NOTE ATHE SOUTH AFRICAN NATION (1900).

NOTE ATHE SOUTH AFRICAN NATION (1900).The events of the last nine, and especially the last seven, years have thrown a curious light upon two statements in Chapter I, written in 1892:Firstly: the statement that the political division of South Africa into separate and self-governing states are divisions "of immense importance and by all means to be preserved."Secondly: the statement that there does exist a subtle internal union between all African states, which causes them to be, in spite of their complex and mixed structure, in a profound sense, one, and makes it impossible to attack and injure any one state without injuring all.South Africa forms naturally one national and distinct entity, widely dissevered from any other national entity, European or otherwise. It may be said that Australia, Canada, and New Zealand contain also the germs which will ultimately develop into distinct national entities; and this is undoubtedly true. As no sane man supposes that an infant will remain perpetually unweaned, or that a healthy sapling will not ultimately form its own bark, so it is inevitable that all healthy off-shoots from European peoples must ultimately form independent nations. But the position of these young countries is not analogous with that of South Africa; and as regards Australia, and especially New Zealand, it is in some respects fundamentally unlike our own.This difference lies in the groundwork of our national structure, and must be manifest to anyone who has given a few years to the impartial study of the problems which beset European races planted in new lands.One is probably not very far from the truth in stating that, roughly speaking, out of every thirty men and women born in Australia and New Zealand, from twenty-five to twenty-eight will be found to be of purely or almost purely English descent—using the word English as it is popularly, though misleadingly, used to include Keltic Irishmen and Scots.In South Africa, from the Zambesi to the mouth of the Orange River, southward to the sea, there are roughly calculated to be about 8,000,000 (eight millions) of souls. Now, out of this population, about 800,000, roughly speaking, are whites, about 400,000 being Dutch-Huguenot, about 260,000 British, and about 100,000 of other European nationalities. As regards persons of unmixed English blood, this is probably an over calculation, as a large number of persons popularly passing as "English" in South Africa are of blended French, Dutch, German and other extractions. But, accepting the persons of Irish, Scottish and English descent even at 300,000, they comprise about one-and-one-eighth of an Englishman in each thirty of the population. Or, to put the matter in another and more obvious light: Were to-morrow the entire population of purely or mainly British descent to leave Australia and New Zealand, those lands would at once be almost wholly depopulated. A few Maoris and quickly dwindling Australian aborigines, with a handful of Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes or Italians, and a sprinkling of Chinamen and other Asiatics, would be all that would be left. Practically, the lands would have been transformed into almost primeval solitudes. The working man, who forms the bulk of all nations, would have disappeared, and with him the farmer, the merchant, the professional man and the speculator. There would be no Australia and no New Zealand in the social sense, were all men of British descent suddenly to leave those lands.In South Africa, on the other hand, a condition entirely the reverse would be maintained. Were every man and woman of pure British descent to disappear to-morrow, no vital diminution in the entire bulk of our population would have taken place. The vast labouring classes who build our roads and bridges, cultivate our fields, tend our flocks, perform our domestic labour and work in our mines, would be left here almost entirely untouched in the persons of our dark citizens, who form an element in our population rapidly and always increasing, and of primary importance. From the Malay fisherman, cab driver, or washerwoman, to the Bantu herdsmen and mining hands and domestic servants, our labouring class, save in the person of a few skilled overseers and workmen, would still be here untouched. Our large white farming class would be but little reduced, while more than half our professional class, our doctors, lawyers, judges and civil servants would be left in numbers amply sufficient for the needs of the country; and while, in our seaport towns and mining centres, a large number of those engaged in commerce and speculation would be gone, at least 100,000 Jews and Europeans of all nationalities engaged in these occupations would still be left, in addition to a good number of Dutch-Huguenot descended inhabitants so employed.An element of importance, indeed, would have been abstracted from our complex communities, an element containing much of that which is noblest and most valuable in our national life, and also much that is sordid and unhealthy—but the South African people, the seed-beds of the great South African nation of the future, would still remain, as far as mere numbers are concerned, practically undiminished and untouched. The removal of the Anglo-Saxon element would affect South Africa as the sudden abstraction of its Jewish inhabitants of Great Britain would affect that land. The nation would be left intact, though an important and powerful element had disappeared.In eighty years' time, when New Zealand and Australia are powerful and independent nations, probably infinitely exceeding in health and virility the inhabitants of the little islands in the North Sea, from which the first white Australians and New Zealanders came, their inhabitants will differ profoundly from the inhabitants of Ireland, Scotland or England, in manners, in appearance, and in tastes, habits, and political and social institutions. They will certainly no more dream of having their policy of peace or war dictated to them nor their governors forced upon them by any of the electors of Great Britain, than a healthy and sane man of forty allows his great grandmother to dictate to him the hour of his retiring or the way in which he shall spend his pence (even now an Australian-born man may be distinguished almost at once from an Englishman born in Britain, and a spirit of independence and self-respect has grown not only in Canada, but in Australia and New Zealand); yet the population of these countries may quite possibly, even in eighty years' time, bear rather more resemblance to the inhabitants of the British Isles than to any other folk.In South Africa, on the other hand, in eighty years' time there will also be a great and independent nation, but it will be unique. It will be wholly unlike any other in the world. It will not be French or Dutch, though a large proportion of the blood in the veins of its white inhabitants will descend from these races; it will not be Russian nor Jewish, though Russian Jews are plentiful here; it will not be German, though German merchants, missionaries, doctors and agriculturists are to be found in every corner of the country; it will not be Scotch nor Irish, and assuredly it will not be English, though the blood of all these nationalities, Keltic and Teutonic, will be blended in the veins of the white South African of the future—it will be simplySouth African.So also our vast dark South African race will not be wholly Negroid. The blood of the brave Bantu folk may predominate, but it will be a race largely blended of Asiatic and other peoples;there will be strains of Dutch and French blood through the slave, of English blood through the English soldiers, and the Malay, the Indian, and even the Hottentot will have place in it. It will be simply the greatSouth African Dark Race, and assuredlynotEnglish. These two great blended varieties, dark and light, will form the South African nation of the future, their two streams of life, keeping, it may be, racially distinct for ages, but always interacting side by side and forming our South African nation.Our South African national structure in the future will not and cannot be identical with that of any other people, our national origin being so wholly unlike that of any other; our social polity must be developed by ourselves through the interaction of our parts with one another and in harmony with our complex needs. For good or evil, the South African nation will be an absolutely new thing under the sun, perhaps, owing to its mixture of races, possessing that strange vitality and originality which appears to rise so often from the mixture of human varieties: perhaps, in general human advance, ranking higher than other societies more simply constructed; perhaps lower—according as we shall shape it: but this, certainly—it will be a new social entity, with new problems, new gifts, new failings, new accomplishments.To-day, the different white elements of the South African nation are already entering upon a stage of rapid combination; South Africans whose ancestors were of English, French, German, Irish or Dutch descent are so rapidly intermarrying that, not in eighty, but in sixty years' time, if a man should pass through South Africa calling out for Frenchmen, Englishmen, Dutchmen or Germans, he would hear hardly a voice answer him; the reply will then be,—"We are all South Africans here."That we cannot be an English nation is certain; but in the past there has appeared no reason why we should not ultimately be a nation bound by ties of friendly feeling to England—as America might have been, had England left her internal concerns untouched a hundred years ago; as Australia and Canada may yet be, if she abstains from interfering with their internal affairs and does not shoot down the men born on their soil.Personally, we have always desired that this should be so.While it has always appeared that the first and most pressing care of the far-seeing and balanced South African statesman must lie in seeking to maintain the integrity and cultivate the individuality and strengthen the internal organization of each of the separate states, in order that each might have an individuality and an internal organization strong enough to make local self-government a sufficient counterpoise to the central power whenever federation was attempted;while, on the other hand, the hardly, if at all, secondary obligation upon the far-seeing South African statesman must lie in the direction of labouring to produce such co-operation and friendliness between the different South African states as might, at the end of another forty or sixty years, find them in a position naturally and spontaneously to federate upon equal terms: to federate, as in the case of the Swiss cantons, where the different divisions are not necessarily of one language or even race, but their geographical position and their interest make them, as regards the outer world, essentially one people.The federation we desired to see would then have been of a nature not strong enough to produce the incalculable evils of an over-centralized and universal government extending over a vast and diverse territory and over large numbers of diverse peoples, while yet it would have been strong enough to have united the different South Africa states against external aggression, to preserve internal peace, and to have formed a powerful central court for arbitration on all interstatal differences: a national structure which would combine as largely as possible the advantages of large and small states.All nations, all those organized