23 NOVEMBER 1850, Page 1

Our colony at the Cape of Good Hope, which afforded-such

topics prospective for congratulation to the Ministers in the Constitution debates of last session, seems not unlikely to supply. the ugliest constitution-dispute that the Colonies have yet waged with the Colonial Office. The charter given to the Cape colonists was heralded as a most liberal concession, vouchsafed proprio motif from the Colonial Minister; it was at once perfectly simple and perfectly popular ; and it would settle the Cape question for ever. It turns out to be neither simple nor final : the letters-patent were clogged with a restriction that has reopened the most vexed con- troversies on local government. The organization of the future Legislative Council and Assembly has been given to a body in which the official element was nearly two-thirds of the whole : the populai members, disgusted at the overruling of their efforts to se- cure a popular basis of representation, have resigned their places, and are calling on the colonists to renew the struggle for " wrest- ing perfect liberty from the Colonial Office." From the West Indian Colonies the cry is one of affliction under the dispensations of Providence. Jamaica is scourged by cholera of the most malignant form; the deaths amounting already, in the Southern parts of the island, to some hundreds a day. TheLegis lature a met, but in no temper for political discussion : it had passed some sanatory measures, and prudently separated—each representative to render aid in personally struggling against the epidemic causes of disease.