men who in capital, energy and education are at least our equals.  All these persons are gathered together, thanks to our law, into one camp.  Through our own act this multitude, which contains elements which even the most suspicious amongst us would not hesitate to trust, is compelled to stand together, and so to stand in this most fatal of all questions in antagonism to us.  Is that fact alone not sufficient to warn us and to prove how unstatesmanlike our policy is?  What will we do with them now?  Shall we convert them into friends or shall we send them away empty, dissatisfied, embittered?  What will our answer be?  Dare we refer them to the present law, which first expects them to wait for fourteen years and even then pledges itself to nothing, but leaves everything to a Volksraad which cannot decide until 1905?  It is a law which denies all political rights even to their children born in this country.  Can they gather any hope from that?  Is not the fate of the petition of Mr. Justice Morice, whose request, however reasonable, could not be granted except by the alteration of the law published for twelve months and consented to by two-thirds of the entire burgher population, a convincing proof how untenable is the position which we have assumed?  Well, should we resolve now to refuse this request, what will we do when as we well know must happen it is repeated by two hundred thousand one day.  You will all admit the doors must be opened.  What will become of us or our children on that day, when we shall find ourselves in a minority of perhaps one in twenty, without a single friend amongst the other nineteen, amongst those who will then tell us they wished to be brothers, but that we by our own act made them strangers to the Republic?  Old as the world is, has an attempt like ours ever succeeded for long?  Shall we say as a French king did that things will last our time, and after that we reck not the deluge?  Again I ask what account is to be given to our descendants and what can be our hope in the future?

Mr. DE CLERCQ opposed the extension.

Mr. JAN DE BEER said he could not agree to the prayer for extension.  The burghers would decide time enough when the dam was too full, or when fresh water was wanted.  He had gone through the memorials, and some that wished an extension were unknown to him, even those who signed from his district.  Very few persons were in favour of the extension.  If the burghers wished it he would give it, he would agree to it.  The people coolly asked the Raad to extend the franchise to 80,000 persons, men who were not naturalized and had nothing to lose.  He did not mind extending the franchise to a few.  When it was a small case he did not object, but when it came to giving away their birthright wholesale he kicked.  He did not object to give the burgher right to persons who shot Kaffirs, or he had better say, persons who went into the native wars on behalf of the Transvaal, because they shed their