Mr. Bourassa, an excitable Member of the Ottawa Parlia- ment,
has drawn from Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the present Premier of the Canadian Dominion, a speech of much signifi- cance. Mr. Bourassa had asked in the name of liberty that Canadians should be prohibited from entering the South African Constabulary, upon which Sir Wilfrid asked him what kind of liberty was that. He maintained that the war had been begun by the Dutch of the Transvaal, who had deliberately appealed to the God of Battles, who had decided against them. He deplored the war, but it had been entered on, and as South Africa had to be either English or Dutch. he preferred " the enlightened government of England to the semi-barbarous civilisation of the Dutch." The latter have been conquered, but- "I pledge my reputation and my name as a British subject that, if they have lost their independence, they have not lost their freedom. When they have the British flag over South Africa, they will have that which has been found everywhere during the last sixty years under the British flag,—namely, liberty for all, equality for all, justice and civil rights for British and Dutch alike." We have won our liberty so completely that a refer- ence to it seems rhetorical, but the fact that words like these can be uttered in a great Colonial Parliament by a Premier who is by origin a Frenchman and by creed a Roman Catholic is significant of the attitude of this country to all the white nations she has founded. So is the other fact, that the blacks in South Africa would, if permitted, rise on the British side.
