of thousands of these annually between India
and the Transvaal, and their recital of the treatment to which
they are subjected, their tales of appeals to the great British
Government, and their account of the latter's inability to protect
them. Much also could be said of the Cape Boy question, but
sufficient prominence has been given to these matters by the
publication of the official documents and the report of the inquiry
into Field-Cornet Lombaard's conduct, which was held at the instance
of the British Government.

It is not suggested that if the Government in the Transvaal were
influenced by the vote of the white British subjects, or if it were
entirely dominated by such vote, any encouragement would be given to
the Indian hawkers and traders, or that there would be any
disposition whatever to give voting rights to coloured people of any
kind, but it _is_ suggested that a more enlightened and a more just
system of treatment would be adopted; and in any case it is to be
presumed that there would be no appeals to the British Government,
involving exhibitions of impotency on the part of the Empire to
protect its subjects, followed by the deliberate repetition of
treatment which might become the subject of remonstrance. The
untutored mind is not given to subtleties and sophistries; direct
cause and effect are as much as it can grasp. These it does grasp and
firmly hold, and the simple inferences are not to be removed by any
amount of argument or explanation, however plausible. There is
scarcely an Uitlander in the Transvaal who would not view with dismay
the raising of the big question upon such grounds as the treatment of
the natives, the Cape boys, or the Indians; and the fact that the
Transvaal Government know this may account for much of the
provocation on these questions. It is nevertheless undeniable that
white British subjects in the Transvaal do suffer fresh humiliation
and are substantially lowered in the eyes of the coloured races,
because appeals are made on their behalf to the British Government,
and those appeals are useless. The condition of affairs should be
that such appeals would be unnecessary, and would therefore
become--in practice--impossible. Such a condition of affairs would
obtain under a friendly and more enlightened government, and the
only security for the voluntary continuance of such conditions is
the enfranchisement of the Uitlander population.

In the midst of all that was gloomy unfa