bodies of men which have contributed greatly to the advance of humanity, have been organized in comparatively small numbers, and have occupied geographically small spaces. To this rule there appears to have been no exception in the past; and its cause is to be found deep in the psychologic structure of the human creature.Greece, which has probably on the whole contributed more to the fund total of the human race on earth, intellectually and spiritually than any other individual folk, was, even were all its states taken together, not so large as a minute fragment of South Africa. And even Greece was only Greece and enabled to accomplish that which she did by the intensely individual and autonomous development of minute separate parts. Athens, which territorially and in numbers was hardly larger than the Cape Peninsula, and Sparta, no larger than a small English county, have yet left the whole world immortally richer for their individual existences, in a manner which would not have been possible had they been more merged under one rule or forced into a common form of organization. The Jews, while that religion and literature were developing which has transformed Europe and reacted on the whole world, were but a small closely inter-bred tribe inhabiting a few stony valleys and plains. Holland, when she took the lead for civil and intellectual freedom, and won it, crushing to earth the unwieldy bulk of the Spanish Empire, was a tiny folk buried among a handful of sand-dunes in a remotecorner of Europe, her whole territory so minute it might be carved out of Russian or Chinese Empires to-day without sensibly abridging them. England herself, when in Queen Elizabeth's reign she had already produced that noble language which is one of her greatest productions, and was developing those representative institutions and that literature which are her pride, when she had produced Chaucer, Shakespeare and Bacon,thatEngland possessed neither an Ireland nor a Scotland nor any spot of earth beyond her own borders, and her entire population was no greater than that which to-day may be found diseased, ragged, and on the border of starvation, inhabiting the back slums of a few of her great Imperial cities.What humanity has attained in culture, in virtue, in freedom, in knowledge, and in the fullest development of the individual, it has owed to small, close, natural and spontaneous organizations of men—small tribes, small states, and, oftenest, to mere cities organized on a natural basis, with but a few miles of territory beneath their walls, owning their sway. Great empires, which have always originally sprung from such an individual, strong and healthful, national organization, but which have finally begun extending themselves by force over alien territories and over peoples not organically and spontaneously or even geographically bound to themselves, have always spelt decay and disease, not merely to themselves as larger social organizations, but to the very individual human creatures comprised within their bulky, unwieldy and unnatural entities.Rome, indeed, in the inflated and diseased days of her Imperial expansion, produced a Marcus Aurelius, as an unpruned and dying rose tree may produce one last gorgeous bloom; but, at the very time she held within her city walls the vastest hybrid population which had ever been gathered into one spot on earth, and her enervated limbs stretched across the world, it is doubtful whether she contained one-tenth as many individuals of civic virtue and intellectual and moral virility as were once to be found within her when her body social consisted of the small city on the seven hills and the plains and hills about it, which a man might walk across in a day.An empire based on force and controlled from a centre may indeed best be likened to an individual, naturally healthy and virile, who at a certain stage in his existence absorbes more nutriment than he requires, and who lays on a vast mass of adipose tissue, more especially abdominally, thus weighting the centres of life, leading to disease in the extremities, and finally ending in the death of the whole organism through heart failure.Mere size and weight, whether in the world of animal organization or social structure, is never necessarily indicative of vitality and longevity. The antediluvian creatures, whose bones alone are nowleft us in the earth's crust, infinitely exceeded in size any extant forms of life, but have had to give place to the more concentrated birds and beasts of our day, as the hippopotamus is to-day passing while the ant and the man remain. No madness more complete can possess a human brain than the conception that mere accretion in size and weight, whether in the individual or national organism, is necessarily an increase in strength or vitality, unless there be an increased interaction between all parts and an increase in the central vitality. One jelly-like tentacle of the deep sea octopus measures twelve feet, but the whole creature is lower in the scale of life, and probably expends less nervous force, than the bee or the humming bird. Increased size may, under certain conditions, spell increased strength; it may also spell death.Had it been possible, for example, in the days of Charlemagne for one central power permanently to crush the diverse individual nationalities which Europe has tended to divide herself into; had England, France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy been dominated over and crushed by one central power, so that their individual course of evolution along diverse lines had been stayed, and had they been forcibly bound under one rule into one large organism; the loss to the human race on earth would probably have been incalculable.Europe during the last thousand years would probably not have contributed much more to the sum total of human advance, in the direction of freedom and many-sided intellectual growth, than the vast Chinese Empire has contributed during the same period, or than the Roman Empire contributed during the last long centuries of its bloated existence.The national organization, controlled from one point and comprising a too vast multitude of humans, must, from that mere fact of size alone and apart from any other defect, tend to become inert. Even supposing free representative institutions universally to prevail, as they never have in any empire, past or present—(for in the British Empire of to-day a few million voters control the entire central government of Great Britain, while in India alone there are over two hundred millions of British subjects who have no representative institutions whatever and who are dominated over by the central body of voters)—and supposing each individual within a vast empire to be endowed with a share in its government, the share of power and control would be exceedingly minute and infinitesimal as regards the central power, and the bulk of citizens would be, of necessity, so far removed from that centre that that intensity of civic life and consciousness of responsibility, which alone makes democratic government healthful, and which exists easilyin a small state or a tribe, where the government is as it were under the eyes of all and where each individual tells sensibly on the body politic,cannot exist.Yet further, the inertness caused by mere excess of numbers under a central rule is but one cause of the inefficacy and unhealthiness of all vast empires. A central government, extending its sway over widely severed and diverse parts of the earth's surface and therefore over bodies of humans in diverse social and physical conditions, is a yet more fertile source of social disease and of enervation and deterioration to the individuals comprised in the body. The very fact, that the government and institutions of a wide empire are exactly suited to the wants of the original central dominant body, makes it impossible that the same government and institutions should be equally suited to peoples geographically remote and under socially diverse conditions. Each shell-fish lives best and healthfully only in the shell it has itself secreted; the cuttle-fish glides through the sea better in its own coarse chalky shield than were it forced into the most elaborate and gorgeous mantle that was ever developed by a nautilus: and human institutions or governments are good or bad exactly as shells are, not abstractedly, but as they harmonize with the wants of the living creatures they are bound to. As even the hermit crab, who makes his home in the shells he has not secreted, can only live and develop on condition of his choosing his own shell; forced between the pearled valves of an oyster or a mussel he will die miserably; so even a noble and virile alien people, when compelled to adapt themselves to the institutions and government developed with regard to the needs of humans in other lands and under distinct conditions, is bound miserably to decay if not to become extinct.The central government of a vast empire, if it spreads its control over diverse or unlike territories or peoples, spells death and disease to them, not necessarily because it is evil in itself, but because it has not been gradually and spontaneously evolved with regard to the needs of the diverse units themselves. The better the shell fits the form of the creature who secreted it, the more deadly it may be when forced artificially over another.Freedom and health for a folk desiring a tribal head is the right to possess him and to live and die for him; for a people with republican instincts is the right to republican institutions; for folk with an inclination towards monarchy, a monarchical rule; national slavery is the compulsory participation in alien institutions. Were an empire based on force yet ruled entirely by a desire to govern for the benefit of the subject nations and not for the subject powers (as none up to the present has ever been), it would still be a disease-producing, freedom-limiting institution; but, based as all empiresup to the present have been, on self interest, Imperialism spells the death of all healthful human readjustments and developments.Even where the parts of a large body social arenotheld together by merely external force, where a very great degree of real homogeneitydoesexist between all its parts, the evils of a much centralized rule are always manifest. It may be questioned whether even France, which is essentially one entity in many respects, has not suffered during the last century, and does not owe many of her difficulties and political perturbations, to that system of over-centralized control and uniformity of local institutions introduced by Napoleon, which has not left sufficient autonomy and self control to the really, in many minor respects, distinct provinces of France; and it is more than open to question whether Germany, almost compelled as she has been in self defence to sacrifice the independence and individuality of her component states during the last twenty years, has not intellectually and morally lost almost as much as she would by foreign domination, by her more centralized government: while in England the attempt forcibly to incorporate Ireland with herself, and govern a closely allied yet differing people, though divided only by a narrow strip of sea, has resulted in centuries of social disease and suffering for Ireland and of moral disease and instability for England.Imperialism is the euphonious title of a deadly disease which under certain conditions tends to afflict the human race on earth. It increases in virulency in proportion as it is extended over more distant spaces and more diverse