Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1906. COLOSSAL IMPUDENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 135, 8 June 1906, Page 4

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1906. COLOSSAL IMPUDENCE.

The lords of the Band do not suffer, as a rule, from an excess of modesty, but we do not know that their brazen impudence ever attained more colossal proportions than those disclosed by the cablegram which reached us from Capetown yesterday. Tho commissioners who have been investigating tho conditions of the Transvaal with a view to advising the Imperial authorities on the grant of constitutional government, and now about to undertake a similar enquiry in the Orange River Colony, are reported by their chairman, Sir J. West Ridgway, to be "very satisfied with the progress that has been made towards framing a constitution satisfactory to all parties" 5 but tho party that at present dominates the Transvaal knows better. It repudiates the notion that the proposals of the commission will bo "satisfactory to all parties" ; _ it is quite satisfied that it never will bo satisfied with anything that the commission is going to recommend. Sir J. P. Fitzpatnck, who is mentioned in _ the cablegram' as "representing tho British party," is said to havo declared "that the committee failed to reconcile the discordant racial elements on a basis of mutual concessions. All the Boer proposals," he adds, "were calculated^ to give them a majority and undermine British supremacy." The gentleman who speaks in this way is himself a Britisher who was one of tho most stalwart champions of the UUlanders before the war and received a knighthood for his Imperial services at its close. But as the representative of two of the greatest groups of mines on the Rand he holds a brief f or t that formidable un-British power which holds the whole country in its grasp, and in that capacity, and as a member also of tho political oligarchy, ho had as much to do as any one man with that eminently tin-British invasion of 60,000 coolies from the Flowery Land. The " British supremacy " for which Sir J. P. Fitzpatnck stands is that of the 'Ecksteins and tho Beits, the Wernhers and the Naumanns, the Icklclieimcrs and fcbe Thelmanns, and scores of others whoso very names, redolent of all that is noblest and moat characteristic in British history, supply as fine a patriotio tonic as "Rule Britannia" or "tho -grand old flag." It wa« these gentlemen who, though many of them have never been in the country, clamoured * most piously for tho protection of their little properties and .their slender earnings against tha oppression of Mr. Kruger's rule before tho war j it is they who since tho war have been allowed to run the country, to indulge their rooted objection to the growth under the Union Jack of a British democracy which might pollute tho eacred precincts of the Rand with a labour question and agitato and vote against their interests, and to mako the country a. fit placo for millionaires and Chinamen onlyj It is for them nnd ,11118 glorious object, though we did not

know it at the time, that free-born colonists have fought and died. What therefore could be more appropriate, as the 'British Government presents a deaf ear and a hard heart to their sorrqws, than to summon the colonies again to the rescue? And this is now gravely suggested, according to the cablegram from which we have already quoted. "Sir J. P. Fitzpatrick advocates," we are told, " an appeal to the colonies whose people had shed their blood in South Africa, and to the national feeling in England, to prevent the loss of all the fruits of their sacrifices." There can bo no harm in making the appeal, and the mine-owners Jjiay even hear a good deal that is to their advantage if they do so. The notion that the colonies with their oyc« open will interfere to preserve " the fruits of their sacrifices" for the- Beits and the Ecksteins and to enforce the right of these gentlemen to maintain the Transvaal as a Chinaman's country is delightful indeed, and we humbly suggest that their first appeal should be to Mr. Seddon ana New Zealand. If these gentlemen had any sense of humour, they might derive from a contemplation of their own colossal impudence a pleasure which would be worth far more than dividends.