THE TRANSVAAL CONSTI1U LION.
AS our readers blow, we feel very strongly that the greatest care must be taken in framing the Trans- vaal Constitution, so as to preserve to the inhabitants of British origin and British sympathies the electoral supremacy which of right belongs to them. If the number of adult males—to whom in every community the right of political rule should belong, just as the duty of national defence and of sacrificing their lives for that object is theirs also—is taken in the Transvaal, there are, it is calculated, something like a plurality of twenty thousand men of British race and sympathies out of a total of some hundred thousand. Yet so anomalous and eccentric is the distribution of the population throughout the Transvaal that, unless the greatest care is shown in the allocation of electoral power, we are very likely to see a majority of representation given to a minority of adult males. So much too large will be the British majorities in the populous districts, and so small, though none the less effective, will be the Dutch majorities in the rural districts, that, to speak from the party point of view, thousands of British votes will be entirely ineffective, while the Dutch votes, on the other hand, will practically never run to waste. In the peculiar circumstances of the case, only a system of proportional representation could do full justice to the British voters. But, unfortunately, the people of the Transvaal are not sufficiently educated in the political sense to demand proportional representation. Accordingly, the British Government have imposed on them the duty of seeing to it that the Constitution shall in some other way carry out the will of the majority and not the will of a minority.
Though we sympathise with the Progressives in the Transvaal in regard to the dangers to which they are exposed owing to the special circumstances that obtain in the Colony, we feel bound to point out that the situation, perilous though it is to themselves, and, we fear, also to the Empire, is very largely due to their own fault. If the Progressive leaders had not asked for Chinese labour, and if Lord Milner had not yielded to their demand, the cause of British supremacy and Imperial safety in South Africa would not now be in danger. When the Progressives insisted that they must have Chinese labour, and when Lord Milner induced, or we might almost say forced, a weak Cabinet at home to yield to their demand, they threw themselves into opposition, not merely to the British democracy, but to democratic feeling throughout the Empire. The adoption of that unhappy policy poisoned the relations between the Progressives of the Transvaal and the majority of the British people. For ourselves, we entirely acquit the Progressives who are now asking for electoral justice under the new Constitution of any design to bolster up the dying cause of Chinese labour, or of meaning a pro-Chinese-labour control when they ask for British control. We are sure that Sir Percy FitzPatrick and his colleagues are acting patriotically and with no sinister idea of duping British public opinion into a policy in favour of Chinese labour. Their anxiety for the security of the Imperial position in South Africa is perfectly genuine. But though we may realise this to the full, we fear that a con- siderable portion of the Liberal Party do not realise it, and imagine that when the Progressives ask them for justice they are really asking them to gerrymander in favour of Chinese labour. The ordinary British voter is no more inclined now to favour the Dutch, or to let South Africa pass out of the Empire, than he was seven years ago. But, unhappily, his mind has been prejudiced by the anti-Imperial and selfish way in which the mine- owners snatched at the possession of power which accident had given to them, to use it, not for the highest good of the Empire, but to further what they believed, though, as we hold, mistakenly, was the interest of a particular industry. The plain man, in a word, takes up this attitude :—" I am not going to be frightened by all this talk about handing over the Transvaal to the Dutch, and the loss of the Colony, and so forth. It only means that the gold-mines people want to make sure that they will be allowed to keep fifty or sixty thousand Chinamen in South Africa, and turn the place into a yellow man's country when it might be a white man's." We do not, of course, sympathise with so crude a view of the situation, though we understand it. We look also at the alternative. We are quite certain that to hand over the Transvaal to the control of a Dutch minority can never make for freedom or good government in any form. It will not, for example, make for the abolition of the system under which the country is flooded with indentured Chinese labour, for it must be remembered that the Dutch as a whole are entirely unpledged in regard to the Chinamen, and. might at any moment make a bargain with the mineowners in this matter. The Dutchman, indeed, as his past history shows, has a natural proclivity towards serfdom. But for the fear of trouble with the British, and because of the Convention under which the Transvaal existed, the former Republics would in all probability have established a system of native indentured labour. We do not in the least desire tocreate any prejudice against the Dutch, and. we are anxious that they should take their proper place and share in the Empire. We cannot, however, think it wise to conceal the facts as to their views in regard to coloured labour. Nor, again, can we pretend that if once given power they would. not use it in a tyrannous fashion. The whole history of the Transvaal under Dutch rule shows that the Boers enter- tain what we may euphemistically call old-fashioned ideas as to the rights of minorities, or, for that matter, majorities if they do not occupy the seat of power. Dutch rule means the leading principle of Tammany in political affairs,—viz., that those who are not for the political organisation in power are against it, and must be treated as enemies.