multitudes, till it becomes at last the death shroud of the nations.It is undoubtedly true that the existence of more rapid means of intercommunication have, during the last centuries, made possible the existence of larger health aggregates than were possible in earlier times, when the small tribe and the city with a few leagues of earth about it formed invariably the largest national organization which was compatible with full social health and the highest human development. To-day, New York and San Francisco are in fact almost as close to each other as Athens and Sparta were two thousand years ago; but even to-day no vast social organism, large both as to numbers and geographical extent, such as the United States of America, could possibly exist with even tolerable healthfulness, were it not for the fact of the complete internal autonomy, individual organization and strength of its separate component states; and, above all, for the important and controlling fact,that the bond between the different states is not Imperial, is not the domination of one central state over others, but an equal confederacy of all.Had the United States of America been united on the Imperial basis of one state dominating and guiding others, not even the moreor less homogeneous nature of its peoples, or the internal autonomy of its separate states, could have kept its vast masses in even that condition of social health and freedom in which we find them to-day.And further, were the separate states of America not conterminous, but widely scattered over the earth, that powerful and vital confederacy as it now exists would be impossible. If New Hampshire were in America, Maine in India, and Virginia in Northern Russia, the band which to-day naturally and strongly unites them could not exist.Few persons who have not given special study to the subject appear to grasp adequately the extent of variation which mere geographical division and the exposure to extremely unlike physical conditions produces in human individuals and in human societies, demanding a corresponding difference in government and institutions. Were two infants removed from each other at birth, the one to be brought up in Finland and the other in India, the mere climatic and physical differences would, at the end of forty years, have rendered them highly dissimilar both in physical constitutions and in many intellectual and material wants, while their descendants at the end of six generations would certainly represent distinct human varieties, for which distinct laws and institutions would be requisite. The effects of geographical severance, dissimilarities in climate and physical surroundings, can never for a moment be lost sight of, in dealing with national questions, without fatal results.Even in the United States of America, in spite of its territorial continuity and the more or less homogeneous nature of its mixed population and the strongly autonomous structure of its separate states, it is still almost open to question (though this is a matter only to be dealt with by one who has long and closely studied the constitution of the United States from within) whether the political life of that vast mass of humanity might not be healthier, its vitality greater, and the individuality of the separate citizens more strengthened, if the whole were divided into two or even three federal bodies instead of one. This at least is certain, that if ever America be tempted to lay aside her great fundamental principle of Equal Federation and geographical continuity, and to adopt in her corporate capacity the principle of Imperial rule by dominating and subjecting distant lands and alien peoples whom she does not absorb into her body politic on equal terms, then she will have introduced into her national life an element which will first morally, and finally materially, disorganize her and in the end lead to the break-up of her great and at present virile body politic; and the world will have to look elsewhere for the most advanced type of social evolution.Napoleon attempted to unite Europe by breaking down its stateswith iron and re-cementing them with blood under the centralized control of France. His attempt failed, as all Imperialistic attempts must ultimately fail which seek to accomplish by force a union which can only healthily come into being through internal necessity and the gradual co-adaptation of ages. And if across the years the dim outline of the Confederate States of Europe may already be seen looming by the attentive eye, it is certain that not the Imperial nightmare, but the noble dream of a free and equal union, will find its realization in that confederacy.If one turns further from the consideration of the separate states and organizations as they exist to-day to the far wider inquiry, what is the desirable and possible ultimate form of organization for the entire human race? it has always appeared to us that there can be but one answer.Probably no powerful and far-seeing mind entertains as possible, and still less regards as desirable were it possible, the existence in the future of a world in which all the interesting and many-sided varieties into which the human race has blossomed during its evolution on earth are cut down and supplanted by any one single variety, more particularly if that variety be not one to which the far-seeing and powerful mind belongs! A Frenchized, Germanized, Russianized, Englishized, Chineseized globe is a nightmare, perhaps only seriously conceived of as a possible reality in the mind of the ignorant man in the street of all nations, eaten up, as such minds are, by a stupendous national egoism, such as might be entertained by an ant who believed his noble ant heap would ultimately cover the whole globe. The ideal of a one-nation-dominated globe can as little satisfy a broad human intelligence as the ideal of a zoological garden populated solely by hippopotami would satisfy a broadly scientific one.To ourselves it has always appeared inevitable that, if continued growth and development of the race are to be maintained, and humanity to blossom into its fairest and most harmonious development possible on earth, progress must always necessarily be along two lines. On the other hand, not only must the independence and freedom of the separate individuals advance, but the independence and individuality of each human variety must continue to increase; while, on the one hand, a certain broad sympathy, rising from an interchange of material and intellectual benefits and a perception of the profound unity which underlies all human diversity, must draw together the different human varieties and races; as to-day the recognized bonds of the family and the nation unite diverse individuals. As the loftiest form of individual relationship is not the forcible bond which binds the slave and the animal to itsmaster, nor even the relation of individuals identical in blood or character, but the noble companionship of persons wholly distinct, equally free, equally independent, complementing by their diversity each other's existence; so the ideal of international and racial relationships is not one of subjection and dominance or of identity, but of complementary interaction.The ultimate chant of the human race on earth is not to be conceived of as a monotone chanted on one note by one form of humanity alone, but rather a choral symphony chanted by all races and all nations in diverse tones on different notes in one grand complex harmony. The vision of the Hebrew prophet when he cried out that the lamb and the wolf should yet lie down together and the weaned child put its hand in the cockatrice's den is the negation of the desire that the lion, having consumed the lamb, should lie alone switching his tail on his sand heap, and the cockatrice, having stung the young child to death, should peer forth from the door of its den on a landscape he had rendered desolate. Not in the extermination of earth's varied races, or the dominance of any one over all, or the annihilation of those complexities and varieties in humanity which form its beauty, not in a universal Imperial rule, but in a free and equal federation of all, lies the ultimate goal of humanity, which, being reached, alone can its fairest proportion be attained.It is difficult to believe that the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century will have passed away before that wave of exploitation and destruction, vomited forth by the nations of Europe, led by England in her drunken orgie of Imperialism, based on capitalism, and which now threatens to sweep across the earth, disrupting and destroying its peoples and their individuality, will have met with the command, "Hereto shalt thou come and no further!" and the drenched peoples of earth, after their blood bath, shall again lift up their heads.Already, to-day, he who notes keenly may feel faintly and from afar the first suck-in which is ultimately to withdraw that wave and leave the deluged and devastated earth to pursue its own slow complex path of progress.To anyone holding this view with regard to the ultimate development of humanity at large, one and only one attitude is possible in dealing with the problems and questions concerning our own smaller South African world. For one holding the view, it is impossible to regard with other than sympathy each of our South African states, or to desire anything but their strength and development, while at the same time he desires a growing bond of sympathy and fellowship between all.For myself, I have never been able to regard other than with deep well-wishing the different political organisms into which South Africa has more or less spontaneously divided itself; and have been compelled to desire to see them each rather strengthened and individualized than dominated and crushed by, or even merged into, another. I have not only desired that the Free State and Transvaal might each grow into strong, highly organized social entities, but one is compelled to desire (though at present without much hope of realization) that such small native states as Basutoland or even Pondoland might be left for fifty or sixty years to pursue their own internal course of evolution, and so enabling some of our native folk to attain to a fuller and more natural development than is possible if they are all forced into the vortex of our so-called modern material civilization. I have regretted the annexation of Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony, and should deeply regret the amalgamation of Mashona and Matabeleland with any other African state, or the merging of Natal and the Cape Colony into one; believing all these territories are quite large enough ultimately to form healthy units: and I have been quite unable to go with the monopolists and speculators in the past, who have desired for their own reasons that English influence should be eliminated. I have no more desired its elimination than I have regretted the existence of the Germans in Damaraland or the Portuguese on the east coast, believing that by the complexity of our elements was produced a healthy friction, preventing that dominance of any one central, overbearing power, which is the death of true freedom. I have never desired for my birthland that all interstatal lines should be broken down and the whole welded into one uniform mass with only a shadow of self-government in its separate parts: an ideal so dear to the heart of the autocrat in all ages, whether capitalist or military despot, who recognizes in each strong interstatal line or conservative institution a kind of embankment resisting his central despotism. Rather, if