; and I should think
that the new Parliament might assemble in Bloemfontein some time
during the autumn of next year. When that work has been completed, and
the new Parliament has assembled, the main direction of South African
affairs in these Colonies will have passed from our hands.

Sir, it is the earnest desire of the Government to steer colonial
affairs out of English Party politics, not only in the interest of the
proper conduct of those affairs, but in order to clear the arena at
home for the introduction of measures which affect the masses of the
people. We have tried in South Africa to deal fairly between man and
man, to adjust conflicting interests and overlapping claims. We have
tried so far as possible to effect a broad-bottomed settlement of the
question which should command the assent of people even beyond the
great party groupings which support us.

Other liberties besides their own will be enshrined in these new
Parliaments. The people of South Africa, and, in a special measure,
the Boers, will become the trustees of freedom all over the world. We
have tried to act with fairness and good feeling. If by any chance our
counsels of reconciliation should come to nothing, if our policy
should end in mocking disaster, then the resulting evil would not be
confined to South Africa. Our unfortunate experience would be
trumpeted forth all over the world wherever despotism wanted a good
argument for bayonets, whenever an arbitrary Government wished to deny
or curtail the liberties of imprisoned nationalities. But if, on the
other hand, as we hope and profoundly believe, better days are in
store for South Africa, if the words of President Brand, "All shall
come right," are at length to be fulfilled, and if the near future
should unfold to our eves a tranquil, prosperous, consolidated
Afrikander nation under the protecting aegis of the British Crown,
then, the good also will not be confined to South Africa; then the
cause of the poor and the weak all over the world will have been
sustained; and everywhere small peoples will get more room to breathe,
and everywhere great empires will be encouraged by our example to step
forward--and it only needs a step--into the sunshine of a more gentle
and a more generous age.

LIBERALISM AND SOCIALISM

ST. ANDREW'S HALL, GLASGOW, _October 11, 1906_

(From _The Dundee Advertiser_, by permission.)

The first indispensable condition of democratic progress must be the