The Inevitable in South Africa. OCTOBER, 1899. By F. Edmund Garrett. Practical Temperance Legislation. By Lady Henry Somerset New Zealand. By Sir Robert Stout, K. C. M.G. A National Church for India. By Alfred Nundy The Workhouse from the Inside. By Edith M. Shaw Obscure Causes of Crime. By J. B. Carruthers By Thomas Holmes The Cross as the Final Seat of Authority. By P. T. Forsyth, D.D. NOVEMBER, 1899. PAGE 457 482 490 500 512 528 539 549 564 573 577 589 The British Power in South Africa. By Sir Charles Warren, G.C.M.G. 609 628 637 The Lambeth "Opinion" and its Consequences. By Canon Knox Little. 648 658 Commercial Corruption. By the Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry. 663 The Historical Congress at Cividale. By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L. 673 "The Silence of God." By Robert Anderson, C.B., LL.D. 683 The Primæval Language. By Charles Johnston 694 Old Crimean Days. By Sir Edmund Verney, Bart. 704 Christian Dogma and the Christian Life. By Professor A. Sabatier 722 The Teaching of English Law at Harvard. By Professor Dicey 742 The Employment of Volunteers Abroad: A Letter to the Editor. By 759 DECEMBER, 1899. The Government and the War. By An Officer . The Voice of "The Hooligan." By Robert Buchanan Balmy November. By Phil Robinson A New Gospel and some New Apocalypses. By J. Rendel Harris The Woman Question in Italy. By Dora Melegari Priest and Prophet. By S. Baring-Gould. A Prose Source of the "Georgics." By the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco The Trend in American Cities. By J. W. Martin The Age Limit for Women. By Clara E. Collet Animal Chivalry. By Woods Hutchinson, M.D. The Venture of Faith. By Emma Marie Caillard Libera Imperialism and the Transvaal War. By J. Guinness Rogers, D.D. 761 774 790 802 819 832 842 856 868 878 889 898 THE CONSERVATISM OF PRESIDENT KRUGER. IT But the T is very seldom nowadays that we find a logical Conservative in Europe, and not often that we find one in the world. The English Conservative, in the true sense of the term, is extinct, unless the Lord Chancellor may be regarded as the last surviving specimen. As a rule those who would have been Conservatives call themselves Unionists to please their allies, and pride themselves on keeping abreast of the times. In France the Conservatives want to upset the Constitution. In Germany they disguise themselves as National Liberals. In the United States the name does not exist. President of the South African Republic is the real article. no deception about him. He dislikes change because it is change, and reform because it is reform. He has no sympathy with progress, with foreigners, with newspapers, or with modern ideas. He reads the Bible and stops at Malachi. He constantly appeals to Providence, and forgets that, as the Daily Telegraph might have reminded him, the Providence of the Old Testament has been superseded by the Providence of the New. He treats coloured persons as if they belonged to an inferior race. He allows his subordinates to misuse them cruelly, and it may be doubted whether he believes that they have souls. From a Liberal point of view nothing could well be more deplorable than the political system which prevails in the Transvaal. It is a narrow, ignorant, and exclusive oligarchy such as governed England before the Reform Act, when the Duke of Wellington said that the human mind could not have devised anything so absolutely perfect as the British Constitution. President Kruger is not, of course, a despot. He can always carry the Volksraad with him in resistance to change. But if he wanted to go forward he would find them in his way. Nevertheless he embodies the prejudices or principles of his people, and it is his spirit which rules the South African Republic. Much of his power is undoubtedly due to the Raid. Before that untoward event his reelection was doubtful, and the chances of General Joubert, who is comparatively Liberal, were considered good. The Raid established Mr. Kruger in office, and made his position impregnable. Mr. Rhodes may be the supremely capable man that his admirers think him. But he has a curious knack of producing the opposite result to that which he intends. The Raid, for the inception if not for the execution of which he was responsible, did more for Mr. Kruger than Mr. Kruger could have done for himself, and if the Dutch majority in the Cape Parliament be due to any single cause it is due to the attacks upon the Africander Bond made at the general election by Mr. Rhodes. The foreign population of the Transvaal are to be congratulated upon having secured the enthusiastic support of the High Commissioner. Those who do not know Sir Alfred Milner may suspect that he has been overpraised. Those who do know him are aware that there is no abler servant of the Crown, as there is none more chivalrous, disinterested, and high-minded. When he was private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, even Mr. Goschen's budgets were tolerable. His book on Egypt could not be improved. As Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue he helped to frame the greatest and the most equitable budget of modern times. Nevertheless, it may be doubted whether Sir Alfred Milner met President Kruger at Bloemfontein in a judicial frame of mind. His telegraphic despatch to Mr. Chamberlain on May 4, which no prudent statesman would have published, is the passionate plea of an extremely able advocate, so confident of his own case that he cannot even see the case on the other side. The rhetorical phraseology, such as the exclamation that the grievances of the Outlanders are "endless," and the comparison of them with the helots of Sparta, does not accord with the gravity and dignity of an official despatch. The Outlanders are not slaves, and their grievances are exhaustively enumerated by themselves. It is not Sir Alfred Milner's fault that he is exhibited as party to a scolding-match with State Secretary Reitz. Mr. Chamberlain is an admirable debater, but he cannot see the difference between debating and diplomacy. The natural conclusion of Sir Alfred Milner's vehement diatribe would have been not a meeting with the President, but the withdrawal of Mr. Conyngham Greene. No