the truth be told, I have nourished with regard to England's part in South Africa a very lofty ambition. I have desired that my motherland might play a very high part, such as perhaps some great people may in the future play in the world's history at large. I have dreamed that it was possible for the influence of England always to make itself felt as a freeing, co-ordinating element among our varying states and peoples, an element which made for the strengthening and protecting of all weaker and smaller states and peoples; I have dreamed that England, desiring nothing for herself, might be able to hold the balance between all our states and peoples; I have desired for her an Empire, an eternal Empire, not based on force but on the reverence and faith of all peoples struggling for freedomthroughout the earth. I have dreamed that when, in forty or sixty years' time, South Africa, its states grown internally strong enough, healthfully and without sacrificing their different systems of internal self-government to federate, federated, took her place beside the world's other large national entities, though the majority of her inhabitants could never be English in descent, and South Africa would be a nation as independent and self-controlling as America or France, that yet a peculiarly close and tender bond might for ever bind her to England.Among human relationships there is one which, though not common, perhaps few beings have been so fortunate as not once to have seen realized, and which constitutes one of the bravest and fairest in the whole domain of human fellowships. It is the bond which exists between a large and generous woman, who, through marriage having thrown into her hands children not her own by blood, yet through all their infancy and early childhood guards and labours for as her own, asking nothing for herself, giving all: desiring not to use her power for her own ends, not favouring those of her own blood unduly, but seeking to aid those in her power to attain most successfully to the freedom and independence of adult life.Those who have been so fortunate as at least once to have seen a woman so nobly using her powers will also have seen her rewarded by a love and devotion from the children not her own yet greater than that which is often given to a mother by the children of the blood.Such is the bond I have dreamed should permanently bind England to South Africa.One has indeed desired that a bond of good fellowship should bind all nations to our own young nation at the South. We, here, guarded by the vast expanses of our southern seas on every hand, with our wild, tempestuous and rocky coasts and our few and easily guarded harbours, are indeed singularly well situated by nature, when once internally united, for living in peace and freedom, untouched by foreign strife. But I, at least, have deeply desired that, with the men and women in the little Island in the North, a peculiarly tender bond should unite us; rising from the memory of great benefits conferred, without self-seeking, when the people of Great Africa were small and young, and England old and strong.Even ten years ago it seemed to me not wholly unreasonable to hope that this ambition might yet be realized.True, there had been in the past even then terrible and grievous mistakes on the part of England; the step-mother of the South African people was, one knew, a step-mother with a not quite certain temper; but when one remembered that England had in the past sent out to South Africa such men as Sir George Grey, that freshfrom Ireland came Sir William Porter, and that in spite of astonishing occasional aberrations there had frequently been a tendency on the part of the ruling power in England to make for a course of rectitude in South Africa, I do not think that dream was wholly unjustifiable, or that one who dreamed it need necessarily have been deemed a madman. Even ten years ago it still seemed within the range of possibility that, when the time came for the official separation between England and South Africa (as it must come between all lands and the old peoples on the other side of the globe; as it will come to Australia and New Zealand and Canada), that when that time came, little as was England's share in the blood of South Africa, there might yet be a tough cable of affection stretching across the six thousand miles of sea, and binding the hearts of South Africans, Dutch, English, German, French or African in origin, to the hearts of the people in the little Isles of the North.To-day, England has made the realization of that dream an impossibility.The first deadly blow was struck at its attainment when, by the instalment of the Chartered Company and the lending of her flag and her sword to a handful of wealthy or aristocratic speculators, she, by condoning their actions towards the African native in Matabeleland and more especially in Mashonaland, made it clear to the intelligent native all over South Africa that from England, under the capitalist control, and under the flag of England, when held aloft by speculators there is nothing to be looked for: that tenderer were the mercies to be hoped for from the roughest Boer or African-English Colonist than from the foreign speculators who acted in England's name.A little later, by countenancing the Raid made upon a European South African state by the same corporation, England, through condonation of their conduct by princelings and politicians, made it clear to the bulk of the white Africans also that, however true to nobler and older traditions might be the hearts of a large section of the English people, the Union Jack was now fallen into the hands of those who had made it dangerous to the peace of Africa; that the flag we had loved as the flag of freedom was become a "Commercial Asset" and waved over the heads of marauders.I think this struck the death-blow to the noblest possibilities of the English Empire over the hearts of South Africans; but there was even then hope left.To-day (writing in the last months of the year 1900), guided by the hands of the same men, England is attempting to crush the independence of our two Republican states. Whether for a time she will succeed or not is still a matter of doubt. But that she has committed suicide in South Africa is a matter for no doubt.Should she succeed in carrying out the speculators' dream of breaking down all the interstatal lines which have stood out as so many small ramparts behind which freedom could hide and which broke into parts the wave of capitalist aggression as it swept on; should England by forcible means, succeed, violently and against their will, in combining to-day all South African states under one central foreign government and forcing them prematurely into a national union, she may indeed form the United States of South Africa forty years sooner than they would spontaneously have been formed—but it will not be for herself.England should clearly understand: It is not for herself that she is to-day attempting violently and by force to push open the rose of the South Africa national existence before its time. She will never wear it.We have not desired it should be forced thus. A flower pushed artificially open by coarse fingers always has something ragged in its appearance; its bloom is never so fair and harmonious as one that has opened spontaneously under the influence of sun and air. We regret the premature and violent opening of our South African rose. But, let England mark this well; it is not for herself that she has torn and forced it: it will never bloom on her bosom.Among all the elements connected with our complex South African world, England has had most to gain by its division into separate states. She has had more influence in South Africa than in Australia or New Zealand or Canada, simply because of its strongly politically divided structure. Once break up these parts and cement them thoroughly with human blood, shed on the battlefield and the scaffold, into one solid whole, and South Africa can stand alone: it will have passed suddenly amid the heat and anguish of battle and martyrdom through adolescence on to manhood.Should England succeed for a time in crushing the two Republics, and, by means of keeping a hundred thousand armed men always on the soil, and, through blood and fire, succeed in holding them down for a moment, or should she not succeed—she has equally brought half a century nearer the time when she will have in South Africa not the hoof of one war horse, not the foot of one of her soldiers shall she be able to land on South Africa's shores. Fate has allowed England to make her choice between forming a fostering and sheltering element to our national germ, to remain for ever bound by ties of affection and gratitude to the great nation which in the future must rise from our blended peoples, or being the dominator and oppressor of an hour: then to depart for ever.The lower element in the English nation haschosen, and by that choice she and we must now abide.Out of the whitened bones of the English soldiers who havefallen bravely fighting in South Africa fate is rearing up a great cairn, beneath which lie buried for ever the noblest possibilities of the English people.The regeneration of nations, as of individuals, is possible, and for the English people there may still be a great and noble future, a future which shall produce in the little Island of the North men worthy to be successors to the noblest of her sons of the past. She may still walk in the path of freedom and humanity, though she can no more lead; but it can only be when, after mighty and agonizing social upheavals, she has reorganized her own social structure.What ails the race to-day in the little Island of the North is that there has been an irruption of the lower and more sordid elements in her body politic over its entire surface, where they have formed as it were an upper crust: as over some green land there might be a physical eruption of scoriæ and sulphurous lava forming a crust over what had been once green fields and fruitful plains. Never, till the healthier strata within the nation have arisen and cracked up and thrown off the plutocratic crust which has caked over its national existence, will vigour and health be restored to it.The future may have a great task in store for that little Island of the North we once loved so and towards which our hearts still call; she may yet lead the world by showing how a community may so reorganize and reshape itself that it may pass from death to life. But she will now have to move along her own path; we on ours—till, it may be, across the ages, we meet again, in the free confederacy of all the world's peoples.A terrible and irrevocable "Might have been" has been written by fate over the possibilities of England in South Africa.The little vessel of the North Sea may still be sound, but, while her sails are manned and her rudder guided as they are to-day, she drifts towards the rocks. It may be that after the shock she will recover herself and re-man her vessel: forHer timbers yet are sound,And she may float again!It may be that her flag washed from its stain will be no more a "Commercial Asset," and that it may yet float free in the air, the banner of freedom, peace and justice of our dreams—Our glorious Semper Eadem,The banner of our pride!—but while it remains in the hand of those who hold it to-day she can but follow the march of humanity, from its rear.While England is given over to the hands of a plutocracy, she cannot lead or guide other nations on the path towards freedom.We are trying to save ourselves: let her try to save herself.

