The Letters Patent and Order in Council establishing the new
Constitution for the Transvaal, together with Mr. Lyttel- ton's covering despatch to Sir A. Lawley. were published in a Parliamentary Paper on Tuesday. After justifying the resort to an intermediate stage before granting full self- government, Mr. Lyttelton states that the Government have decided to leave the matter of the War Loan to the new Assembly. The omission to grant a similar Constitution to the Orange River Colony is explained on the ground that there is less urgency than in the Transvaal, where there are "industrial and economic conditions which make it very desirable in that Colony to have at the earliest date some better means of ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than the present system affords." This argument would, we are bound to point out, have carried more weight if the Government had not conspicuously dis- regarded it in the case of the Chinese Labour Ordinance. For then, as the Daily Chronicle aptly reminds us, we were told that anything in the nature of a popular vote was un- necessary, and that ample means already existed for gauging the views of the different sections of the population. There are, as we have pointed out elsewhere, valid reasons for postponing the immediate grant of a Constitution to the Orange River Colony, but Mr. Lyttelton's special line of argument is one which he, at any rate, is not entitled to use.
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