be registered as a voter, or if a man shall have held for a year a house, or land, or land and house conjointly, worth £50, he may be registered. It is certainly the case that even at present a very large number of Kafirs might be registered. It has already been threatened in more than one case that a crowd of Kafirs should be taken to the poll to carry an election in this or that direction. The Kafirs themselves understand but little about it,—as yet; but they will come to understand. The franchise is one which easily admits of a simulated qualification. It depends on the value of land,—and who is to value it? If one Kafir were now to swear that he paid another Kafir 10s. a week and fed him; no registrar would perhaps believe the oath. But it will not be long before such oath might probably be true, or at any rate impossible of rejection. The Registrar may himself be a Kafir,—as may also be the member of Parliament. We have only to look at the Southern States of the American Union to see how quickly the thing may run when once it shall have begun to move. With two million and a quarter of coloured people as against 340,000 white, all endowed with equal political privileges, why should we not have a Kafir Prime Minister at Capetown, and a Kafir Parliament refusing to pay salary to any but a Kafir Governor?
There may be those who think that a Kafir Parliament and a Kafir Governor would be very good for a Kafir country. I own that I am not one of them. I look to the civilization of these people, and think that I see it now being effected by the creation of those wants the desire for supplying which has since the creation of the world been