The events of the last nine, and especially the last seven, years have thrown a curious light upon two statements in Chapter I, written in 1892:

Firstly: the statement that the political division of South Africa into separate and self-governing states are divisions "of immense importance and by all means to be preserved."

Secondly: the statement that there does exist a subtle internal union between all African states, which causes them to be, in spite of their complex and mixed structure, in a profound sense, one, and makes it impossible to attack and injure any one state without injuring all.

South Africa forms naturally one national and distinct entity, widely dissevered from any other national entity, European or otherwise. It may be said that Australia, Canada, and New Zealand contain also the germs which will ultimately develop into distinct national entities; and this is undoubtedly true. As no sane man supposes that an infant will remain perpetually unweaned, or that a healthy sapling will not ultimately form its own bark, so it is inevitable that all healthy off-shoots from European peoples must ultimately form independent nations. But the position of these young countries is not analogous with that of South Africa; and as regards Australia, and especially New Zealand, it is in some respects fundamentally unlike our own.

This difference lies in the groundwork of our national structure, and must be manifest to anyone who has given a few years to the impartial study of the problems which beset European races planted in new lands.

One is probably not very far from the truth in stating that, roughly speaking, out of every thirty men and women born in Australia and New Zealand, from twenty-five to twenty-eight will be found to be of purely or almost purely English descent—using the word English as it is popularly, though misleadingly, used to include Keltic Irishmen and Scots.

In South Africa, from the Zambesi to the mouth of the Orange River, southward to the sea, there are roughly calculated to be about 8,000,000 (eight millions) of souls. Now, out of this population, about 800,000, roughly speaking, are whites, about 400,000 being Dutch-Huguenot, about 260,000 British, and about 100,000 of other European nationalities. As regards persons of unmixed English blood, this is probably an over calculation, as a large number of persons popularly passing as "English" in South Africa are of blended French, Dutch, German and other extractions. But, accepting the persons of Irish, Scottish and English descent even at 300,000, they comprise about one-and-one-eighth of an Englishman in each thirty of the population. Or, to put the matter in another and more obvious light: Were to-morrow the entire population of purely or mainly British descent to leave Australia and New Zealand, those lands would at once be almost wholly depopulated. A few Maoris and quickly dwindling Australian aborigines, with a handful of Frenchmen, Germans, Swedes or Italians, and a sprinkling of Chinamen and other Asiatics, would be all that would be left. Practically, the lands would have been transformed into almost primeval solitudes. The working man, who forms the bulk of all nations, would have disappeared, and with him the farmer, the merchant, the professional man and the speculator. There would be no Australia and no New Zealand in the social sense, were all men of British descent suddenly to leave those lands.

In South Africa, on the other hand, a condition entirely the reverse would be maintained. Were every man and woman of pure British descent to disappear to-morrow, no vital diminution in the entire bulk of our population would have taken place. The vast labouring classes who build our roads and bridges, cultivate our fields, tend our flocks, perform our domestic labour and work in our mines, would be left here almost entirely untouched in the persons of our dark citizens, who form an element in our population rapidly and always increasing, and of primary importance. From the Malay fisherman, cab driver, or washerwoman, to the Bantu herdsmen and mining hands and domestic servants, our labouring class, save in the person of a few skilled overseers and workmen, would still be here untouched. Our large white farming class would be but little reduced, while more than half our professional class, our doctors, lawyers, judges and civil servants would be left in numbers amply sufficient for the needs of the country; and while, in our seaport towns and mining centres, a large number of those engaged in commerce and speculation would be gone, at least 100,000 Jews and Europeans of all nationalities engaged in these occupations would still be left, in addition to a good number of Dutch-Huguenot descended inhabitants so employed.

An element of importance, indeed, would have been abstracted from our complex communities, an element containing much of that which is noblest and most valuable in our national life, and also much that is sordid and unhealthy—but the South African people, the seed-beds of the great South African nation of the future, would still remain, as far as mere numbers are concerned, practically undiminished and untouched. The removal of the Anglo-Saxon element would affect South Africa as the sudden abstraction of its Jewish inhabitants of Great Britain would affect that land. The nation would be left intact, though an important and powerful element had disappeared.

In eighty years' time, when New Zealand and Australia are powerful and independent nations, probably infinitely exceeding in health and virility the inhabitants of the little islands in the North Sea, from which the first white Australians and New Zealanders came, their inhabitants will differ profoundly from the inhabitants of Ireland, Scotland or England, in manners, in appearance, and in tastes, habits, and political and social institutions. They will certainly no more dream of having their policy of peace or war dictated to them nor their governors forced upon them by any of the electors of Great Britain, than a healthy and sane man of forty allows his great grandmother to dictate to him the hour of his retiring or the way in which he shall spend his pence (even now an Australian-born man may be distinguished almost at once from an Englishman born in Britain, and a spirit of independence and self-respect has grown not only in Canada, but in Australia and New Zealand); yet the population of these countries may quite possibly, even in eighty years' time, bear rather more resemblance to the inhabitants of the British Isles than to any other folk.

In South Africa, on the other hand, in eighty years' time there will also be a great and independent nation, but it will be unique. It will be wholly unlike any other in the world. It will not be French or Dutch, though a large proportion of the blood in the veins of its white inhabitants will descend from these races; it will not be Russian nor Jewish, though Russian Jews are plentiful here; it will not be German, though German merchants, missionaries, doctors and agriculturists are to be found in every corner of the country; it will not be Scotch nor Irish, and assuredly it will not be English, though the blood of all these nationalities, Keltic and Teutonic, will be blended in the veins of the white South African of the future—it will be simplySouth African.

So also our vast dark South African race will not be wholly Negroid. The blood of the brave Bantu folk may predominate, but it will be a race largely blended of Asiatic and other peoples;there will be strains of Dutch and French blood through the slave, of English blood through the English soldiers, and the Malay, the Indian, and even the Hottentot will have place in it. It will be simply the greatSouth African Dark Race, and assuredlynotEnglish. These two great blended varieties, dark and light, will form the South African nation of the future, their two streams of life, keeping, it may be, racially distinct for ages, but always interacting side by side and forming our South African nation.

Our South African national structure in the future will not and cannot be identical with that of any other people, our national origin being so wholly unlike that of any other; our social polity must be developed by ourselves through the interaction of our parts with one another and in harmony with our complex needs. For good or evil, the South African nation will be an absolutely new thing under the sun, perhaps, owing to its mixture of races, possessing that strange vitality and originality which appears to rise so often from the mixture of human varieties: perhaps, in general human advance, ranking higher than other societies more simply constructed; perhaps lower—according as we shall shape it: but this, certainly—it will be a new social entity, with new problems, new gifts, new failings, new accomplishments.

To-day, the different white elements of the South African nation are already entering upon a stage of rapid combination; South Africans whose ancestors were of English, French, German, Irish or Dutch descent are so rapidly intermarrying that, not in eighty, but in sixty years' time, if a man should pass through South Africa calling out for Frenchmen, Englishmen, Dutchmen or Germans, he would hear hardly a voice answer him; the reply will then be,—"We are all South Africans here."

That we cannot be an English nation is certain; but in the past there has appeared no reason why we should not ultimately be a nation bound by ties of friendly feeling to England—as America might have been, had England left her internal concerns untouched a hundred years ago; as Australia and Canada may yet be, if she abstains from interfering with their internal affairs and does not shoot down the men born on their soil.

Personally, we have always desired that this should be so.

While it has always appeared that the first and most pressing care of the far-seeing and balanced South African statesman must lie in seeking to maintain the integrity and cultivate the individuality and strengthen the internal organization of each of the separate states, in order that each might have an individuality and an internal organization strong enough to make local self-government a sufficient counterpoise to the central power whenever federation was attempted;while, on the other hand, the hardly, if at all, secondary obligation upon the far-seeing South African statesman must lie in the direction of labouring to produce such co-operation and friendliness between the different South African states as might, at the end of another forty or sixty years, find them in a position naturally and spontaneously to federate upon equal terms: to federate, as in the case of the Swiss cantons, where the different divisions are not necessarily of one language or even race, but their geographical position and their interest make them, as regards the outer world, essentially one people.

The federation we desired to see would then have been of a nature not strong enough to produce the incalculable evils of an over-centralized and universal government extending over a vast and diverse territory and over large numbers of diverse peoples, while yet it would have been strong enough to have united the different South Africa states against external aggression, to preserve internal peace, and to have formed a powerful central court for arbitration on all interstatal differences: a national structure which would combine as largely as possible the advantages of large and small states.

