A telegram from Cape Town announces that the tele- graphic
communication with the Transvaal is interrupted. `This may mean that the Boers, excited by the arrest of Mr. Pretorius, have risen in earnest ; and we note that two regi- ments, ordered to Natal and England, have been stopped, but it is more probably the result of accident. The Boers, it now appears, included in their resolutions a singular offer of com- promise. They are willing, if allowed• their self-government, to enter the Confederation of South Africa as a State. That might be a basis for negotiation, if they would leave to the Federation the passing and execution of the native laws, but this is just what they will not do. We are bound to pro- tect natives once become British subjects, as Mr. Forster has pointed out in the Times; and Mr. Courtney's irritable reply, that we did not annex the Transvaal for that reason, is no answer at all. We did not annex Ben- gal for that reason, but having annexed it, that is one reason at least for stopping there. The plain truth of the matter is that with so few whites and so many natives, and such hostility between the two, all British South Africa needs to be governed for a generation, like India, by a Supreme Government, each division retaining municipal legislative rights. That may be unattainable, but that is the ideal.
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