While treating of this matter we should like to say
a word in regard to the attempt which is now being made by the Boers to induce the Government to abandon the principle of "One vote one value" which has been adopted for the Trans- vaal Legislature, and to change it to a system which will give a greater weight to the vote of the man who lives in the country than in the town. If the Government yield to the - pressure which is now being brought to bear upon them, and if they desert a sound democratic principle in favour of what is, after all,. a scheme for gerrymandering, they are likely, we fear, to get into many difficulties. None detest the Chinese labour policy of the late Government more than we do, and• none have protested against it more strongly than we.—We opposed it when opposition thereto was not as popular as it is now.—But if Chinese -labour is to be got rid of by the will of the Transvaal, it must be by the will of the majority of the voters, and not by that of a minority who have been placed in a position of exceptional privilege. We want to feel that whatever policy is adopted has a full popular sanction behind it. Nothing would be more unsatisfactory than to have a decision challenged after it was made because it did not repre- sent the will of the majority. A man who lives in a town has as much right to decide the destinies of the community to which he belongs as a matt who lives in the country ; nor can we admit, especially in the case of a Colony, that an un- married man who is helping to build up the new nation has not as good a right to direct her destinies as the man who has lived there a greater number of years and has a family. That is Krilgerism pure and simple.
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