The Government “recognize that there are industrial and economic conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than the present system affords.  The question as regards the Orange River Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective representative institutions are granted to the last-named Colony, because this will permit His Majesty’s Government to observe the experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained.”

What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political argument?  It was important to “ascertain the views” of the bi-racial Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically homogeneous Orange River Colony.  The “question” there is a “less urgent one.”  What question?  Why less urgent?  Is it that the British minority, being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch?  That is a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of “ascertaining the views” of the different sections of the population, greater, not less.  Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an assumed improbability of disorder owing to the homogeneity of the population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding it?  These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world.  A quiet Ireland does not want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it.  If the Unionist element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority.  If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority will be easier.  So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men still talk of “experiments” and “profiting by experience,” while the demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of centuries, and while masses of facts accumulate, demonstrating the great truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and dangers—­and it has both—­is the best resource for uniting, strengthening, and enriching a community of white men.

The Transvaal Constitution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, with the results that we know.  Instantaneously there permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of brotherhood.  Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends