On Monday, while the country was keeping Bank Holiday the
House of Commons was busy passing the second reading of the Appropriation Bill. The discussion on such an occa- sion, though it reads like a kind of Parliamentary nightmare, and jumps suddenly from sugar bounties to the hinterland of Sierra Leone, or from Welsh slate quarries "to the prosecu- tion of Sergeant Sullivan at the Sligo Assizes," always contains a good deal of interest. Sir Wilfrid Lawson was very indignant about the Government's policy in South Africa, and quoted with approval the remarks of the Spectator of August 5th as to the necessity for giving a moral basis to empire. He seemed, however, to think that our words represented the view of the Little Englanders, and condemned the policy of the Government in regard to the Outlanders. We hold, on the contrary, and pointed out in the very article from which Sir Wilfrid Lawson quoted, that if we are to give the Empire a moral basis, we must act as trustees for the Empire as a whole, and consider, not what is the pleasantest and easiest path to follow in South Africa, but what is just and right. If we were to think only of our selfish interests, and of what would pay us best, we should most certainly allow the Boers to do what they will with their own. If, however, we are to think of the interests of South Africa both by itself and as an integral part of the Empire, we must, however disagreeable and onerous the task—and it is both—insist upon the rights of free men being extended to all the resident inhabitants of the Transvaal who are of European race.
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