ctive,
but containing, as _ex-officio_ members, the whole of the Executive
Council as nominated by the Crown. Executive power, therefore, together
with the last word in all legislation, was to remain wholly in the hands
of the Crown, acting through a Ministry not responsible to the people's
representatives. It would have been difficult to design a plan more
certain to promote friction, racialism, and an eventual deadlock,
necessitating either a humiliating surrender by the Government under
pressure of the refusal of supplies, or a reversion to despotic
government which would have produced another war. With wide differences
of detail and with the added risk of financial deadlock, it was sought
to establish the kind of political situation prevalent in Ireland after
the Act of Union. The executive power in that country, and, with the
exception of the Department of Agriculture, the policy and personnel of
the host of nominated Boards through which its affairs are administered,
still stand wholly outside popular control, while legislation in
accordance with Irish views is only possible when, in the fluctuation of
the British party balance, a British Ministry happens to be in sympathy
with these views, and only too often not even then.

Statesmen who looked with complacency on the history of a century in
Ireland under such a system naturally took a similar view of the
Transvaal, deriving it from the same low estimate of human tendencies.
The literature, despatches, and speeches of the period carry us straight
back to the Canadian controversies of 1837-1840, and beyond them to the
Union controversy of 1800. In one respect the parallel with the Irish
Union is closer, because, while British opinion in Lower Canada was
predominantly against responsible government, there was in Ireland a
strong current of unbribed Protestant opinion against the Union.
Similarly, in the Transvaal, there was a strong feeling among a section
of the British population, coinciding with the general wishes of the
Dutch population, in favour of full responsible government. In other
words, the mere prospect of self-government lessened racial cleavage,
brought men of the two races together, and began the evolution of a new
party cleavage on the normal lines natural to modern communities. The
whole question was keenly canvassed at public meetings and in the Press
from November, 1904, to February 5, 1905, and in Johannesburg a British
party of considerable st