SOUTH AFRICAN UNION.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 475, 6 April 1909, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICAN UNION.

■—.—* . ' THE CONSTITUTION. (dt telegraph—press association—copyright.) Pretoria, April 4. The Legislative Council at Pretoria has adopted the draft Constitution of the South African Union. NATAL AND THE REFERENDUM. A writer in the "Standard of the Empire" declares that the Natal delegates attended the Convention pledged to '■ federation, and that there is much opposition in Natal to the priaciple of unification on which the Convention has based the Constitution- The writer adds:— "Natal from the outset has objected in the strongest possible manner to the attempt to force a change of the Constitution without reference to the people, and the Government of the colony had to give an undertaking to Parliament before the Convention met that any -draft Constitution framed would he submitted to a referendum. But Natal is the only one of the four colonies directly interested which has made so firm a stand for the British principlo of referring a political question of such vital importance to the people before it is ratified. At the present time not a single member of the Natal Parliament, nor of any other Parliament in South Africa, has any mandate of any Irihd from his constituents to vote in favour of unification, federation, or closer union of any kind. The whole movement has sprung into being since the last general elections, when the question was never discussed, and it is a significant fact that the advocates of unification are deprecating any consultation of the people on the subject."