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Treasurers anxious to pay excessive sums to the States under the Braddon clause), Old Age Pensions, the occupation of the Northern Territory, two transcontinental railways (all important defence measures, these last three), the Federal capital (forced on it by one of the States), and such incidentals as a High Commissioner's office in London. To meet this outlay it has such revenue as the Post Office brings in (which Australia's magnificent distances and still scanty population keep hopelessly low), and the proceeds of Customs and Excise duties. The States, on the other hand, have to provide adequately for education and police (which Englishmen reckon municipal work), for immigration and land settlement (much of which could be met, directly or indirectly, by a progressive land tax), for public works (mainly constructed with borrowed money), for interest on loans, and for a variety of small matters which the Federal statistician can only class as "miscellaneous." To balance the expenditure they have a surplus from their railways, a fairly large land-revenue, and the proceeds of probate and stamp duties, income taxes, and various half-hearted forms of land-tax; they have a large contribution from the Federal Treasury, and they have the resource of retrenchmentthe cutting down of certain large expenditures which were justifiable for independent colonies, and are not justifiable for States in a Commonwealth—still largely unavailed of. It would be useless to give figures at present; those available give no idea of the amounts which must in future be spent on defence alone, to say nothing of the other items. The coming Premiers' Conference may lead to the publication of reliable estimates in this regard, but none are yet available. Still, it does seem on the face of it plausible to suggest that the great national revenues should be mainly devoted to great national purposes, and that the more or less municipal expenditures should be otherwise provided for. And the plausibility is increased when we find that the rulers of New South Wales, the leaders among those who would restrict Federal expenditure narrowly, and demand a large Federal contribution to their State Treasury, have within recent years deliberately remitted at least a quarter of the stamp duties and income tax, and have handed over the State land-tax to municipalities and shire councils practically in total relief of the

rates.

CORRESPONDENCE

To the Editor of THE NATIONAL REVIEW

UNITED DUTCH SOUTH AFRICA

SIR, The unification of South Africa is an accomplished fact. The labours of the Convention at Durban, Capetown, and Bloemfontein, the delegation to England bringing the Constitution for ratification, have called our attention repeatedly during the year to the building which was being pushed on, the coping-stone which was being placed on the work begun in South Africa at the time of the General Election in England of 1906, when the British electorate placed a gigantic Liberal majority in power.

This is no time for recrimination, for discussing whether A or B could have done more or less, whether Y or Z are responsible. The thing is over, and the only worthy part left to us, here in England, is to try to make to ourselves a true picture of what has happened in South Africa.

Many people have gushed over the new Constitution; the Press has done nothing else. But it would be as well, now that the tumult and the shouting have died away, to think a little about what the past three years have done in South Africa so as realise the conditions created. To do that it will be necessary to go back, for a moment, to the period before the war, and to understand the chief cause that made a conflict between Great Britain, as the sovereign of Cape Colony, and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State inevitable.

Public opinion at home was slow to apprehend the situation, and in the few weeks before the war, when Great Britain was thoroughly roused, people were too preoccupied by the arming of the two Republics and their successive acts of chicanery and insolence to realise the situation in Cape Colony, and yet Cape Colony was the dominating political factor. There was a vague idea in England that there would be rebels in our oldest African Colony, but very few people realised that the spirit of the majority of that community was thoroughly antiBritish and separatist, and that it was the existence of that spirit which did more than anything else to bring about the war. For we could have got on with the Republics as foreign countries; we did not want their territory, and we could, in the absence of Cape Colony, have come to terms with them. But it was impossible to do so while they were stimulated and encouraged in their truculent attitude by the bulk of our own subjects in Cape Colony, who took their side in every difference with the Imperial Government, and threatened

that Government if it did not at once give way. It was, in fact, with our own disloyal Cape Colonists that we could not live, unless we abdicated our sovereignty, not with the Boers.

