The Times of Tuesday publishes from its Johannesburg correspondent an
explanation of the dispute between Lord Selborne and the three members of the Inter-Colonial Council —Sir George Farrar, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, and Mr. Quinn— who have resigned. Recently a wholesale reorganisation of the railways of the new Colonies was recommended by a Com- mission. The chief authority for the railways is still the High Commissioner, not the Colonial Governments, the High Commissioner being advised by the Inter-Colonial Council. But in reality the current work of the railways has always been conducted by the Railway Committee, and since the grant of self-government this Committee has been a party body. A few days after the Report of the Commission appeared Lord Selborne instructed the Railway Committee to put the reforms proposed by the Commission into effect. Some of the members of the Inter-Colonial Council, which will nominally be in existence only till June, disapproved of the reform scheme. This was only natural, as the three members, for example, who have resigned belong to the political Opposition. Their grievance is that they were not consulted by Lord Selborne. It seems that if Lord Selborne deliberately disregarded the Inter-Colonial Council, he did so because it is in process of extinction. But even if he was wrong on a point of courtesy, there was evidently no display of the "partisanship" which has been freely attributed to him.
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