ession, which in 1885 involved
the British Government in military measures costing nearly as much as
would have been required to suppress the whole rising in 1881. For the
time being the stagnation and chronic bankruptcy which followed the
removal of British rule and the exodus of the loyalists limited
Transvaal ambitions. The gold discoveries both increased that ambition
by furnishing it with revenue, and at the same time brought about a
close economic intercourse with the neighbouring colonies which, under
the political conditions of disunion, was bound to create friction. In
the end the policy of make-believe and "cutting the loss" had to be
redeemed at the cost of 20,000 lives and of L200,000,000.
Reconciliation, in large measure, has come since. But it has only come
because British statesmen showed, firstly, in the war, their inflexible
resolution to stamp out the policy of separation, and secondly, after
the war, their devotion to the real welfare of South Africa in a policy
of economic reconstruction, and in the establishment of those free and
equal British institutions under which--by the final dying out of a
spurious nationalism based on racial prejudice and garbled
history--South Africa may become a real, living nation.

The reservations and guarantees which this Home Rule Bill may contain
cannot possibly constitute the framework of a federal constitution. All
they can guarantee is a period of friction and agitation which will
continue till Ireland has secured a position of complete separation from
the United Kingdom. At the best the Home Rule experiment would then
reduce Ireland to the position of another Newfoundland; at the worst it
might repeat all the most disastrous features of the history of "Home
Rule" in the Transvaal. At the same time it may be worth inquiring how
far there would really be any valid Colonial analogy for the
introduction of a federal system of "Home Rule all round" if such a
scheme had been honestly contemplated. The first thing to keep in mind
is that the internal constitution of the Dominions presents a whole
gradation of constitutional types. There is the loose federal system of
Australia, in which the Commonwealth powers are strictly limited and
defined, and all residuary powers left to the States. There is the close
confederation of Canada in which all residuary powers are vested in the
Dominion. There is the non-federal unitary government of South Africa
with a system of provinc