Any one who knew South Africa before the war remembers the social and political oppression which the British suffered. Not only in the Transvaal, where they were outlanders, but in Cape Colony, where their flag flew, Englishmen, as such, were barely tolerated, while the Dutch bore themselves with studied insolence with regard to everything connected with the Empire, including very often the representatives of the Crown. The English mugwump was all right; he waived the Imperial side of every question when it was raised, and got on wonderfully with his Dutch neighbour in consequence. Indeed, a certain moral superiority was shown by the Dutch in their constant and perfectly frank assertion of their own ideals, language, traditions, race; while those Englishmen, who were equally keen about their ideals, were at a disadvantage all round, especially in politics and in the higher walks of all the professions. The dominant society of the Cape Peninsula was saturated with that spirit. To be a Dutch patriot was paying. Indeed, it was bon ton to admire Dutch pride of race. To be a British patriot was bad form and "impolitic," because it was "calculated to hurt the feelings of the Dutch." Under a nominal equality of races, under the British flag, Dutch ideas, Dutch feelings, Dutch interests were predominant. Among other things, the Dutch had, in the main, imposed their native policy upon the British, as they have so clearly and even flagrantly imposed it upon the Convention, not only on their fellow citizens in South Africa, but on the Imperial Government, upon a Radical Ministry and a Radical Parliament.

Such was the state of Cape Colony before the war that the British, for all their naturally easy-going temperament, had been goaded to a state of absolute rage by the constant Dutch assumption that they belonged to an inferior race. And the Dutch had this immense advantage over their more straightforward fellow colonists, that they constantly bamboozled a certain number of Britishers into thinking they could treat on equal terms with them; and when each separate set of innocent Britishers was slowly undeceived there was always another set ready to take their place, it being a rule with regard to the South African Dutch that no one ever profits by any one else's experience of them.

A typical illustration of the attitude of the disloyal Cape Colonist was that of Mr. W. P. Schreiner during his Premiership. He allowed the passage through Cape Colony, a British Colony, of 1,000,000 cartridges for the Boers on the eve of war. He claimed, in a speech made in the House of Assembly immediately before hostilities commenced, the right to keep Cape Colony neutral as between Great Britain and the Republics; he wished it to be "a garden of peace"-that is to say, a place where both combatants would spend millions on stores and which would supply thousands of fighting men to the Boers. That speech epitomised Cape Colony before the war; it was typical of the mentality of the Cape Dutchman Colonist.

During and after the war, when British ideals seemed certain to prevail, the senior Colony came along with the other South African Colonies, and there was every reason to suppose that it would become a stout and useful member of the body politic of the Empire. For in those days the fait accompli seemed

complete. Then came the General Election in Great Britain in 1906, with all it entailed in the northern Colonies, the complete abandonment of all Imperial ideals and all British interests, and the placing of the Transvaal under Boer dominion. Cape Colony swung at once, her old political activities were roused, and again, the people who meant to keep the British Fleet to guard their coasts while they worked against the British Empire in their Colony came to the fore as leaders. Politically' Cape Colony is now the dominating Colony. The pre-war conditions obtain again, but they extend from Capetown to the Zambesi instead of only to Orange River. The British people and their Government have succeeded by a series of unthinking acts during the last three years in doubling the size and disloyalty of the only disloyal Colony the Empire possesses! What genius.

