It is quite certain that there will be a fierce
debate in the winter Session on the policy of burning Boer homesteads, and it is most important that such a debate should not degenerate into a party quarrel, or a mere slinging of charges between the Army and the apologists of the Boers. Mr. Charles Trevelyan, Member for the Elland district of York- shire, therefore suggests in a most temperate letter to the Times that the Government should first of all give us authentic statistics as to the number of farms burned. He evidently fears that it is very great, and asks what will be the feeling of the next generation, whose earliest recollection will be of homes in flames, or of the prisoners when they return to find their houses destroyed, though they cannot by physioal possibility have been guilty of treachery towards the troops. That ten such cases have occurred seems clear from the petition of the Boer officers confined at Green Point Cape Town. We do not suppose the Government either can or will furnish the statistics required, and would rather suggest a debate upon the question whether, the Transvaal and the Orange Colony having been annexed, law has ended in them. That in an enemy's country the will of the occupying generals is the supreme law is admitted, but is a province belonging to her Majesty, though in a state of rebellion, an enemy's country ? If it is not, surely any settlers whose homesteads have been burned must have some means of obtaining a legal decision as to the justice of such burning, which will vary in each instance. Houses full of munitions, or houses whose existence favours the enemy's attacks, mast, of course, be destroyed, but destruction merely as a punishment for suspected treason is, we imagine, illegal, as it is certainly unjust. We have, it mast net be forgotten, to live with these people for the next few hundred years.
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