On Tuesday Lord Salisbury made a speech at the banquet
of the City of London Conservative Association. After touching on the housing question, and deploring th fact that it had become so much a matter of class and party attack, and suggesting that the problem could only be adequately solved by the use of private capital, Lord Salisbury went on to deal with the war. He very easily showed that when he used the words, "we desire no territory and we desire no goldfields," he was not saying anything in the least inconsistent with the policy of including the Trans- vaal and the Free State within the British Empire. Of course he was not. What he meant by the words just quoted, and what is the simple truth, is that we were not going to grab the goldfields for ourselves or to seize them and exploit them as a valuable tribute-bearing estate. Even those who try most to discredit Lord Salisbury must know per. fectly well that we shall treat the Transvaal just as we treat the rest of the Empire,—never work it or exploit it in our own interests, but solely in those of its inhabitants, and ultimately hand it over to those inhabitants to be governed by them as Canada and Australia are governed. To say that Lord Salisbury is forsworn because the Boer Republics are to be included within the Empire is merely to play with words. Lord Salisbury ended by declaring that we must shape our policy in the future (1) to protect the native races; (2) to produce reconciliation between British and Dutch. The speech as a whole was a thoroughly sound one, and shows Lord Salisbury has grasped the problem before the country.
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