In the Commons on Thursday Mr. Lyttelton made the im-
portant announcement that the Government had decided to grant representative institutions to the Transvaal, though not at present full self-government. That is a wise step ; but in view of the adoption of this policy the Ministry have behaved very strangely in not leaving the question of Chinese labour to be decided by the new elected Legislature which they are about to establish. In the discussion before Mr. Lyttelton's speech Mr. Chamberlain made a strong defence of Chinese labour. We confess, however, that his arguments do not convince us. They fail to meet the three points on which we have always insisted,—i.e., (1) that the introduction of the Chinese by the Imperial Government, in defiance of the public opinion of the self-governing portions of the Empire, dealt a grave blow to the cause of Imperial unity ; (2) that by the introduction of Chinese labour we abandon the idea of making the Transvaal a white man's country; (3) that the conditions under which the white men in the Transvaal will alone allow the Chinese to be imported and to labour are conditions which must tend to demoralise the community in which they are established.
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