On May 31, 1902, the Peace of Vereeniging had brought the fratricidal South African war to a conclusion. Only four years afterwards the Liberal administration in Great Britain tried the bold experiment of granting responsible government to the Transvaal State by passing an act to that effect which came into force on January 1st, 1907. In the following year similar powers of self-government were bestowed on the Orange Free State (as it was eventually re-named). These concessions to the sturdy nationalism of the Boers were intended to pave the way for that long desired Union of South Africa. Negotiations were conducted between the statesmen of Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, which resulted in 1909 in an agreement and an Act of Union. This Act was ratified by the British Parliament and received the sanction of King Edward VII (who ever since his coming to the throne had striven earnestly to bring about peace in South Africa) on September 21, 1909. The Union of South Africa includes under one, central, South African Parliament at Pretoria, and one Governor-General, the states of Cape Colony (with British Bechuanaland and Walfish Bay), Natal, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal. The native states of Basutoland, Swaziland, and Bechuanaland, and the territories of Southern and Northern Rhodesia and the Nyasaland Protectorate remain outside the Union for a variety of reasons most of which may not have a permanent value. But one of these reasons is the distrust which is felt in Great Britain as to the ability and fair-mindedness of the white population to act as the governors of the states above mentioned in which the negro population very greatly preponderates over the white, or which, as in Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland, have been more or less reserved for negro colonization and expansion. Cape Colony, it is true, has a negro population of nearly 1,700,000, contented and admirably governed for the most part, possessing a large proportion of the good land, and holding the franchise to the Cape Legislature on the same terms as white men. But the liberal-minded Cape Colony, in which one scarcely ever hears of native troubles or “Black perils,” is only one of the states composing the Union; and the others, notably the Transvaal, have shown themselves—the Transvaal still keeps up this evil reputation—unfair and harsh in their treatment of the black man. When the provisions of the Act of Union were laid before the British Parliament they were found to exclude any man of colour from the franchise[161]. British ministers expressed regret at this illiberality, but passed the measure to end strife in other directions. Nevertheless the “Native question” will long continue to bar the way to a Greater South Africa, a vast confederation which