Liberal can possibly sympathise with the policy of the Boer Government. In a republic, as under a monarchy, there ought to be universal suffrage. President Kruger clings to the exploded formula that the franchise should be an incident of property and not the right of a citizen. This is the old and mischievous delusion that the rich That is the man alone has a stake in the country. Liberals have pointed out again and again that the poor man's capital, even if he has no savings, is his labour, that the poorest can lose all they have, and that the richest can lose no more. The superstition clings even to our own House of Commons, which has just refused to abolish the ten-pound qualification for lodgers. Sir Alfred Milner is constitutionally sound in arguing that the question of the franchise lies at the root of the Outlanders' case. For if they had that on the same terms as the Boers they could redress their grievances for themselves. orthodox Liberal theory, which should be applied, so far as practicable, in all circumstances and at all times. The Outlanders are not so badly off as the agricultural labourers were in England fifteen years ago, when they had to march through London with hop-poles before Parliament would do anything for them. I must confess, to be quite honest, that I do not altogether sympathise with Englishmen who want to get rid of their nationality. But that is their affair, and if Mr. Kruger were a Liberal he would understand that all jealousy of foreigners was irrational. If the inhabitants of Great Britain were chiefly aliens, no really consistent Liberal would refuse to enfranchise them merely because he suspected, or even because he knew, that they would pass laws in their own exclusive interest. But it is, of course, an old Tory fallacy that any race, or any class, will all vote together. When Lord Salisbury resigned office in 1867 he assumed that the working classes would do it in towns. When Mr. Goschen refused office in 1830 he assumed that that they would do it in counties. They never have done it, and they never will. The petition of the Outlanders to the Queen says surprisingly little about the franchise. But the very fact that a counter-petition, almost as numerously signed, has been sent to the President, proves, as Sir Alfred Milner reminded him, that he has nothing to fear from the unity of the immigrants. If Mr. Kruger and the Volksraad had had the sense and the courage to give the suffrage to all comers on easy and generous terms, they would have strengthened and consolidated their Republic. But then they would have been Liberals, and that is just what they are not. The President did make concessions at Bloemfontein, though they did not satisfy Sir Alfred Milner. I do not say that they ought to bave satisfied him. But why did he not accept them for what they were worth, with the distinct understanding that they were only an instalment? Then no one could have said that the Conference had failed, and negotiations could have been continued at leisure. Mr. Kruger is not very popular in this country at the present time, and it is therefore the more incumbent upon fair controversialists to point out that as soon as he got home he brought his own proposals before the Volksraad. This he was in no way bound to do after the High Commissioner had refused them. He also proposed to abolish the monopoly of dynamite, which, according to the Professor of International Law in the University of Cambridge, is not a breach of the Convention, and to which Sir Alfred Milner did not seriously object. Free traders must dislike monopolies of all kinds, and explosive substances must be used in mines. But it may be argued that a monopoly of dynamite is preferable to a monopoly of liquor or of land. The Conference terminated because the President required seven years' residence for the franchise. The British Government requires five, and even then the Home Secretary may, in his absolute discretion, refuse it. Both periods are too long, and in the Transvaal there would be no immediate enfranchisement of any one who had come into the country since 1892. It is not therefore accurate to say that Sir Alfred Milner broke up the Conference on a mere question of two years. He regards the franchise not as an end in itself, but as the means to obtain satisfaction for complaints of long standing. He is therefore quite consistent, from his own point of view, in rejecting as useless a law which would not come into operation for several years. Here again the President is thoroughly illiberal. There is nothing more abhorrent to Liberals than an Alien Bill. The last measure of the kind was introduced by Lord Salisbury in the late Parliament, and cordially welcomed by the House of Lords. They greeted it the more heartily because it would only have excluded the poor. Liberals, of course, protested against it: it never came before the House of Commons, and though it was promised in the Queen's Speech of 1896, it has not again seen the light. But there are people in this country who are more effectually deprived of the franchise than any Outlander in the Transvaal. They are not foreigners, but British workmen, earning daily wages by honest toil. In the city of Edinburgh, where two elections have just been held, no working man whose landlord lives on the premises can get a vote. That is because his lodgings are not worth ten pounds a year unfurnished. Our registration laws are so bad that a workman who travels in pursuit of his calling, or in the service of his contractor, may be perpetually kept off the register by the length of the qualifying period. The late Government brought in a Bill to remedy this grievance. They received no support from Mr. Chamberlain or from the Conservative party. The victims of injustice were only British workmen living at home, and as by the hypothesis they had no votes they were not worth considering. But President Kruger's offences against Liberalism are not confined to the franchise. He draws a pernicious distinction between the first and the second Raad. For the second Raad it is easy to get a vote. The qualification for the second Raad is high, and is guarded with jealous care. For our first Raad, of which the Prime Minister is so |