All nations, all those organized bodies of men which have contributed greatly to the advance of humanity, have been organized in comparatively small numbers, and have occupied geographically small spaces. To this rule there appears to have been no exception in the past; and its cause is to be found deep in the psychologic structure of the human creature.

Greece, which has probably on the whole contributed more to the fund total of the human race on earth, intellectually and spiritually than any other individual folk, was, even were all its states taken together, not so large as a minute fragment of South Africa. And even Greece was only Greece and enabled to accomplish that which she did by the intensely individual and autonomous development of minute separate parts. Athens, which territorially and in numbers was hardly larger than the Cape Peninsula, and Sparta, no larger than a small English county, have yet left the whole world immortally richer for their individual existences, in a manner which would not have been possible had they been more merged under one rule or forced into a common form of organization. The Jews, while that religion and literature were developing which has transformed Europe and reacted on the whole world, were but a small closely inter-bred tribe inhabiting a few stony valleys and plains. Holland, when she took the lead for civil and intellectual freedom, and won it, crushing to earth the unwieldy bulk of the Spanish Empire, was a tiny folk buried among a handful of sand-dunes in a remotecorner of Europe, her whole territory so minute it might be carved out of Russian or Chinese Empires to-day without sensibly abridging them. England herself, when in Queen Elizabeth's reign she had already produced that noble language which is one of her greatest productions, and was developing those representative institutions and that literature which are her pride, when she had produced Chaucer, Shakespeare and Bacon,thatEngland possessed neither an Ireland nor a Scotland nor any spot of earth beyond her own borders, and her entire population was no greater than that which to-day may be found diseased, ragged, and on the border of starvation, inhabiting the back slums of a few of her great Imperial cities.

What humanity has attained in culture, in virtue, in freedom, in knowledge, and in the fullest development of the individual, it has owed to small, close, natural and spontaneous organizations of men—small tribes, small states, and, oftenest, to mere cities organized on a natural basis, with but a few miles of territory beneath their walls, owning their sway. Great empires, which have always originally sprung from such an individual, strong and healthful, national organization, but which have finally begun extending themselves by force over alien territories and over peoples not organically and spontaneously or even geographically bound to themselves, have always spelt decay and disease, not merely to themselves as larger social organizations, but to the very individual human creatures comprised within their bulky, unwieldy and unnatural entities.

Rome, indeed, in the inflated and diseased days of her Imperial expansion, produced a Marcus Aurelius, as an unpruned and dying rose tree may produce one last gorgeous bloom; but, at the very time she held within her city walls the vastest hybrid population which had ever been gathered into one spot on earth, and her enervated limbs stretched across the world, it is doubtful whether she contained one-tenth as many individuals of civic virtue and intellectual and moral virility as were once to be found within her when her body social consisted of the small city on the seven hills and the plains and hills about it, which a man might walk across in a day.

An empire based on force and controlled from a centre may indeed best be likened to an individual, naturally healthy and virile, who at a certain stage in his existence absorbes more nutriment than he requires, and who lays on a vast mass of adipose tissue, more especially abdominally, thus weighting the centres of life, leading to disease in the extremities, and finally ending in the death of the whole organism through heart failure.

Mere size and weight, whether in the world of animal organization or social structure, is never necessarily indicative of vitality and longevity. The antediluvian creatures, whose bones alone are nowleft us in the earth's crust, infinitely exceeded in size any extant forms of life, but have had to give place to the more concentrated birds and beasts of our day, as the hippopotamus is to-day passing while the ant and the man remain. No madness more complete can possess a human brain than the conception that mere accretion in size and weight, whether in the individual or national organism, is necessarily an increase in strength or vitality, unless there be an increased interaction between all parts and an increase in the central vitality. One jelly-like tentacle of the deep sea octopus measures twelve feet, but the whole creature is lower in the scale of life, and probably expends less nervous force, than the bee or the humming bird. Increased size may, under certain conditions, spell increased strength; it may also spell death.

Had it been possible, for example, in the days of Charlemagne for one central power permanently to crush the diverse individual nationalities which Europe has tended to divide herself into; had England, France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland and Italy been dominated over and crushed by one central power, so that their individual course of evolution along diverse lines had been stayed, and had they been forcibly bound under one rule into one large organism; the loss to the human race on earth would probably have been incalculable.

Europe during the last thousand years would probably not have contributed much more to the sum total of human advance, in the direction of freedom and many-sided intellectual growth, than the vast Chinese Empire has contributed during the same period, or than the Roman Empire contributed during the last long centuries of its bloated existence.

The national organization, controlled from one point and comprising a too vast multitude of humans, must, from that mere fact of size alone and apart from any other defect, tend to become inert. Even supposing free representative institutions universally to prevail, as they never have in any empire, past or present—(for in the British Empire of to-day a few million voters control the entire central government of Great Britain, while in India alone there are over two hundred millions of British subjects who have no representative institutions whatever and who are dominated over by the central body of voters)—and supposing each individual within a vast empire to be endowed with a share in its government, the share of power and control would be exceedingly minute and infinitesimal as regards the central power, and the bulk of citizens would be, of necessity, so far removed from that centre that that intensity of civic life and consciousness of responsibility, which alone makes democratic government healthful, and which exists easilyin a small state or a tribe, where the government is as it were under the eyes of all and where each individual tells sensibly on the body politic,cannot exist.

Yet further, the inertness caused by mere excess of numbers under a central rule is but one cause of the inefficacy and unhealthiness of all vast empires. A central government, extending its sway over widely severed and diverse parts of the earth's surface and therefore over bodies of humans in diverse social and physical conditions, is a yet more fertile source of social disease and of enervation and deterioration to the individuals comprised in the body. The very fact, that the government and institutions of a wide empire are exactly suited to the wants of the original central dominant body, makes it impossible that the same government and institutions should be equally suited to peoples geographically remote and under socially diverse conditions. Each shell-fish lives best and healthfully only in the shell it has itself secreted; the cuttle-fish glides through the sea better in its own coarse chalky shield than were it forced into the most elaborate and gorgeous mantle that was ever developed by a nautilus: and human institutions or governments are good or bad exactly as shells are, not abstractedly, but as they harmonize with the wants of the living creatures they are bound to. As even the hermit crab, who makes his home in the shells he has not secreted, can only live and develop on condition of his choosing his own shell; forced between the pearled valves of an oyster or a mussel he will die miserably; so even a noble and virile alien people, when compelled to adapt themselves to the institutions and government developed with regard to the needs of humans in other lands and under distinct conditions, is bound miserably to decay if not to become extinct.

The central government of a vast empire, if it spreads its control over diverse or unlike territories or peoples, spells death and disease to them, not necessarily because it is evil in itself, but because it has not been gradually and spontaneously evolved with regard to the needs of the diverse units themselves. The better the shell fits the form of the creature who secreted it, the more deadly it may be when forced artificially over another.

Freedom and health for a folk desiring a tribal head is the right to possess him and to live and die for him; for a people with republican instincts is the right to republican institutions; for folk with an inclination towards monarchy, a monarchical rule; national slavery is the compulsory participation in alien institutions. Were an empire based on force yet ruled entirely by a desire to govern for the benefit of the subject nations and not for the subject powers (as none up to the present has ever been), it would still be a disease-producing, freedom-limiting institution; but, based as all empiresup to the present have been, on self interest, Imperialism spells the death of all healthful human readjustments and developments.

Even where the parts of a large body social arenotheld together by merely external force, where a very great degree of real homogeneitydoesexist between all its parts, the evils of a much centralized rule are always manifest. It may be questioned whether even France, which is essentially one entity in many respects, has not suffered during the last century, and does not owe many of her difficulties and political perturbations, to that system of over-centralized control and uniformity of local institutions introduced by Napoleon, which has not left sufficient autonomy and self control to the really, in many minor respects, distinct provinces of France; and it is more than open to question whether Germany, almost compelled as she has been in self defence to sacrifice the independence and individuality of her component states during the last twenty years, has not intellectually and morally lost almost as much as she would by foreign domination, by her more centralized government: while in England the attempt forcibly to incorporate Ireland with herself, and govern a closely allied yet differing people, though divided only by a narrow strip of sea, has resulted in centuries of social disease and suffering for Ireland and of moral disease and instability for England.

Imperialism is the euphonious title of a deadly disease which under certain conditions tends to afflict the human race on earth. It increases in virulency in proportion as it is extended over more distant spaces and more diverse multitudes, till it becomes at last the death shroud of the nations.

