THE SOUTH-AFRICAN DOMINION.
IT is a comfort to find that there is one member of Her Majesty's Government who dare attempt big things. We can hardly imagine a heavier task than that which Lord Carnarvon has evidently undertaken,—the attempt to weld the British Colonies in South Africa and the Free Dutch Republics into one powerful and, as far as general polities are conoerned, homogeneous nation. It is true Lord Carnarvon succeeded during his former administration of the Colonies in a similar effort to create a nation in North America, but he had advantages there the want of which will be severely felt
when the discussion becomes serious in South Africa. The colonists of the two Cape Colonies, of Natal, of Griqualand, and of the three Dutch Republics, are not driven, so to speak, into union by the presence of a mighty Power stretched all along their frontier, and coveting, if not their submission, at least their absorption within its boundaries. Nor are they
filled with a population homogeneous' if not in origin, at least in colour and civilisation and full, if not of loyalty, of a
reasoning wish to remain for a generation under the unexact- ing protection of the British Crown. The statesmen of the Dominion had difficult religious questions to face and delicate foreign complications to overcome, but they had not to deal with crowds of martial savages pouring into their settled districts out of the depths of a continent scarcely yet explored. The internal jealousies of the Provinces were probably the same in one Dominion and the other, but they were not embittered in Canada, as they are in South Africa, by a kind of suspicious- ness produced partly by want of pecuniary prosperity, partly by repeated and unsatisfactory wars, and partly by a quite ex- ceptional degree of isolation from the influence of British opinion. South Africa has never been a Goshen, has never been free from fears of native risings, and has never been inundated with British immigrants, British travellers, and British literature, as Canada has been. Moreover, the North- American Colonies have never been distracted by a silent, bitter, and unending controversy as to the best treatment of dark races a controversy which in the United States produced a great Civil War, in Griqualand has led to formidable riots, and in India is only kept down by the recognised inability of the Whites seriously to oppose the Government. If the two White Powers in Bengal, the Government and the settlers, had been equal at all, the Contract dispute and the Black Act would have produced a White insurrection. And finally, Great Britain had in North America a great deal to offer,—an armed protection against dangerous menace a railway of vital importance to the Dominion, a reception within the circle of politics which made every Canadian statesman feel himself a personage in the world. It is useless to make the first offer to South Africa, which feels no danger to its auto- nomy; difficult to make the second, till population has grown thicker ; and impossible to make the third, till Europe is aware that we have in South Africa a fertile empire many times as large as France, and capable of supporting in comfort and even luxury 60,000,000 of civilised persons.
It is to the high credit of Lord Carnarvon that without any pressure from public opinion, which knows very little of South Africa, except that second-rate diamonds have recently been found there, and that there may be gold discovered by-and-by, and without any serious demand from within the Colonies themselves where statesmanlike foresight had hardly had time to be developed, he has imposed on himself the labour and the thought necessary to bring such a project up to the stage at which the work of legislation may begin. Founding empires
is no doubt a work worthy of any man's ambition, and the success of the experiment in Canada has been most marked—
statesmanship and society there alike assuming visibly a broader and higher tone—but that kind of ambition has seemed of late to die out in English Ministers, who have
turned themselves into waiters on opinion, and felt content if only they could, during a brief term of office, avoid cata- strophes great enough to make a Parliamentary sensation. Lord Carnarvon has commenced a heavy work, which will not benefit himself, for men have already forgotten that he founded the Dominion of Canada, and will only im- perceptibly benefit his party, for an English party, though it may be injured by Colonial disaster, seldom profits by a Colonial success, solely because he conceives the work will benefit the Colonists he governs and the Empire which he helps to ad- minister,—a kind of devotion not so frequent in our modern annals that it should pass without recognition. His first steps seem to have been taken with a prudence all the more note- worthy, because the natural impulse of any English Minister convinced of his own purpose is to set the great wheel in motion, and use the autocratic power of Parliament to carry his designs into immediate execution. It is most essential that the Colonists, who just now are thinking of sheep, and diamonds, and gold, and Zulus, and anything rather than nationalities, should perceive, to begin with, that Federation will produce them one direct good,—an increase of strength which will place them, few as they are' beyond danger from native insurrection. A native rising is the skeleton in the South-African cupboard. Therefore, Lord Carnarvon, in a despatch of 4th May to Sir H. Barkly, has told them:—" As long as the natives, who are shrewd observers in such matters, perceive that the compara- tively small European population of South Africa is divided under a number of Governments, which not only are not in close and cordial relations with each other in regard either to native questions or to any other matters, but are in some cases estranged by controversies which are sometimes sustained with only too much warmth, they must continue restless and un- settled, they are at the mercy of factious intrigues, and are ready to listen to suggestions as to their power of combining successfully against the disunited European Governments. The result is, that there exists a distinct danger (though it is not, I trust, imminent) of