SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9713, 8 February 1910, Page 5

SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS.

NON-PARTY GOVERNMENT. TRENCHANT SPEECH BY MR MERRIMAN. HIS IDEA OF A PROGRESSIVE. Received February 7, 9.30 p.m. LONDON, February 7. The " Daily Mail's" Capetown correspondent reports that Ge..eral Botha (Premier of the Transvaal, Mr J. G. Smuts (Colonial Secretary of the Transvaal), and Dr Jameson, are willing to assist in forming a non-party Government, but Mr Merriman (Premier of Cape Colony), is detached from Cape Bond leaders. Mr Merriman, speaking at Worcester after a consultation with General tfotha, who is at Capetown, advised the Progressives to get out of the little cockle-boat coalition iiea, which smanated from Throgmorton Street. The. 'Union Government would need all possible criticism. The South African party embraced the national feeling in a broad way. It looked forward to maDging its own affairs without interference. Mr Merriman added: "My idea of a Progressive is a man who is fond of borrowing, who wants to imitate Australia, who admires the Imperial bouth African Association,, which we loath., who has one eye on South Africa and the other on the English Stock Exchange. Mr Merriman deprecated the amalgamation of the Bond, Orangia, and the Het volk, but the three, he considered, might constitute a United South African Party, which he hoped would be the dominating party of the future.