That the natives are advancing under guidance and help, which it is essential not to check.
That the franchise qualification is low, and may soon come within their reach.
That the European race has resolved, for reasons not necessary to recapitulate, to maintain its ascendancy in, and to occupy. South Africa.
As pointed out in the Commission Report, after exhaustive inquiry, the present number of native voters who have attained the qualification in certain Colonies is the merest fringe of the impending mass, and in view of this fact the full magnitude and gravity of the question may be apprehended.
It is idle to ignore that fact, unless there is to be an entire revolution of thought in favour of granting full political rights to all who can qualify—an argument, indeed, which appeals strongly to many in England, and to a few in South Africa, who hold the conviction that it should be followed because it is humanly right. In support of the conviction, an utterance of a great statesman, Mr. Rhodes, has been freely quoted, in which he advocated equal political rights for all civilized people. But Mr. Rhodes considered consequences and was the exponent of South African Colonies when he often expressed the opinion that class legislation. Pass Laws, and Peace Preservation Acts, were essential, and that natives should be regarded as a subject race so long as they continued in a state of barbarism. He did not define what constituted a state of barbarism, nor propound any scheme for the treatment of those who emerged from it in solitary numbers. That he left until solid changes in the mass in the sense of their proved intellectual capacity should be visible, and his successors felt impelled from right motives, and in the fitness of time, to adjust legislation accordingly.
Of the forces which have operated powerfully to stiffen resistance to the granting of equal political rights, the most pronounced, apart from the sentiment so strongly felt, are the belief that natives are not yet
