As I told the House in May, his Majesty’s Government thought it their duty to review the whole question.  We thought it our duty and our right to start fair, free, and untrammelled, and we have treated the Lyttelton Constitution as if it had never been.  One guiding principle has animated his Majesty’s Government in their policy—­to make no difference in this grant of responsible government between Boer and Briton in South Africa.  We propose to extend to both races the fullest privileges and rights of British citizenship; and we intend to make no discrimination in the grant of that great boon, between the men who have fought most loyally for us and those who have resisted the British arms with the most desperate courage.  By the Treaty of Vereeniging, in which the peace between the Dutch and British races was declared for ever, by Article 1 of that treaty the flower of the Boer nation and its most renowned leaders recognised the lawful authority of his Majesty King Edward vii, and henceforth, from that moment, British supremacy in South Africa stood on the sure foundations of military honour and warlike achievement.

This decision in favour of even-handed dealing arises from no ingratitude on our part towards those who have nobly sustained the British cause in years gone by.  It involves no injustice to the British population of the Transvaal.  We have been careful at each point of this constitutional settlement to secure for the British every advantage that they may justly claim.  But the future of South Africa, and, I will add, its permanent inclusion in the British Empire, demand that the King should be equally Sovereign of both races, and that both races should learn to look upon this country as their friend.

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When I last spoke in this House on the question of the South African Constitution, I took occasion to affirm the excellence of the general principle, one vote one value.  I pointed out that it was a logical and unimpeachable principle to act upon; that the only safe rule for doing justice electorally between man and man was to assume—­a large assumption in some cases—­that all men are equal and that all discriminations between them are unhealthy and undemocratic.  Now the principle of one vote one value can be applied and realised in this country, either upon the basis of population, or upon the basis of voters.  It makes no difference which is selected; for there is no part of this country which is more married, or more prolific than another, and exactly the same distribution and exactly the same number of members would result whether the voters or the population basis were taken in a Redistribution Bill.  But in South Africa the disparity of conditions between the new population and the old makes a very great difference between the urban and the rural populations, and it is undoubtedly true that if it be desired to preserve the principle of one vote one value, it is the voters’ basis and not the population basis that must be taken in the Transvaal—­and that is the basis which his Majesty’s Government have determined to adopt.