Liberalism and the Social Problem | Page 8

differs
fundamentally from the case of the Orange River Colony. The latter has
been in the past, and will be again in the future, a tranquil agricultural
State, pursuing under a wise and tolerant Government a happy destiny
of its own. All I have to say about the Orange River Colony this
afternoon is this--that there will be no unnecessary delay in the granting
of a Constitution; and that in the granting of that Constitution we shall
be animated only by a desire to secure a fair representation of all
classes of inhabitants in the country, and to give effective expression to
the will of the majority.
When we came into office, we found a Constitution already prepared
for the Transvaal by the right hon. Member for St. George's, Hanover
Square.[1] That Constitution is no more. I hope the right hon.
gentleman will not suspect me of any malevolence towards his
offspring. I would have nourished and fostered it with a tender care; but
life was already extinct. It had ceased to breathe even before it was
born; but I trust the right hon. gentleman will console himself by
remembering that there are many possibilities of constitutional
settlements lying before him in the future. After all, the Abbé Sieyès,
when the Constitution of 1791 was broken into pieces, was very little
younger than the right hon. gentleman, and he had time to make and
survive two new Constitutions.
Frankly, what I may, for brevity's sake, call the Lyttelton Constitution
was utterly unworkable. It surrendered the machinery of power; it
preserved the whole burden of responsibility and administration. Nine

official gentlemen, nearly all without Parliamentary experience, and I
daresay without Parliamentary aptitudes, without the support of that
nominated majority which I am quite convinced that the right hon.
Member for West Birmingham had always contemplated in any scheme
of representative government, and without the support of an organised
party, were to be placed in a Chamber of thirty-five elected members
who possessed the power of the purse. The Boers would either have
abstained altogether from participating in that Constitution, or they
would have gone in only for the purpose of wrecking it. The British
party was split into two sections, and one section, the Responsibles,
made public declarations of their intention to bring about a
constitutional deadlock by obstruction and refusing supplies, and all the
other apparatus of Parliamentary discontent. In fact, the Constitution of
the right hon. gentleman seemed bound inevitably to conjure up that
nightmare of all modern politicians, government resting on consent,
and consent not forthcoming.
As I told the House in May, his Majesty's Government thought it their
duty to review the whole question. We thought it our duty and our right
to start fair, free, and untrammelled, and we have treated the Lyttelton
Constitution as if it had never been. One guiding principle has animated
his Majesty's Government in their policy--to make no difference in this
grant of responsible government between Boer and Briton in South
Africa. We propose to extend to both races the fullest privileges and
rights of British citizenship; and we intend to make no discrimination
in the grant of that great boon, between the men who have fought most
loyally for us and those who have resisted the British arms with the
most desperate courage. By the Treaty of Vereeniging, in which the
peace between the Dutch and British races was declared for ever, by
Article 1 of that treaty the flower of the Boer nation and its most
renowned leaders recognised the lawful authority of his Majesty King
Edward VII, and henceforth, from that moment, British supremacy in
South Africa stood on the sure foundations of military honour and
warlike achievement.
This decision in favour of even-handed dealing arises from no
ingratitude on our part towards those who have nobly sustained the

British cause in years gone by. It involves no injustice to the British
population of the Transvaal. We have been careful at each point of this
constitutional settlement to secure for the British every advantage that
they may justly claim. But the future of South Africa, and, I will add,
its permanent inclusion in the British Empire, demand that the King
should be equally Sovereign of both races, and that both races should
learn to look upon this country as their friend.
* * * * *
When I last spoke in this House on the question of the South African
Constitution, I took occasion to affirm the excellence of the general
principle, one vote one value. I pointed out that it was a logical and
unimpeachable principle to act upon; that the only safe rule for doing
justice electorally between man and man was to assume--a large
assumption in some cases--that all men are equal and that all
discriminations between