John Bull" seem to us to give a very reasonable
and moderate statement of the case of Boer v. Briton. The writer describes himself as "a British Colonist who has passed all his working life under a South African sky, and who therefore has had time to digest the facts of Boer history, Boer character, and Boer aspira- tions." This is not the place to discuss the question. As to the past, that may be left alone, though it would be madness to ignore its lessons. The future we cannot put away. " Anglo- Africander" quotes an ominous sentence from Mill : " Free insti- tutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities?' They are certainly being turned into ridicule in Austria. Yet free institutions there must be ; the problem before our statesmen is to make them workable. They may have wisdom enough to solve it; that they will have the patriotism is almost too much to hope for. We can only comfort ourselves by remem- bering that the English Opposition of the early nineteenth century was more unprincipled than the Opposition of the early twen- tieth. Meanwhile, this little book should be read.
Previous page
