after the greatest disturbance in its history, are enabled to take the measure of the task.

The settlement presents itself in two aspects-the temporary and the permanent; and it is the latter which has naturally called forth most attention in England. That the talk of a "Dominion like Canada" has been a little too easy is something which I shall presently deal with. In South Africa people are far more concerned with the temporary aspect of the resettlement than with the final condition of the country politically. The loss, confusion and misery of this conflict have been felt, and, I would add, endured uncomplainingly in South Africa, to an extent impossible to be realized in England. I am not speaking of mourning for the dead. The war has taken its deathtoll of the noblest families, as of the poorest, in the old country, just as it has of the flower of colonial youth. But in displacement from home and business, in certainty of heavy loss both in town and country by looting, and in a hundred ruinous disarrangements of ordinary life, the burden is mainly South African. It is no wonder, therefore, that colonists, echoing the tone of a famous telegram, are inclined to cry, “Let confederation wait." They want to recover what is left of their property, and have law and order secured so that they can get to work again. There never was a war before this, in which it was deemed necessary to expel the entire urban population of a State as a preliminary, or in which the civil relationships of the people were in such confusion. Immediately upon complete occupation of the republics, we must presume that some law will run, besides the mere will of the officer in supreme command, and queer as some of the results of a continuance of the standing laws of the republics may be, I do not see what other course is possible. The repeal of bad laws and the reform of the whole republican system can only come by slow degrees; and meanwhile there will be a thousand questions between man and man which will not wait. One or two examples will best illustrate the statement. A British subject being

desirous of becoming a member of the Johannesburg Sanitary Board-a paid office-took the oath of allegiance to the republic, and became a burgher liable to be commandeered for military service. Of course, in common with most people outside Boer confidences, he never anticipated that a time would come when he might be called upon to fight his own countrymen. That, however, is just what happened ; but as he had become a refugee, his dwelling-house, said to be a rather fine building, was, in strict accordance with republican law, declared forfeited. The Government sold it to some favourite for a mere song, and the man who has bought it will certainly claim to retain possession, while it is equally certain that the man who has been dispossessed will think it very hard in a British settlement of affairs if he is to be robbed of his property because he would not remain to fight Great Britain. It is clear, however, that the new authorities will have to take the law or leave it ; they cannot administer it to suit their own sentiments, for that is just one of the evil things done by the Boers that, combined with others, have brought about the war. Another source of dispute and lawsuits will be found in a decree of the Executive Council at the beginning of the war, which was, I believe, issued for once with the best of intentions, but which will be provocative of untold confusion. It was ordered that during the continuance of martial law no interest or rent should be recoverable, except where it could be shown that there had been beneficial occupation of the property concerned. There was some reason in this, as it would be hard for a mortgager to have the interest on his bond mounting up while a state of war prevented his doing any business in the premises upon which the money was advanced. Equally hard, perhaps, for the mortgagee to bear the whole burden of war loss; but war presents numerous successions of hard cases. Already two views are held as to the meaning of the proclamation itself. By some it is held that the President's proclamation merely means that all courts would be closed during war-time, and that

interest and rent, while running on as usual, will not be recoverable until the close of the war. The more general view is that payments are intended to lapse altogether. As mortgages are all but universal in South Africa, business transactions will produce a large crop of disputes to settle over this one item alone, and as the continuance of daily business will depend upon settlement, the question will be most urgent. The Transvaal Government itself may be expected to contribute to the list of difficulties of this kind. The Transvaal is the scene of some of the most curious governmental arrangements in the world. When it becomes certain to Boer intelligence that the British will soon be in possession in Pretoria, I should not be surprised at an extensive transfer of the assets of the State, such as the interest of the Government in the Netherlands Railway Company. The undoing of such transactions may involve us in international complications. Strange as it may seem to say so, the very fact that the republics are to vanish. will make the work of settlement in some respects all the more difficult, as there will be nobody to look to for redress. The commandoes of the Boers have looted the property of colonists to an appalling extent, not merely capturing cattle for their commissariat-an act which has some of the excuse of war about it—but destroying everything, like so many savages. Who is to pay? Not the republics, for there will be none, and not the individual Boers, for we shall never be able to identify them. There will be no State assets to speak of, as everything will have gone in the war; and, moreover, Great Britain will have to assume the debts of the Transvaal if she takes the country. The reckoning with the mines will be a severe exercise of ingenuity. The Government has been working some mines itself, and taking a modest tax of one-third of the produce from others, and has been discriminating in treatment between those which appear to have most foreign names. on the register and those which are believed to be in English hands. Finally, there is some wild talk of wrecking

the mines altogether. Probably the only settlement of this series of difficulties will be for the unfortunate shareholders to resume possession of what is left of their properties and pocket their losses. In the Free State, of course, all questions are immeasurably simpler, as the Government has never played Pretorian pranks, and the population is more homogeneous. There is but one considerable diamondmine, the Jagersfontein Diamond - mine, and it is not believed that there will be any interference with it. The State has no debt to speak of, and no concessionary complications, while it has a good asset in its trunk line of railway acquired from the Cape Colony.

The new Government will be confronted with one special difficulty, easily to be compassed in the Free State, but of overwhelming dimensions in the Transvaal—I mean the manning of the Civil Service. In the Free State the Service is pure, and there is no reason why it should be interfered with. But the case is very different in the Transvaal. Of deliberate policy the Service has been filled with the foreigners whose intrigues against everything English have been one of the causes of the war. Anti. British patriotism has been made the screen for the most widespread corruption. There are some good men, Colonial Afrikanders and others, in various posts in the State, and it would seem a pity to drive them all out. I can only say that the presence of thousands of displaced Hollander officials will be very embarrassing to the new Government, while, on the other hand, it will never do to restore the reign of official insolence, incompetency, and corruption with which the country has been cursed. Altogether there never was such a tangle. What to do with the Presidents and high officers, whom to repress and whom to restore, how far to go in punishment of rebellion, these and a hundred questions, not to speak of those which the wisest of us cannot anticipate, might well tax the resources of archangels.

So much for the difficulties, which, however trying, must

in the nature of things be evanescent, since the settlement, good or bad, will have to be immediately made, if society is not to be left in a state of chaos. The territorial and constitutional difficulties of settlement have at least this consolatory aspect, that they can be postponed without interfering with the ordinary business of life. They are, however, the weightier of the two groups of questions, because their consequences will, in the nature of things, be the more permanent. Territorially it is understood that Natal is to have something. Ardent Natalians say, with no small voice, that that something should be--the Transvaal and the Free State. There has been talk of a Dominion League in Natal for securing any slices of territory that may be going. The advantage of strengthening Natal by extending her too narrow boundaries is cheerfully admitted by the British section in the Cape Colony. Probably the north-east corner of the Free State and the south-east corner of the Transvaal with Swazieland, will be found to meet the case. For the rest, it is possible that any rearrangements will be fissiparous. The eastern districts of the Cape would like to enter a confederation as a separate province from that containing the western districts, while Griqualand and Bechuanaland would probably also prefer a separate existence from the old Cape Colony. In Rhodesia, Mashonaland would hail with joy a provincial existence independent of Matabeleland. As to what is really likely to take place in these respects, it would be unsafe for the oldest colonist to hazard an opinion. Each side in the great quarrel is afraid of being gerrymandered into a minority in the juggling of settlement-not a very hopeful outlook for federation prospects.

We speak of

Supposed parallels are misleading. Canada; but in Canada the French population, presumed to be in some way the counterpart of the South African Dutch, are grouped for the most part in one portion of the country, and the remainder of Canadian land is occupied. by British Canadians as closely as England is occupied by