It is undoubtedly true that the existence of more rapid means of intercommunication have, during the last centuries, made possible the existence of larger health aggregates than were possible in earlier times, when the small tribe and the city with a few leagues of earth about it formed invariably the largest national organization which was compatible with full social health and the highest human development. To-day, New York and San Francisco are in fact almost as close to each other as Athens and Sparta were two thousand years ago; but even to-day no vast social organism, large both as to numbers and geographical extent, such as the United States of America, could possibly exist with even tolerable healthfulness, were it not for the fact of the complete internal autonomy, individual organization and strength of its separate component states; and, above all, for the important and controlling fact,that the bond between the different states is not Imperial, is not the domination of one central state over others, but an equal confederacy of all.

Had the United States of America been united on the Imperial basis of one state dominating and guiding others, not even the moreor less homogeneous nature of its peoples, or the internal autonomy of its separate states, could have kept its vast masses in even that condition of social health and freedom in which we find them to-day.

And further, were the separate states of America not conterminous, but widely scattered over the earth, that powerful and vital confederacy as it now exists would be impossible. If New Hampshire were in America, Maine in India, and Virginia in Northern Russia, the band which to-day naturally and strongly unites them could not exist.

Few persons who have not given special study to the subject appear to grasp adequately the extent of variation which mere geographical division and the exposure to extremely unlike physical conditions produces in human individuals and in human societies, demanding a corresponding difference in government and institutions. Were two infants removed from each other at birth, the one to be brought up in Finland and the other in India, the mere climatic and physical differences would, at the end of forty years, have rendered them highly dissimilar both in physical constitutions and in many intellectual and material wants, while their descendants at the end of six generations would certainly represent distinct human varieties, for which distinct laws and institutions would be requisite. The effects of geographical severance, dissimilarities in climate and physical surroundings, can never for a moment be lost sight of, in dealing with national questions, without fatal results.

Even in the United States of America, in spite of its territorial continuity and the more or less homogeneous nature of its mixed population and the strongly autonomous structure of its separate states, it is still almost open to question (though this is a matter only to be dealt with by one who has long and closely studied the constitution of the United States from within) whether the political life of that vast mass of humanity might not be healthier, its vitality greater, and the individuality of the separate citizens more strengthened, if the whole were divided into two or even three federal bodies instead of one. This at least is certain, that if ever America be tempted to lay aside her great fundamental principle of Equal Federation and geographical continuity, and to adopt in her corporate capacity the principle of Imperial rule by dominating and subjecting distant lands and alien peoples whom she does not absorb into her body politic on equal terms, then she will have introduced into her national life an element which will first morally, and finally materially, disorganize her and in the end lead to the break-up of her great and at present virile body politic; and the world will have to look elsewhere for the most advanced type of social evolution.

Napoleon attempted to unite Europe by breaking down its stateswith iron and re-cementing them with blood under the centralized control of France. His attempt failed, as all Imperialistic attempts must ultimately fail which seek to accomplish by force a union which can only healthily come into being through internal necessity and the gradual co-adaptation of ages. And if across the years the dim outline of the Confederate States of Europe may already be seen looming by the attentive eye, it is certain that not the Imperial nightmare, but the noble dream of a free and equal union, will find its realization in that confederacy.

If one turns further from the consideration of the separate states and organizations as they exist to-day to the far wider inquiry, what is the desirable and possible ultimate form of organization for the entire human race? it has always appeared to us that there can be but one answer.

Probably no powerful and far-seeing mind entertains as possible, and still less regards as desirable were it possible, the existence in the future of a world in which all the interesting and many-sided varieties into which the human race has blossomed during its evolution on earth are cut down and supplanted by any one single variety, more particularly if that variety be not one to which the far-seeing and powerful mind belongs! A Frenchized, Germanized, Russianized, Englishized, Chineseized globe is a nightmare, perhaps only seriously conceived of as a possible reality in the mind of the ignorant man in the street of all nations, eaten up, as such minds are, by a stupendous national egoism, such as might be entertained by an ant who believed his noble ant heap would ultimately cover the whole globe. The ideal of a one-nation-dominated globe can as little satisfy a broad human intelligence as the ideal of a zoological garden populated solely by hippopotami would satisfy a broadly scientific one.

To ourselves it has always appeared inevitable that, if continued growth and development of the race are to be maintained, and humanity to blossom into its fairest and most harmonious development possible on earth, progress must always necessarily be along two lines. On the other hand, not only must the independence and freedom of the separate individuals advance, but the independence and individuality of each human variety must continue to increase; while, on the one hand, a certain broad sympathy, rising from an interchange of material and intellectual benefits and a perception of the profound unity which underlies all human diversity, must draw together the different human varieties and races; as to-day the recognized bonds of the family and the nation unite diverse individuals. As the loftiest form of individual relationship is not the forcible bond which binds the slave and the animal to itsmaster, nor even the relation of individuals identical in blood or character, but the noble companionship of persons wholly distinct, equally free, equally independent, complementing by their diversity each other's existence; so the ideal of international and racial relationships is not one of subjection and dominance or of identity, but of complementary interaction.

The ultimate chant of the human race on earth is not to be conceived of as a monotone chanted on one note by one form of humanity alone, but rather a choral symphony chanted by all races and all nations in diverse tones on different notes in one grand complex harmony. The vision of the Hebrew prophet when he cried out that the lamb and the wolf should yet lie down together and the weaned child put its hand in the cockatrice's den is the negation of the desire that the lion, having consumed the lamb, should lie alone switching his tail on his sand heap, and the cockatrice, having stung the young child to death, should peer forth from the door of its den on a landscape he had rendered desolate. Not in the extermination of earth's varied races, or the dominance of any one over all, or the annihilation of those complexities and varieties in humanity which form its beauty, not in a universal Imperial rule, but in a free and equal federation of all, lies the ultimate goal of humanity, which, being reached, alone can its fairest proportion be attained.

It is difficult to believe that the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century will have passed away before that wave of exploitation and destruction, vomited forth by the nations of Europe, led by England in her drunken orgie of Imperialism, based on capitalism, and which now threatens to sweep across the earth, disrupting and destroying its peoples and their individuality, will have met with the command, "Hereto shalt thou come and no further!" and the drenched peoples of earth, after their blood bath, shall again lift up their heads.

Already, to-day, he who notes keenly may feel faintly and from afar the first suck-in which is ultimately to withdraw that wave and leave the deluged and devastated earth to pursue its own slow complex path of progress.

To anyone holding this view with regard to the ultimate development of humanity at large, one and only one attitude is possible in dealing with the problems and questions concerning our own smaller South African world. For one holding the view, it is impossible to regard with other than sympathy each of our South African states, or to desire anything but their strength and development, while at the same time he desires a growing bond of sympathy and fellowship between all.

For myself, I have never been able to regard other than with deep well-wishing the different political organisms into which South Africa has more or less spontaneously divided itself; and have been compelled to desire to see them each rather strengthened and individualized than dominated and crushed by, or even merged into, another. I have not only desired that the Free State and Transvaal might each grow into strong, highly organized social entities, but one is compelled to desire (though at present without much hope of realization) that such small native states as Basutoland or even Pondoland might be left for fifty or sixty years to pursue their own internal course of evolution, and so enabling some of our native folk to attain to a fuller and more natural development than is possible if they are all forced into the vortex of our so-called modern material civilization. I have regretted the annexation of Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony, and should deeply regret the amalgamation of Mashona and Matabeleland with any other African state, or the merging of Natal and the Cape Colony into one; believing all these territories are quite large enough ultimately to form healthy units: and I have been quite unable to go with the monopolists and speculators in the past, who have desired for their own reasons that English influence should be eliminated. I have no more desired its elimination than I have regretted the existence of the Germans in Damaraland or the Portuguese on the east coast, believing that by the complexity of our elements was produced a healthy friction, preventing that dominance of any one central, overbearing power, which is the death of true freedom. I have never desired for my birthland that all interstatal lines should be broken down and the whole welded into one uniform mass with only a shadow of self-government in its separate parts: an ideal so dear to the heart of the autocrat in all ages, whether capitalist or military despot, who recognizes in each strong interstatal line or conservative institution a kind of embankment resisting his central despotism. Rather, if the truth be told, I have nourished with regard to England's part in South Africa a very lofty ambition. I have desired that my motherland might play a very high part, such as perhaps some great people may in the future play in the world's history at large. I have dreamed that it was possible for the influence of England always to make itself felt as a freeing, co-ordinating element among our varying states and peoples, an element which made for the strengthening and protecting of all weaker and smaller states and peoples; I have dreamed that England, desiring nothing for herself, might be able to hold the balance between all our states and peoples; I have desired for her an Empire, an eternal Empire, not based on force but on the reverence and faith of all peoples struggling for freedomthroughout the earth. I have dreamed that when, in forty or sixty years' time, South Africa, its states grown internally strong enough, healthfully and without sacrificing their different systems of internal self-government to federate, federated, took her place beside the world's other large national entities, though the majority of her inhabitants could never be English in descent, and South Africa would be a nation as independent and self-controlling as America or France, that yet a peculiarly close and tender bond might for ever bind her to England.

