ORANGE RIVER'S FIRST PARLIAMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 78, 28 September 1907, Page 13

ORANGE RIVER'S FIRST PARLIAMENT.

'"Though the elections ar-s not likely to bo held before the second week in November," says the Bloemfontein correspondent of the London Times, "it is possible already to form sorno idea of the composition of the first Parliament. In this colony thoro is, nf course,, no question of a British-born majority. The Constitutional party led by Sir John George Fraser embraces 'most of the immigrant Englishmen and supports in general the policy pursued by the British Administration sincn the war, bnt includes a large proportion drawn fiom the moderate section of the older population, and evidently is viewed with ' considerable favour by tha Dutch Church." But "beyond four seats in Bloemfontein town and fair prospects in ona or two grouped urban constituencies, tHe chances of tlie FrasT party proper aro everywhere exceedingly doubtful. . . . The Orangia Unie,' corereppndjng; to ,Het -Vjolk in the Transvaal and embracing'the solid mass of the Boer population, is under the leadership of Mr. Abraham Fischer, and is unquestionably the^ strongest party in Orange Rive-r politic* to-day. . . Seeing that a tJnie Government is probable inevitable, it is some satisfaction to find that the official candidates on the whole rcpres?nt the i least ' violent section of a party tho public utterances o£ which < have naturally, given rise to gloomy forebodings of r'aeial animosity and retrogressive policy.* The influence of Mr. Steyn, who*"is tho high pricet of tho irreconcilr übles, is clearly on the wave. - . . But 1 the' more one sees of the Orange Hiver Colony, the more one ralisos arm regrets th 4 folly of disturbing tho existing administration in favour of a, system of ; party government on English lines, 1 which is totally ulien to tho ideas and 1 traditions of the psople, which cannot ; fail to awaken dormant racial feuds, and for which there is no sort of demand."