar, though the Dutch element is far stronger in the latter than in the former. In what follows I speak of the Cape only, for political parties have not had time to grow up in Natal, where responsible government dates from 1893. In the earlier days of the Cape Legislature parties were not strongly marked, though they tended to coincide with the race distinction between Dutch and English, because the western province

In

was chiefly Dutch, and the eastern chiefly English, and there was a certain rivalry or antagonism between these two main divisions of the country. The Dutch element was, moreover, wholly agricultural and pastoral, the English party mercantile ; when an issue arose between these two interests, it generally corresponded with the division of races. Political organisation was chiefly in English hands, because the colonial Dutch had not possessed representative government, whereas the the English brought their home habits with them. However, down till 1880 parties remained in an amorphous or fluid condition, being largely affected by the influence of individual leaders; and the Dutch section of the electorate was hardly conscious of its strength. the end of that year, the rising in the Transvaal, and the War of Independence which followed, powerfully stimulated Dutch feeling, and led to the formation of the Africander Bond, a league or association appealing nominally to African, but practically to Boer, patriotism. It was not anti-English in the sense of hostility to the British connection, any more than was the French party in Lower Canada at the same time, but it was based not only on the solidarity of the Boer race over all South Africa, but also on the doctrine that Africanders must think of Africa first, and see that the country was governed in accordance with local sentiment rather than on British lines or with a view to British interests. Being Dutch, the Bond became naturally the rural or agricultural and pastoral party, and therewith inclined to a