NATIVE AFFAIRS.

The administration of native affairs is a gross scandal and a source of immense loss and danger to the community.  Native Commissioners have been permitted to practise extortion, injustice, and cruelty upon the natives under their jurisdiction.  The Government has allowed petty tribes to be goaded into rebellion.  We have had to pay the costs of the ‘wars,’ while the wretched victims of their policy have had their tribes broken up, sources of native labour have been destroyed, and large numbers of prisoners have been kept in goal for something like eighteen months without trial.  It was stated in the newspapers that, out of 63 men imprisoned, 31 had died in that period, while the rest were languishing to death for want of vegetable food.  We have had revelations of repulsive cruelty on the part of field-cornets.  We all remember the Rachman case, and the April case, in which the judges found field-cornets guilty of brutal conduct to unfortunate natives; but the worst features about these cases is that the Government has set the seal of its approval upon the acts of these officials by paying the costs of the actions out of public funds, and the President of the State a few days ago made the astounding statement in regard to the April case, that, notwithstanding the judgment of the High Court, the Government thought that Prinsloo was right in his action, and therefore paid the costs.  The Government is enforcing the ‘plakkerswet,’ which forbids the locating of more than five families on one farm.  The field-cornets in various districts have recently broken up homes of large numbers of natives settled on ‘Uitlanders’’ lands, just at the time when they had sown their crops to provide the next winter’s food.  The application of this law is most uneven, as large numbers of natives are left on the farms of the Boers.  Quite recently a well-known citizen brought into the country at great expense some hundreds of families, provided them with land, helped them to start life, stipulating only that he should be able to draw from amongst them labour at a fair wage to develop his properties.  Scarcely had they been settled when the field-cornet came down and scattered the people, distributing them among Boer farms.  The sources of the native labour supply have been seriously interfered with at the borders by Government measures, and difficulties have been placed in the way of transport of natives by railway to the mines.  These things are all a drain upon us as a State, and many of them are a burning disgrace to us as a people.

THE EDUCATION SCANDAL.

The great public that subscribes the bulk of the revenue is virtually denied all benefit of State aid in education.  There has been a deliberate attempt to Hollanderise the Republic, and to kill the English language.  Thousands of children are growing up in this land in ignorance, unfitted to run the race of life, and there is the possibility that a large number of them will develop into criminals.  We have had to tax ourselves privately to guard against these dangers, and the iniquity of denying education to the children of men who are paying taxes is so manifest that I pass on with mingled feelings of anger and disgust.