THE BOERS IN THE TRANSVAAL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7968, 20 February 1906, Page 7

THE BOERS IN THE TRANSVAAL.

A QUESTION OP POLITICAL POWER. The efforts which are being made I to give the Boers in the Transvaal a preponderating political power, contrary to the provisions of the Oon- j stitution granted by r tbe Balfour administration, are not unlikely to succeed, owing co the well-known sympathies of the leading members •of the Bannerman Cabinet. That j ■ Constitution provides that the electoral districts shall be framed on the ! 'basis of the number of voters resident within them, and not, as was .the case under the Republic, on that Of the white inhabitants. - The preservation of the old constituencies, which tjbe Boer reactionaries desired, was necessarily rejected. Those, constituencies were . deliberately arranged by the former rulers of the Bepublio so as to give tbe ignorant and obscurantist Boer farmers of the tjonotry districts an extravagant preponderance over the progressive nonIJoer population of the towns. The i scheme which gave Lydenburg, with a population of 3,500, two members, and Johannesburg, with a population of 76,500, but one member, could not serve as the foundation for a reasonable system of fedistribution. The adoption of the number of white inhabitants instead of the number of voters—which is practically the number of adult males—'as the basis of representation, would have se- * cured Boer supremacy as effectually as the maintenance of .the old constituencies, and with equal injustice to' the British colonists. The rural Boers 'marry early, and have large families, while the towns ' and the industrial districts are foil.' of ypung unmarried Englishmen. In •Standerton, for example, there are only 3,267 adult males out of a total white population of 11,192, while in the mining distriot of Barberfon, ■there are 1,143 idult males out of a total White population of no more -than 2,642. Under the new Constitution the voting power of electors will no longer depend on the relative fecundity of the districts in whioh tb€y dwell. This, however, does not suit the Boers, and hence their efforts to have a change made.