Mr. ——­, in a letter addressed to one of your contemporaries, informed the British public that in view of a liberal Government grant of L4 per head per annum, the Transvaal Uitlander had nothing to complain of in respect to education.  As Mr. ——­ claims to be completely informed on Transvaal politics, he can only have been guilty of a deliberate, if not malicious suppressio veri when he omitted to say that, like most of the legislation of this country, which has for its ostensible object the amelioration of the condition of the Uitlander, this measure, which looks like munificence at first sight, has been rendered practically inoperative by the conditions which hedge it round.  Take, for example, a school of 100 children.  Strike out ten as being under age, ten as having been too short a time at school, twenty as suspected of being of Dutch parentage.  Out of the sixty that remain suppose fifty satisfy the inspector in the Dutch language and history, and you have as your allowance for the year L200—­a sum which is insufficient to pay the Dutch teacher employed to bring the children up to the required standard in that language.  It is small wonder, then, that most teachers prefer to dispense with this Will-o’-the-wisp grant altogether, seeing that the efforts of some to earn it have resulted in pecuniary loss.  The actual sum expended on Uitlander schools last year amounted to L650, or 1s. 10d. a head out of a total expenditure for education of L63,000, the expenditure per Dutch child amounting to L8 6s. 1d.

Mr. Chamberlain considers the new educational law for Johannesburg as a subject for gratulation.  I should have thought that his recent dealings with Pretoria would have suggested to him as a statesman that felicitations upon the passing of a vague and absolutely undefined measure might possibly be a little too premature.  A Volksraad, which only rejected the forcible closing of private schools by a majority of two votes, is hardly likely to give the Executive carte blanche to deal with Uitlander education without some understanding, tacit or declared, as to how this power is to be wielded.  Be that as it may, nearly two months have elapsed since the passing of a measure which was to come into operation at once, and nothing has been done.  In the meantime, we can learn from the inspired press and other sources that English schools which desire aid under the new law must be prepared to give instruction in Standard V. and upwards, and entirely in the Dutch language.  So far, the Superintendent of Education, whether acting under instructions or on his own initiative, has been absolutely immovable on this point, and the much-vaunted law promises to be as much a dead letter as the 1s. 10d. grant.  The Johannesburg Council of Education has exerted its influence to secure such an interpretation of the new law as would lead to the establishment of schools where Dutch and English children might sit side by side, and so work towards establishing