mpenetrable to
European troops, have not forgotten the prowess of a Cetewayo and the
victory of Isandhwana.

It may well be that some day they will try the fortune of one more
general revolt before accepting the permanent over-lordship of their
conquerors. Natal lives in apprehension of such a day. Throughout all
South Africa, among both British and Dutch, there is a feeling that
Great Britain knows nothing of the native question.

The British people see the native through the softly tinted spectacles
of Exeter Hall. When they have given him a Bible and a breech-cloth
they fondly fancy that he has become one of themselves, and urge that
he shall enter upon his political rights. They do not know that to a
savage, or a half-civilized black, a ballot-box and a voting-paper are
about as comprehensible as a telescope or a pocket camera--it is just a
part of the white man's magic, containing some particular kind of devil
of its own. The South-Africans think that they understand the native.
And the first tenet of their gospel is that he must be kept in his
place. They have seen the hideous tortures and mutilations inflicted in
every native war. If the native revolts they mean to shoot him into
marmalade with machine guns. Such is their simple creed. And in this
matter they want nothing of what Mr. Merriman recently called the
"damnable interference" of the mother country. But to handle the native
question there had to be created a single South-African Government
competent to deal with it.

The constitution creates for South Africa a union entirely different
from that of the provinces of Canada or the States of the American
Republic. The government is not federal, but unitary. The provinces
become areas of local governments, with local elected councils to
administer them, but the South-African Parliament reigns supreme. It is
to know nothing of the nice division of jurisdiction set up by the
American constitution and by the British North America Act. There are,
of course, limits to its power. In the strict sense of legal theory,
the omnipotence of the British Parliament, as in the case of Canada,
remains unimpaired. Nor can it alter certain things,--for example, the
native franchise of the Cape, and the equal status of the two
languages,--without a special majority vote. But in all the ordinary
conduct of trade, industry, and economic life, its power is unhampered
by constitutional limitations.

The constitution sets up as