leading public man in South Africa, from the High Commissioner, and other imperial governors and administrators of British territories and British agents in the Transvaal, to the present and late Ministers of the two Colonies of the Cape and of Natal; from the presidents and executives and volksraads of the Republics of the Vaal and of the Orange River to leaders of the Bond in Cape Town, to leaders of the Uitlanders of Johannesburg and to Reform prisoners in Pretoria jail. In this way I have steadily adhered to the method of inquiry which I mapped out before I reached South Africa, and which I stated in the first of a short series of letters which I contributed to a leading London journal, beginning in November, 1896.

As I have stated, my inquiry was not confined to the purely political question of British or Dutch predominance in South Africa now engrossing all minds. In pursuance of my original design, I collected their views on the exploitation of minerals from directors of "De Beers" in Kimberley, as well as from Socialists in Pretoria; from Johannesburg millionaires and from workmen in the gold mines. On land tenure I have conversed with Boer commandants holding cattle runs of twelve thousand acres as well as with the Bijwoner, living on an overlord's land with a less certain than the most precarious of feudal tenures. I have inquired into the prospects of missionary enterprise, visiting the chief missions of all the Churches in Basutoland (the greatest of the armed Kaffir reserves) and have compared, later on, the methods of civilising the Kaffir adopted by the Société Evangélique de Paris in Morija with those followed at the monastery of the German Trappists in Natal. I have noted. the doubts as to native adaptability to Christianity presented to me by white trader and Kaffir chief. On the momentous problem for the European race of the right way to deal with the Kaffir-the origo malorum between British and DutchKaffir reserve or Kaffir dispersion-the land for the black or for the white-and generally the relation of the Kaffir to the dominant race, in the towns and on the veld, on the farm and in the mine, I have ascertained the theories of European

mine owners, of Boer stock farmers, of British agriculturists; of missionaries who champion the Kaffir almost to the verge of claiming for him social and political equality; as well as of home-born and Colonial British who approve of the Kaffir's exclusion from the foot-path in Johannesburg. As far as possible I have contrasted with these theories what the Zulu and the Basuto, the Swazi and the Matabele have to say to one on those matters, and on the incomprehensible ways of Boer and Briton and white men in general; although the task of penetrating into the recesses of the Kaffir mind, I am assured, by life-long observers, is one which no European can ever feel even hopeful of having achieved. On the utility of permitting or encouraging Indian immigration I have been favoured with views so widely divergent as, in Rhodesia, those of the Chamber of Commerce of Buluwayo, and in Durban, those of the Association of Indians (Mohammedan and Hindu) of Natal.

The legal problems of South Africa-questions of legislation and administration-I have had the privilege of discussing with all the Chief Justices and most of the Judges of the High Courts, as well as with past and present AttorneysGeneral and State Attorneys of the Cape, of Natal, of Rhodesia, of Griqualand West, of the Transvaal and of the Orange Free State; and also with the Resident of Basutoland, with Native Commissioners, and other magistrates administering the law affecting natives in the Kaffir reserves and in territory occupied by Europeans. No one in Europe who has not made a special study of this aspect of the South African public field can form an adequate conception of the number and complexity of these problems, dealing with such unfamiliar topics as the degree to which legislation should admit natives to civil or political rights, similar to those possessed by Europeans; the recognition to be accorded to native usages; the regulation of Asiatic immigration; the effect of systems of land tenure, native and European, on the supply of labour for agriculture, for the mines, for industries and generally on the economical progress of the country: the special, and, to European eyes, the anomalous laws enacted

to protect the production of diamonds and gold; the restriction of the supply of alcohol to the natives; the prohibition of the supply to them of arms.

The very titles of these enactments and of the officials to enforce them, strike strangely on the ear; the Curfew Laws, the Glen Grey Act, the Faction Fight Acts, the Native Commissioners, the Protector of Indians. Above all, fruitful of endless and persistent and fierce controversy among lawyers and laymen alike, are the famous enactments styled the I.D.B. Acts, which, contrary to usual principles of jurisprudence, reverse the burden of proof for all persons, European or native, by making it incumbent on the possessor of rough diamonds to prove his innocence.

Legislative power has been vested in authorities of every kind, and promulgated in every form, from enactments by British Colonial Parliaments of the Cape and Natal, to resolutions of a Chartered Company and of a Legislative Council in Rhodesia; from Volksraad besluits in the Transvaal to proclamations of the High Commissioner in the native reserves.

In another book I hope to publish the result of these inquiries. It is true that I have adhered to this method of investigation long past the period which I had originally believed would be sufficient. This, however, was the result of a discovery-made by other Europe-born inquirers in South Africa-that, however admirable a method of induction is the collection of opinion on both sides of every controversy, a year is not a sufficient time in which to test the value of opinions or the reliability of assurances. Within the first year I carried out my plan of travel almost in full. If, however, I had written my conclusions in November 1897, I should now be compelled to very gravely modify them. For-to take the problem overshadowing South Africa even then, now so tragically solved-I had come to the conclusion that there would be no war between the British and Dutch. I had accepted the assurances given to me, from the Orange River to the Limpopo, by men in the highest station in the Republics, that no war party and no war spirit existed; and

I had agreed with the view of Mr. Bryce, whose book on South Africa I had followed with attention, that infinite patience and the slow touch of time would heal.

This view, indeed, was repeatedly expressed to me within the past twelve months-when I had long ceased to hold it -by public men of such political experience as past and present Ministers of the Crown in Cape Colony and Natal, and by men of such opportunities of gauging the most sensitive barometer of peace and war as the Committee of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

However, at the end of my appointed time, a pressure of professional work (chiefly reaching me as advisory counsel to the Transvaal Republic on the legal questions arising under the Conventions with the Imperial Government) decided me to prolong my stay in South Africa for another year.

Since then, the increasing strain of the ever-darkening political scene, fraught with such sequence of blood and tears to all who live in South Africa and to all citizens of the Empire a situation which, so far off as November, 1898, I saw and proclaimed could have no ending but war-has held me as a spectator, and, to some slight degree, a most unwilling actor in the drama, which I had come only to witness.

That I have warned, with all the force I could command, the Governments of the two Republics against the fatal course into which they were led by counsellors of their own race, I have no reason to regret; although much, that my warning was in vain.

CAPE TOWN,

July, 1900.