recommending that purchases in future be limited to areas defined by legislative enactment The resolution was opposed by an experienced officer, representing the Cape Colony, for weighty reasons recorded, and it was qualified by a reservation of the Natal delegates, to the effect that the determining factors in the ownership of land by natives should be the degree of civilization attained and the abandonment of native law and polygamy.
In the older Colonies, where there is no bar to the free acquisition of land by natives, it is claimed, by those who advocate the justice and utility of the policy, that no evil results are likely to accrue. That opinion is, however, by no means universal even in those Colonies, whilst a large body of evidence in the new Colonies condemns in no uncertain manner any departure from the prohibition to acquire land which their early laws enacted. If the two sides of the argument are weighed, it will be found that there is against it, in the new Colonies particularly, a profoundly antagonistic feeling ready to ripen into agitation and resistance.
Upon this point, therefore, the cleavage in South Africa is marked, and it becomes impossible to lay down for common adoption a policy acceptable to all Colonies. That of absolute freedom of purchase may be right, but it may not be expedient Between the two schools of thought there is a wide gulf not easy to span. It is a thorny question upon which practice has not had time to yield results positive enough to define as an axiom what course should be followed. If changes were made in respect of some Colonies to bring them into definite line with others, it could only be done at the expense of extreme bitterness and dangerous discontent; and if there is a risk of discord between the European races over the subject, the lesser evil is to let the several Colonies work out their own policy until the time arrives when a common interest draws them into line. There is no royal road to the solution of problems which are parts of a whole, and are best determined
