should be evenly
distributed among them.

In the Transvaal the principle of "one vote, one value" can be made
operative only upon a basis of voters. In nearly every other country
in the world, population is the usual basis of distribution, for
population is the same as electorate and electorate the same as
population. On both bases the distribution of the constituencies would
be the same. There is, for instance, no part of this country which is
more married, or more celibate, or more prolific than any other part.
It is only in the Transvaal, this country of afflicting dualities and
of curious contradictions, where everything is twisted, disturbed, and
abnormal, that there is a great disparity between the distribution of
seats on the basis of voters and on the basis of population. The high
price of provisions in the towns restricts the growth of urban
population, and the dullness of the country districts appears to be
favourable to the growth of large families. It is a scientific and
unimpeachable fact that, if you desire to apply the principle of "one
vote, one value" to the Constitution of the Transvaal, that principle
can best be attained--I am not sure that it cannot only be
attained--on the basis of voters, and that is the basis Mr. Lyttelton
took in the Constitution he formed.

But Mr. Lyttelton's plan did not stop there. Side by side with this
basis of voters, he had an artificial franchise of L100 annual value.
That is a very much lower qualification in South Africa, than it would
be in this country, and I do not think that the franchise which Mr.
Lyttelton proposed could be called an undemocratic franchise, albeit
that it was an artificial franchise, because it yielded 89,000 voters
out of a population of 300,000, and that is a much more fertile
franchise, even after making allowance for the abnormal conditions of
a new country, than we have in this country or than is the case in
some American and European States. So that I do not accuse Mr.
Lyttelton of having formulated an undemocratic franchise, but taking
these two points together--the unusual basis of distribution with the
apparently artificial franchise--acting and reacting, as they must
have done, one upon the other--there was sufficient ground to favour
the suspicion, at any rate, that something was intended in the nature
of a dodge, in the nature of a trick, artificially to depress the
balance in one direction and to tilt it in the other.

In deali