representation of
town and country. The towns are British and the country Dutch, so the
bearing of equal rights is obvious. Proportional representation and
equal rights were in the end squared off against one another.

South Africa will retain duality of language, both Dutch and British
being in official use. There was no other method open. The Dutch
language is probably doomed to extinction within three or four
generations. It is, in truth, not one linguistic form, but several: the
Taal, or kitchen Dutch of daily speech, the "lingua franca" of South
Africa; the School Taal, a modified form of it, and the High Dutch of
the Scriptural translations brought with the Boers from Holland. Behind
this there is no national literature, and the current Dutch of Holland
and its books varies some from all of them. English is already the
language of commerce and convenience. The only way to keep Dutch alive
is to oppose its use. Already the bitterness of the war has had this
effect, and language societies are doing their best to uphold and
extend the use of the ancestral language. It is with a full knowledge
of this that the leaders of the British parties acquiesced in the
principle of duality.

The native franchise was another difficult question. At present neither
natives nor "colored men" (the South-African term for men of mixed
blood) can vote in the Transvaal, the Orange River, and Natal. Nor is
there the faintest possibility of the suffrage being extended to them,
both the Dutch and the British being convinced that such a policy is a
mistake. In the Cape natives and colored men, if possessed of the
necessary property and able to write their names, are allowed to vote.
The name writing is said to be a farce, the native drawing a picture of
his name under guidance of his political boss. Some 20,000 natives and
colored people thus vote at the Cape, and neither the Progressives nor
the Bond party dared to oppose the continuance of the franchise, lest
the native vote should be thrown solid against them. As a result each
province will retain its own suffrage, at least until the South-African
Parliament by a special majority of two-thirds in a joint session shall
decide otherwise.

The future conformation of parties under the union is difficult to
forecast. At present the Dutch parties--they may be called so for lack
of a better word--have large majorities everywhere except in Natal. In
the Transvaal General Botha's party--Het Vo