very few
constituencies. Accordingly, an Act was passed in 1892, establishing a
combined educational and property qualification--that is to say, the
ownership of a house or other building of the value of L75 or upwards,
or the being in receipt of a salary of L50 per annum, with the ability
to sign one's name and write one's address and occupation This Act,
which did not apply to those already registered in any particular
district and claiming to be re-registered therein, is expected to keep
down the number of coloured voters; and as it applies to whites also
there is no inequality of treatment. Tribal Kafirs have, of course,
never had the franchise at all. Neither the natives--the most
substantial and best educated among whom possess the qualifications
required--nor their friends complain of this law, which may be defended
on the ground that, while admitting those people of colour whose
intelligence fits them for the exercise of political power, it excludes
a large mass whose ignorance and indifference to public questions would
make them the victims of rich and unscrupulous candidates. It is,
perhaps, less open to objection than some of the attempts recently made
in the Southern States of America to evade the provisions of the
amendments to the Federal Constitution under which negroes obtained the
suffrage. In Natal nearly all the Kafirs live under native law, and have
thus been outside the representative system; but the Governor has power
to admit a Kafir to the suffrage, and this has been done in a few
instances. As stated in Chapter XVIII, the rapid increase of Indian
immigrants in that Colony alarmed the whites, and led to the passing, in
1896, of an Act which will practically debar these immigrants from
political rights, as coming from a country in which no representative
institutions exist. Thus Natal also has managed to exclude coloured
people without making colour the nominal ground of disability. I need
hardly say that whoever has the suffrage is also eligible for election
to the Legislature. No person of colour is now, however, a member of
either chamber in either Colony.

It is easy for people in Europe, who have had no experience of the
presence among them of a semi-civilized race, destitute of the ideas and
habits which lie at the basis of free government, to condemn the action
of these Colonies in seeking to preserve a decisive electoral majority
for the whites. But any one who has studied the question on