THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1909. THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTITUTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3119, 19 February 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1909. THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONSTITUTION.

The interesting synopsis of the new South African Union Constitution recently cabled shows that the projected federation adopts the Canadian model in contradistinction to the Australian Commonwealth, which distinctly favours that of the United States. There is to be equality of provincial representation in the Senate, the same as in the United States and Australia, a condition which experience scarcely favours, but which may have been essential if a working arrangement was to b* come to, as has happened elsewhere. The senators are to be nominated by provincial councils, in which, broadly,

the American plan is followed; but modern federal models generally are departed from in the stipulation that the federal executive shall always nominate eight, or a orovincial share, of the senators. Another noticeable feature of the constitution is that it provides for proportional representation, an undeniably and incomparably fair system, but oh such a large scale as this an innovation in British countries. Coming to the federal and pruvincial powers, Canada is found to have been even outdone, for the union apparently takes control of practically everything of large importance, having below it provincial councils "with carefully delimited powers." That is the crucial phase of the experiment which the people of South Africa are to, be asked to endorse, the transfer of so much of the machinery of local government to a central body. A scheme tending so far toward unification as that does involves a sharp test of the people's faith in federation. Under any circumstances they must submit to curtailment of their provincial grandeur or what they take for grandeur, but in such a transference as this they are required to give up their own immediate concerns to the management of a remote Government, to come down to an equality winh small provinces if they live in big ones, to take the risk of being overruled by the greater provinces if they belong to small ones, and so on. In a scattered and spacious country like South Africa virtual unification means provincial surrenders, the prospect of which may be regarded with a good deal of dubiety. However, the Convention was evidently confident enough, and seems to have acted on the principle of going the entire distance while about it. What now remains to be seen is whether the Parliaments and the public will endorse its findings, or whether, as in other federated countries, the drafting of a Constitution is to prove only the first move in a long and strenuous campaign.