Among human relationships there is one which, though not common, perhaps few beings have been so fortunate as not once to have seen realized, and which constitutes one of the bravest and fairest in the whole domain of human fellowships. It is the bond which exists between a large and generous woman, who, through marriage having thrown into her hands children not her own by blood, yet through all their infancy and early childhood guards and labours for as her own, asking nothing for herself, giving all: desiring not to use her power for her own ends, not favouring those of her own blood unduly, but seeking to aid those in her power to attain most successfully to the freedom and independence of adult life.

Those who have been so fortunate as at least once to have seen a woman so nobly using her powers will also have seen her rewarded by a love and devotion from the children not her own yet greater than that which is often given to a mother by the children of the blood.

Such is the bond I have dreamed should permanently bind England to South Africa.

One has indeed desired that a bond of good fellowship should bind all nations to our own young nation at the South. We, here, guarded by the vast expanses of our southern seas on every hand, with our wild, tempestuous and rocky coasts and our few and easily guarded harbours, are indeed singularly well situated by nature, when once internally united, for living in peace and freedom, untouched by foreign strife. But I, at least, have deeply desired that, with the men and women in the little Island in the North, a peculiarly tender bond should unite us; rising from the memory of great benefits conferred, without self-seeking, when the people of Great Africa were small and young, and England old and strong.

Even ten years ago it seemed to me not wholly unreasonable to hope that this ambition might yet be realized.

True, there had been in the past even then terrible and grievous mistakes on the part of England; the step-mother of the South African people was, one knew, a step-mother with a not quite certain temper; but when one remembered that England had in the past sent out to South Africa such men as Sir George Grey, that freshfrom Ireland came Sir William Porter, and that in spite of astonishing occasional aberrations there had frequently been a tendency on the part of the ruling power in England to make for a course of rectitude in South Africa, I do not think that dream was wholly unjustifiable, or that one who dreamed it need necessarily have been deemed a madman. Even ten years ago it still seemed within the range of possibility that, when the time came for the official separation between England and South Africa (as it must come between all lands and the old peoples on the other side of the globe; as it will come to Australia and New Zealand and Canada), that when that time came, little as was England's share in the blood of South Africa, there might yet be a tough cable of affection stretching across the six thousand miles of sea, and binding the hearts of South Africans, Dutch, English, German, French or African in origin, to the hearts of the people in the little Isles of the North.

To-day, England has made the realization of that dream an impossibility.

The first deadly blow was struck at its attainment when, by the instalment of the Chartered Company and the lending of her flag and her sword to a handful of wealthy or aristocratic speculators, she, by condoning their actions towards the African native in Matabeleland and more especially in Mashonaland, made it clear to the intelligent native all over South Africa that from England, under the capitalist control, and under the flag of England, when held aloft by speculators there is nothing to be looked for: that tenderer were the mercies to be hoped for from the roughest Boer or African-English Colonist than from the foreign speculators who acted in England's name.

A little later, by countenancing the Raid made upon a European South African state by the same corporation, England, through condonation of their conduct by princelings and politicians, made it clear to the bulk of the white Africans also that, however true to nobler and older traditions might be the hearts of a large section of the English people, the Union Jack was now fallen into the hands of those who had made it dangerous to the peace of Africa; that the flag we had loved as the flag of freedom was become a "Commercial Asset" and waved over the heads of marauders.

I think this struck the death-blow to the noblest possibilities of the English Empire over the hearts of South Africans; but there was even then hope left.

To-day (writing in the last months of the year 1900), guided by the hands of the same men, England is attempting to crush the independence of our two Republican states. Whether for a time she will succeed or not is still a matter of doubt. But that she has committed suicide in South Africa is a matter for no doubt.

Should she succeed in carrying out the speculators' dream of breaking down all the interstatal lines which have stood out as so many small ramparts behind which freedom could hide and which broke into parts the wave of capitalist aggression as it swept on; should England by forcible means, succeed, violently and against their will, in combining to-day all South African states under one central foreign government and forcing them prematurely into a national union, she may indeed form the United States of South Africa forty years sooner than they would spontaneously have been formed—but it will not be for herself.

England should clearly understand: It is not for herself that she is to-day attempting violently and by force to push open the rose of the South Africa national existence before its time. She will never wear it.

We have not desired it should be forced thus. A flower pushed artificially open by coarse fingers always has something ragged in its appearance; its bloom is never so fair and harmonious as one that has opened spontaneously under the influence of sun and air. We regret the premature and violent opening of our South African rose. But, let England mark this well; it is not for herself that she has torn and forced it: it will never bloom on her bosom.

Among all the elements connected with our complex South African world, England has had most to gain by its division into separate states. She has had more influence in South Africa than in Australia or New Zealand or Canada, simply because of its strongly politically divided structure. Once break up these parts and cement them thoroughly with human blood, shed on the battlefield and the scaffold, into one solid whole, and South Africa can stand alone: it will have passed suddenly amid the heat and anguish of battle and martyrdom through adolescence on to manhood.

Should England succeed for a time in crushing the two Republics, and, by means of keeping a hundred thousand armed men always on the soil, and, through blood and fire, succeed in holding them down for a moment, or should she not succeed—she has equally brought half a century nearer the time when she will have in South Africa not the hoof of one war horse, not the foot of one of her soldiers shall she be able to land on South Africa's shores. Fate has allowed England to make her choice between forming a fostering and sheltering element to our national germ, to remain for ever bound by ties of affection and gratitude to the great nation which in the future must rise from our blended peoples, or being the dominator and oppressor of an hour: then to depart for ever.

The lower element in the English nation haschosen, and by that choice she and we must now abide.

Out of the whitened bones of the English soldiers who havefallen bravely fighting in South Africa fate is rearing up a great cairn, beneath which lie buried for ever the noblest possibilities of the English people.

The regeneration of nations, as of individuals, is possible, and for the English people there may still be a great and noble future, a future which shall produce in the little Island of the North men worthy to be successors to the noblest of her sons of the past. She may still walk in the path of freedom and humanity, though she can no more lead; but it can only be when, after mighty and agonizing social upheavals, she has reorganized her own social structure.

What ails the race to-day in the little Island of the North is that there has been an irruption of the lower and more sordid elements in her body politic over its entire surface, where they have formed as it were an upper crust: as over some green land there might be a physical eruption of scoriæ and sulphurous lava forming a crust over what had been once green fields and fruitful plains. Never, till the healthier strata within the nation have arisen and cracked up and thrown off the plutocratic crust which has caked over its national existence, will vigour and health be restored to it.

The future may have a great task in store for that little Island of the North we once loved so and towards which our hearts still call; she may yet lead the world by showing how a community may so reorganize and reshape itself that it may pass from death to life. But she will now have to move along her own path; we on ours—till, it may be, across the ages, we meet again, in the free confederacy of all the world's peoples.

A terrible and irrevocable "Might have been" has been written by fate over the possibilities of England in South Africa.

The little vessel of the North Sea may still be sound, but, while her sails are manned and her rudder guided as they are to-day, she drifts towards the rocks. It may be that after the shock she will recover herself and re-man her vessel: for

Her timbers yet are sound,And she may float again!

Her timbers yet are sound,And she may float again!

Her timbers yet are sound,And she may float again!

Her timbers yet are sound,

And she may float again!

It may be that her flag washed from its stain will be no more a "Commercial Asset," and that it may yet float free in the air, the banner of freedom, peace and justice of our dreams—

Our glorious Semper Eadem,The banner of our pride!

Our glorious Semper Eadem,The banner of our pride!

Our glorious Semper Eadem,The banner of our pride!

Our glorious Semper Eadem,

The banner of our pride!

—but while it remains in the hand of those who hold it to-day she can but follow the march of humanity, from its rear.

While England is given over to the hands of a plutocracy, she cannot lead or guide other nations on the path towards freedom.

We are trying to save ourselves: let her try to save herself.

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