The recent unification is an entirely Dutch unification. It will not be the domination of the fighting Dutch, but a domination of the old Cape Dutch kind, with its secret caucuses and its countless intrigues. It is no source of strength to us that our Flag should float over such a dominion, rather the reverse, for United Dutch South Africa, like old Cape Colony, will not come our way, or pull on our rope. She will use us and the fellow nations in the Empire, but she will not serve with us, and she will welter on in the old anti-British state for many years. The forward Boers will no doubt endeavour to keep with them some of the Englishmen, like Mr. Merriman, who have administrative ability and antiBritish prejudice; the older Boers will try to go back to the happy days of President Kruger, although these two parties will always combine against any British party which may endeavour to hold its own. Mr. Hofmeyr, the veteran Cape leader, will by balancing the forward Boers, led by General Botha, against the backward Boers, a solid and voiceless phalanx, probably succeed in securing throughout South Africa the power which he had in Cape Colony before the war. He is a man of great political astuteness, the cleverest man in South Africa, perhaps in the Empire. For some years people said that his influence was gone, but with the re-production of the old conditions during the last three years it has returned, and at his own hour, the eleventh hour, he became the dominating influence in unification. Mr. Hofmeyr will use his power in the future, as he used it in the past, to keep Dutch ideals dominant in South Africa and the Dutch a people apart, aloof from the Empire they unwillingly belong to, growing to their development under the Union Jack, with eyes cast up towards it and longing prayers for the day when they may safely pull it down.

Before that day many things will happen. For one thing, a big native war anticipated unless the Dutch use the powers given them with unexpected moderation. The Imperial Parliament has consented to the permanent disfranchisement of some of the strongest supporters and adherents Great Britain has ever had. The native and coloured men in Cape Colony whose political power has been taken away from them would not be human if they did not vent their bitterness on the Imperial connection. That connection has afforded them no protection, and in the event of a native war we must expect that the leaders of the tribes will be the educated coloured men of the Cape, Loyalty has not profited them nor any other South Africans; they have, with the

British loyalists, learned their lesson, and Imperialism is for ever dead in United Dutch South Africa, for when that ideal is buried finally in the coming months there will be no one to write on the coffin" Resurgam."

I beg to remain, yours &c.,

COLONIAL.

To the Editor of THE NATIONAL REVIEW

STRIPPED TOBACCO-AN OBJECT LESSON IN SCIENTIFIC TARIFFS

SIR,-Unmanufactured tobacco is imported into England in two stages. Firstly, in the whole leaf, known as "leaf," and secondly with the stalk or midrib extracted, known as "strips," though to be exact, this should be classed as a partly manufactured article. England is the only country to import stripped tobacco. Other countries either have a tobacco duty so insignificant as not to make it worth the manufacturers while to bear the extra heavy cost and wastage of stripping beyond the boundary of their country, or else place such a much higher duty on strips compared to leaf as to make their import prohibitive. In England, with the abundance of cheap labour, it is not a question of the price of labour, but of the high duty that compels manufacturers to strip abroad. The higher the duty, the greater the incentive to import tobacco in a stripped condition, and as a consequence, the wider should be the margin of duty between strips and leaf. The recent additional tax of 8d. per pound on tobacco imposed by Mr. Lloyd George will cause a still greater proportion of strips to be imported, and a still further decrease in the amount of employment for our home strippers. In stripping abroad there is a great wastage of labour, unpacking the bales, liquoring the tobacco, stretching the leaf out flat after stripping, tying up in small bundles, drying by artificial heat, and then repacking in cases. All this labour is saved when stripped in the factory, as the tobacco is ready either for cutting or making into cigars immediately it has been stripped. The manufacturers of this country gain by stripping abroad, because they can import tobacco drier and more free from sand, and so save duty on both moisture and sand, very important items when the duty is 3s. 8d. per pound as in England, but not of much importance on a 1s. 2d. per cwt. duty as in Holland.

The bulk of the tobaccos imported in a stripped condition into this country are grown in America. The tobacco from the Southern States of Virginia and Kentucky, where they have the cheap negro labour, is stripped on the spot. In the Northern States as Wisconsin, where the cigar tobaccos are grown, cheap labour is not procurable. Therefore English leaf tobacco dealers buy this tobacco in the leaf and ship it to Rotterdam, where it is transhipped and forwarded to the villages in the interior of Holland and stripped there in factories and also in the homes of the peasants. Duty has to be paid on the tobacco entering Holland, and this duty is refunded as drawback on the weight of tobacco reshipped to England. But by then it has lost from 25 per cent. to 50 per cent. in stalks, moisture, and sand, and the duty on these is not refunded

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