In writing as we have written we realise fully the extreme difficulty with which the Government are faced. We are quite sure that they desire to give effect to two principles, with both of which all true Imperialists must be in agreement. The first of these is to maintain the British Empire strong and inviolate, and to prevent the growth of any disruptive tendencies. The next is to hold the balance evenly between the various elements in different sections of the Empire, so that no man shall be able to say that the Empire is built up on privilege or injustice. The enunciation of these principles is easy enough and simple enough. It is in their application that difficulty arises. In judging how to apply these principles we would venture to ask the Cabinet, in the first place, to remember Bacon's saying that "suspicion clouds the mind." There is no fear of their failing to apply this maxim in the case of the Boers. Indeed, we are not sure that here they may not carry the lack of suspicion too far, though we admit that this is a, fault on the right side. But while they keep their minds free from suspicion in the case of the Boers, they must also free them from it in the case of the British element, and must not allow any doubts of the Progressives in regard to Chinese labour to prevent full justice being done. We admit that this is a hard saying considering the bitter, and naturally bitter, feeling of the bulk of the Liberal Party on this matter. But it is never- theless one which must be remembered by any body of men who have the true interests of the Empire at heart, as we are sure the Government have. The problem of Chinese labour must be settled by itself, and on the lines already laid down by the Prime Minister ; but the fact that the majority of the Transvaal Progressives differ from the Liberal view of that problem ought not to be allowed to weigh with the Cabinet in adjusting an electoral system which will have to deal with hundreds of other questions of vital importance, and which will remain long after the problem of indentured labour has been solved.
The Government in producing their new Constitution must remember also that if they come to a wrong decision, and if they place a minority, and an anti- British minority, in power, they will create for them- selves a situation which may have the most disastrous consequences on home policy. The British people may for the moment seem quite content to establish Dutch supremacy in the Transvaal, because they will be establishing it without knowing it. When, however, the consequences begin to work themselves out, we are quite certain that they will not accept those consequences, and that in refusing them they may not only make South Africa once more the cockpit of the Empire, but may rum the hopes of the Liberal Party. We fully accept democratic government ; but we cannot help noting one peculiarity of democracies, and that is their liability to be governed by sentimentality up to a certain point, and then to turn completely round and order the guns to fire. That being so, we can imagine nothing more likely to be disastrous to Liberalism than the creation of a situation in South Africa which may lead to oppressive action by the Dutch against the British. Liberals must remember that the Dutch are not in any sense Liberals, and. make no pretence of holding Liberal principles. Their notion of the possession of power is to use it. If any one here thinks that they would pause in the use of that power for fear of injuring the Liberal Party or hurting the feelings of Liberals, he is utterly mistaken. If trouble anise in the Transvaal, the Boers would think solely of the local situation, and not in the least of those who are somewhat ineptly dubbed their " friends " at Westminster. We are not amongst those who suppose that every Dutchman is burning with hatred for England, but we are quite sure that the Dutch in their feelings towards Englishmen do not make nice distinctions between the English of one party and the English of another, as is sometimes fondly imagined here. The Transvaal Dutch feel no particular sense of gratitude or loyalty towards the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party and the Liberal Government must not, indeed, look for gratitude from either party in the Transvaal. Their only path of safety is to act on sound democratic prin- ciples, and, if they establish representative and responsible government, to allow the will of the majority throughout the country to prevail, and not to permit gerrymandering either by accident or by design. The gerrymandering of accident is quite as harmful as the gerrymandering of intention. By gerrymandering we mean, of course, a distribution of political influence which allows a majority of the electorate to be dominated by a minority, or at any rate deprives the majority of its true proportion of power.
Before we leave the subject we should like to add a word on another point, though we fear it is a point which it will be declared is now too late for discussion. We wish that it were possible, before the grant of the Consti- tution, to amalgamate Natal and the Transvaal and make them into one State. Such an arrangement would secure a British majority, and would also have the immense advantage of giving the Transvaal, or rather the new State, access to the sea. To put it frankly, we hold that the white community of Natal have questions to deal with, such as the native question, and the British-Asiatic question, and the railway-to-the-sea question, which are somewhat beyond their size and numbers. The people of Natal have played a great as well as a most responsible part in Imperial affairs, and have played it with singular unselfishness and in a true Imperial spirit ; but amalgama- tion with the Transvaal in one great State would, we believe, be for the good of Natal, as it would certainly be for the good of the Transvaal and the Empire as a whole. If, as we fear, the matter is raised too late, we trust that the problem of amalgamation will be the first question to be taken in hand by the Transvaal Parliament, and that every assistance towards such a consummation will be given by the Imperial Government.
Previous page
