The Dominion. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1911. STRANGE HAPPENINGS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1133, 22 May 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1911. STRANGE HAPPENINGS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

The other day we referred to the unconstitutional methods adopted by the former Treasurer of the Transvaal Ministry when, without Parliamentary sanction, he signed contracts for about a million sterling, being part of the cost of the immense Government buildings now in course of erection at Pretoria. But his displays of autocratic power, which power the Minister—Mr. Hull—obviously believes is part of his official belongings, do not end with the Pretoria contracts. Sir Edgar Walton, a farmer Treasurer-General of Cape Colony and a particularly keen hnap.eial critic, speaking in the Wo.nso of Assembly on the Union midget, was able to show that the contracts episode did not stand alons in the record of Mr. Hull. For example, he found that tho year before Union was established, Mr. Hull, evidently on his own responsibility, had lent a Government official a large sura of public money with which to buy a farm. Again, on his own authority, Mr. Hull had advanced to' another official £1850 from the country's funds "to pay off a debt." And, about the samo time, there was a loan of £400, "to a gentleman described as a confectioner, to start business in Johannesburg, and afterwards, an additional £ICO, to keep him going," said Sir Edgar Walton. These were the acts of Mn. Hull and, presumably, of his colleagues, in the days of the Transvaal Parliament. It need therefore occasion no surprise when the truth is learned that the Union Government seems determined to maintain the system which became so notorious under President Iveugeu, a system formed by the bold intermingling of bureaucracy and autocracy. The career of the Union Government has, as Mr. Merriuan says, been an extraordinary one. It has been extraordinary from the Constitutional point of view; studied along with the history of the Krugkr regime there is nothing extraordinary about it. The Botha Administration unfortunately appears to be largely a survival of Krugcrism. Its extravagant expenditure of public money, its crude legislative proposals, and its amazing assumptions—all are reminiscent of "Oom" Paul."

Mr. Meriiiman declares that the Botha Ministry is suffering from megalomania. An inspection of the Union Budget alone suggests ssrious symptoms of that inconvenient malady, though, unfortunately, tho cHcations are not confined to finance. I Ministers, it will be recalled, voted I themselves handsome salaries: £3000 j each, with the exception of the Prime Minister, who takes £'1000. Ministers cost the country for salaries £31,000 a year. And they have been generous almost to an equal extent with officials. The minimum salary paid to the head of any Department in the Union is £1500 per annum. South Africa's pension list, unless a halt is called, threatens, in time, to bs a close sceond to the American. Already the pensions paid amount to £410,000 per annum. Great Britain, a member pointed out, with an annual revenue of £175,000.000, lm a Civil List reaching only to £800,000 a year, while South Africa, with a yearly income of but £10,000,000, and within two years of Union, is now paying more than half that amount. Evidently the Government stands by its friends. One Transvaal magistrate, for instance, receives a 'retiring allowance of £!)00 per annum; why that large amount Ministers have not yet explained. By Union, and the abolition of the four separate Governments, great economies were to be immediately effected. So it was said and so it was_ believed. But the hope of reducing the cost of government has proved vain and illusory. Instead of being less than under the colonial systems, the yearly expenditure is already £3,000,000 more. Mr. Hull has apparently taken a lesson in up-to-date finance from New Zealand. He borrows from the Railway and. Harbour Fund, employs cash balances from loan funds to relieve the Exchequer, and, of course, produces a surplus. This surplus, however, Mr. Merriman bluntly characterises as bogus. Two loans, amounting to about £11,000,000, arc to be floated, so that, before long, South Africa doubtless will be, like New Zealand, a regular customer on the London money, market, and that in spite of the.fact that the public debt of the Union is £116,000,000.

Some of the few measures introduced into Parliament by the Botha Ministry have contained provisions which seem strangely out of place for tho British Empire. In" th<! halcyon days of the Raads they would have attracted little attention being but part of a whole. To their chagrin, Ministers are discovering that their proposals, as often as not, arc greeted with bitter scorn, or joyous badinage, not onlj from the Opposition,. Gut also from the more far-seeing members of their own following. Mention may bo made in this connection of ' Mr. Heutzog's Prisons and Reformatories Bill. This is the Minister who made an attempt to compel English children to learn Dutch—or," we presume, not Dutch, but that mixture of Kaffir, obsolete French, and old Dutch known as the "taal." As originally drafted this measure conferred on the Minister for Justice— that is, on Mtt. Hertzoo—nowcr to commit any person to prisoTi on his own personal authority. 'Further, the Bill proposed that witnesses be compelled to find securitv for their duo appearance at trials." and, failing security being found, that such witnesses be committed to too]. In his explanation of tho Bil~ this remarkable British Minister laid down the extraordinary dictum that "a witness is not innocent in the eyes of the law." What was in the mind ofMlt. Humoo when he uttered opinions ko contrary to all ideas of British justice we have not been able to discover. Members of the Onn'sition complain that the Ministry has no domestic policy, and no mind of its own respecting its relations with tho Imperial Government. General Botha forwarded resolutions for consideration at the Imperial Conference, and withdrew them by cable message three days later. The Government's Immigration Bill, and its Miners' Compensation Bill have just been withdrawn. South Africa, under Dutch rule, has far from agree.able prosoecta.