Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1926. LOGIC AND LOYALTY

Evening Post, Volume 50, Issue 50, 27 August 1926, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1926. LOGIC AND LOYALTY

The logic by which the Hon. F. W. Beyers seeks to reconcile the obligations of his oath as a Minister of the Crown in South Africa with the right to advocate secession makes very good reading. It was very brave of Mr. Beyers to make the attempt, and if he has failed it is not for the lack of an ingenuity at tho least equal to his courage. The right of secession had, he said, been admitted for the past eighty or ninety years by prominent British Ministers and others. It therefore followed that for every reason a -person who was a British subject was entitled under the Constitution of any Dominion to make propaganda for putting absolute equality with the United Kingdom iuto practice, and even advocating secession. The oath of allegiance could not derogate from constitutional rights, and was therefore not inconsistent with tho exercise of such rights. It would be interesting to know the names of these' "prominent British Ministers and others" who during the last eighty or ninety years have admitted the right of secession, what authority they had for doing so, and, above ! all, what exactly they said. Any statements made upon the subject two or three generations ago must surely have been very loose, and probably were concerned rather with tho obligations of Britain than with the rights of infant colonies which were then utterly unable to stand alone or to think of doing so. It was in those days a doctrine of the Manchester School that the colonies were the immature fruit of the old tree, from which, in the course of. Nature, they would drop as they ripened. Equally fatal to Imperial unity and even more unflattering to the dignity of the colonies was the description given of thorn by an arch-opponent of that school. It was Disraeli himself who, in the days beforo ho had great visions of Empire, regarded tho colonies of Britain as no better than millstonos round her neck. Not tho right of the millstones to secede, but the obligation of Britain to carry them, was the aspect of the problem which concerned tho statesmanship of those days.

In our own time the only references that we can recall to the alleged right of secession -was an apparently unguarded statement of Mr. Bonar Law's which waa regarded as having overstepped the mark, and, if not subsequentlyqualified, was never, so far as we are aware, repeated or confirmed. Practically, however, it may be assumed that, as the foundation of the Empire is democracy and the consent of the governed; Britain would not fight to enforce on. any Dominion an allegiance which was no longer freely and loyally given. If Ireland is to be regarded as a Dominion, she is a necessary exception to the rule, for enemy control of the Irish ports would be fatal not only to the British Empire but to Britain herself. 'Subject to these strategic considerations, which might posßibly have a partial application' elsewhere, the statement of Professor A. Berriedale Keith in his "Imporial Unity and the Dominions" may doubtless be accepted as correct. If, he says, it is really the will of! the people of a Dominion to sever themselves from the Imperial control and to set ■ up as an independent Power, it is impossible to bolieve that the Imperial Government would forbid the carrying out of this desire, though it would doubtless take steps to secure that the desire was a deliberate one representing the decision of a real majority, and to safe-guard-the interests of those who, having gone to settle in the Dominion on the faith of its British character, did not desire to remain in it under a change of regime. The great rally of the Empire to tho support of British rule in South Africa, in which it may be said to have been finding itself twenty-five years ago, is certainly not likely to be repeated. Tho Admiralty might have something to say about the status of Table Bay of the sai kind as they aro now 'thinking about Tangier, and not merely the guardian of India and Singaporo but the Governments of Australia and Now Zealand would be entitled to bo heard. I But, subject to the necessary reservation?, tho Empire which fought to prevent its South African colonies from being, overrun by the Boers would not fight to keep a united South Africa from seceding, and there is solid comfort in the admission of Mr. Beyers and his friends that tho secession of a disunited South Africa is not to bo thought of. In consonance with the repeated assurances which the responsibilities of office have drawn from Genoral Hertzog, his Minister of Marine says in the speech under review that thero could never bo any question of absolute severance from the British Commonwealth or tho community of nations until tho two great white races, tho English and Dutch, substantially agreed upon stepping out of tho Commonwealth or tho community. Unless Natal is to be ruled out as an unsubstantial part of the South African Union, this condition postpones the realisation of tho Dutch UcpuWica7]3' ideal to a very distant date, for Natal

is just about as unpromising a subject for conversion as our own Dominion. And when her conversion does aomo in, perhaps, two or three centuries, it is safo to prophesy that it will havo been preceded by a great advance in that conversion of the Boers which has already taken the teeth out of the truculent Nationalism of a few years ago.

In his attempt to reconcile the obligations of his oath of allegianco with a secessionist propaganda, Mr. Beyers has failed in an impossible task. Tho argument by which General Smuts endeavoured to blanket this propaganda, viz., that independence and sovereignty had already been conferred upon tho Dominions by the Leaguo of Nations without shattering the Empire, was plainly absurd, because it meant that in respect of South Africa the King might bo at peace with a Power with which, in respect of the rest of the Empire, ho was at war. Mr. Beyers carries the humour a step.further when he argues that an oath of allegiance to a King is no obstacle to undermining his authority and breaking up his dominions. Wo say "undermining" and not "defying," since the idea of violence seems now to have been abandoned by the South African Nationalists, or at any rate by their leaders, but the peacefulneas of the means does not alter the character of tho end in view. Mr. Beyers would surely havo been better employed in arguing that tho oath which he has taken is a mero formality, and imposes no limitation on the freedom which he previously enjoyed. There is indeed high legal authority for saying that the oath of allegiance imposes no new obligation, but merely supplies an additional sanction for an obligation already existing. The formal profession, or oath, of j subjection is, says Blackstone, nothing more than a declaration in words of what was before implied in law. "Which occasions Sir Edward Coke very justly to observe, that "all subjects are eqnally bounden to their allegiance as if they had taken the oath; because it is written by the finger of the law in their hearts, and the taking of the corporal oath is but an outward declaration of tho same." The sanction of an oath, it is true, in case of violation of duty, ■ makes tho guilt still more accumulated, by superadding perjury to treason; but it does not increase tho civil obligation to loyalty; it only strength - ons the social tie by uniting it with that of religion. Let us at least recognise as practical men that those in whose hearts loyalty has not been written "by the finger of the law" cannot be made loyal 1 by any form of words.