widely-extended disaffection, which, if circumstances lent themselves to it, it might be difficult to subdue. Even in the absence of any threatening combination, each Government is required, in order to maintain order among the natives within its own territory, and to guard against pos- sible attacks from those without, to expend on police and other defensive organisations an amount of anxious thought, as well as of money, which might be better devoted to the general advancement of the community." The Colonies once federated could, in fact, support a Militia which would be as strong for internal purposes as an army ; could maintain a dis- armament law of a really effective kind ; and could come to some final conclusion as to the expediency of unrestricted im- migration from the North, an immigration which, if we are to civilise instead of extirpating Zulus, seems 'to us most un- wise. No society could stand against continuous deluges of savagery, or maintain for ever the self-command necessary to the perpetual recommencement of an apparently accomplished task. A central organisation is necessary for all this, and most necessary in the interests of the natives, for they may rely on it that in this century at all events, and among English-speaking men, it is secret terror and not race-hatred which makes states- men brutal. This argument of increased strength will impress the colonists, and so will the next, that Federation, if accom- plished, will be accomplished by themselves. Her Majesty's Government wish it, and will aid it, but their delegates are to discuss it, their legislatures are to vote it, their representatives are to fix the degree of rigour with which the Provinces are to be bound to the whole Dominion. Subject to some grand principles, such as the final autocracy of Parliament, the right of posting British troops, the right of all British subjects to enjoy the protection of law, the extinction of slavery, and we trust, the right of the Crown to appoint the Judges of the Supreme Court, they can think out the terms of unity for themselves, and modify them according to the general interests of their provinces, and even, should the Dutch Republics accept the offer to adhere to the Dominion, according to the necessities of their civilisation. The more original their plan, the more likely is it to be accepted. The Crown claims no majority in the Conference summoned by Lord Carnarvon, and sends into it as its representative a man who, whatever the merits or defects of his intellect, has on him no official crust. How far the South Africans will be willing to make the sacrifices required—for Confederation must be accompanied by a thorough revision of their fiscal system—remains to be seen, but to out- siders it appears as if their gain from the revolution would be enormous. They will be able to solve the native difficulty. They will be able to solve the land difficulty. They will be able to attract part of that great stream of emigration, German as well as English, which fertilises every colony it reaches, which alone can place them finally above all native questions, and which now passes them by unobserved. Englishmen and Germans emigrate to known fields, not to unknown, and if the South Africans are wise in their generation, they will ask as their single bribe from the mother-countryaguarantee for a telegraph cable, and help to establish more and swifter passenger steamers. They will, when once federated, be governed by men of a higher class, bound by closer links to the political life of Europe, and their own more eminent citizens will have a chance of those careers in the Empire, instead of in a colony, which, after all, furnish the highest stimulus to energetic ambition. And they will obtain all this without sacrificing self-government, for the central body must be a Parliament; without surrendering local importance, for a single Parliament is impossible in a region so vast and so thinly settled ; and without hazarding any very severe pressure of new taxation. Their greatest difficulty—and we quite admit it will be a great one—will be to balance forces so that the settled districts do not rule at pleasure the unsettled ones; but that very difficulty has been met and overcome in the United States, in the Dominion of Canada, and in a less perfect way in New Zealand. There must be ability enough in South Africa to devise a Senate
which shall be ah effective protection against any 'tyranny of numbers.
It has been observed that this despatch is scarcely well timed, inasmuch as Natal has just been asked to surrender govern- ment by Representatives in favour of government by a Council in which the Executive appoints just half the members, but the objection is hypercritical. There is nothing in Federation which either proscribes or prescribes any particular method of selecting a local legislature. If a strong Executive is required in Natal, it can be linked to the central Government as a Territory on the American plan; or as a -Non-Regulation" Province, on the Indian one; or, as we should prefer, as a full Province, exercising its right of selecting members to Congress through its nominee legislature, which, so far from choosing unwisely, will probably among all the Legislatures make the best selection. Nor can we see, the question of slavery once settled, any difficulty in the way of admitting the Dutch Re- publics into the Dominion. No doubt the Boers are not born loyalists, but if they wish to come in, what does that signify ? They can be loyal to the Dominion they helped to build, just as well as to the Queen. Loyalty is a quality which develops very rapidly when the ruling power is felt to be on our side, and no American doubts the fidelity of Ohio because so many of its citizens were born outside the dominion of the Republic. There is nothing in the climate of South Africa to make Englishmen degenerate, and unless degenerate, they will absorb Dutchmen as easily as any other race. The experiment has been tried before, and among the most Ameri- can of Americans in patriotism, in ways, and in efficiency as citizens, New York counts the descendants of the "Knicker- bockers," the Dutchmen who were once the masters of the State.
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