nor is the
protection of native industry a "live issue" of the first magnitude.

The farmers and ranchmen of Cape Colony no doubt desire to have custom
duties on food-stuffs that will help them to keep up prices, and they
have got such duties. But the scale is not very high, and as direct
taxation is difficult to raise in a new country with a scattered
population, the existing tariff, which averages twelve and a half per
cent, _ad valorem_ (but is further raised by special rates on certain
articles), may be defended as needed, at least to a large extent, for
the purposes of revenue. Natal had a lower tariff, and has been more
favourable in principle to free trade doctrine, but she has very
recently (1898) entered the S. African Customs Union, therewith adopting
a higher tariff. Manufactures have been so sparingly developed in both
Colonies that neither employers nor workmen have begun to call for high
duties against foreign goods. Here, therefore, is another field of
policy, important in North America and Australia, which has given rise
to comparatively little controversy in South Africa.

As there is no established church, and nearly all the people are
Protestants, there are no ecclesiastical questions, nor is the progress
of education let and hindered by the claims of sects to have their
respective creeds taught at the expense of the State.

Neither are there any land questions, such as those which have arisen in
Australia, for there has been land enough for those who want to have it,
while few agricultural immigrants arrive to increase the demand.
Moreover, though the landed estates are large, their owners are not
rich, and excite no envy by their possession of a profitable monopoly.
If any controversy regarding natural resources arises, it will probably
turn on the taxation of minerals. Some have suggested that the State
should appropriate to itself a substantial share of the profits made out
of the diamond and other mines, and the fact that most of those profits
are sent home to shareholders in Europe might be expected to make the
suggestion popular. Nevertheless, the idea has not, so far, "caught
on," to use a familiar expression, partly, perhaps, because Cape Colony,
drawing sufficent income from its tariff and its railways, has not found
it necessary to hunt for other sources of revenue.

Lastly, there are no constitutional questions. The suffrage is so wide
as to admit nearly all the whites, and there is, o