at home who have seemed to prepare the way for final separation from the mother country.
Federation, though generally unpopular in the Colonies, has been welcomed in the Eastern Province of South Africa, because it would be a means of giving if not entire at any rate partial independence from Capetown domination. If Federation were once sanctioned and carried out, the Eastern Province thinks that it would enter the union as a separate state, and that it would have such dominion as to its own affairs as New York and Massachusetts have in the United States.
But there would be various other States in such a Federation besides the two into which the Cape Colony might be divided, and in order that my readers may have some idea of what would or might be the component parts of such a union, I will endeavour to describe the different territories which would be included, with some regard to their population.
At present that South African district of which the South African politician speaks when he discusses the question of South African Federation, contains by a rough but fairly accurate computation,[1] 2,276,000 souls, of whom 340,000 may be classed as white men and 1,936,000 as coloured men. There is not therefore one white to five coloured men. And these coloured people are a strong and increasing people,—by no means prone to die out and cease to be
- ↑ This is so far accurate that it certainly does not overstate the coloured population. No doubt the coloured people are more numerous. I have seen 800,000 stated as the black population of the Transvaal. But as the limits of the territory are not settled, any estimate must be vague.
