Lord Selborne at a farewell dinner given in his honour
by the Chamber of Mines at Johannesburg on Sunday last made a courageous and striking speech on the colour question. Taking as his theme the status of the coloured people—i.e., those of partly white and partly black origin— Lord Selborne declared that be was unable to share the prevailing tendency to lay all the stress on the black side of this class. He, on the contrary, would lay all the stress on the white side. It was unjust to force coloured people down to the level of Kaffirs, because they often had the feelings and thoughts of the 'White man; and it was unwise, because one - day we might have to face a great concerted movement of native races, in which event the leader might be a coloured man with the feelings, character, and superiority of a white. Except where the coloured people adopted the native mode of life, they ought to be led up to a condition in which they could receive the treatment awarded to the white man. But he strongly condemned mixed marriages, believing them to be utterly base and wrong.
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