Stagnation as opposed to progress, slavery to freedom, racial hatred to general unity, isolation and seclusion to free colonization and settlement, the darkness of the African veldt to the light of European civilization--these are the original causes of the war. British mistakes of policy in defending the Boer against the Kaffir or the Kaffir against the Boer; political errors in making the Conventions of 1852 and 1854, of 1881 and 1884; hesitancy in the annexation of territory and indifference in the holding of it; have increased the complications of South African life and government, but have not affected the root of the evil--the fact of two absolutely conflicting social and political systems developing side by side during a century of difficulty and racial rivalry. This antagonism has been absolute. The Boer love for liberty or independence became simply a love for isolation from the rest of humanity and a desire to imitate the slave-owners of Old Testament history. The final result has been the creation of a foreign, or Hollander, oligarchy in both the Dutch republics for the purpose of preserving this condition. The British ideal is freedom in government, in trade, in politics, for himself and for others, regardless of race, or creed, or color. The Boer principle of morality has always been a mere matter of color; that of the average Englishman is very different. The Boer religion is a gospel of sombreness wrapped in the shadow of Hebrew seclusion and exclusiveness; that of the true Englishman is a gospel of love and the light of a New Testament dispensation. Side by side these two types have lived and struggled in South Africa, and to-day the racial, national, individual and other differences are being thrown into the crucible of a desperate conflict. There can only be one local result--the ultimate organization of a united South Africa in which race and creed and color will be merged in one general principle of perfect equality and the practice of one great policy of liberty to all, within the bounds of rational legislation and honest life. A second and more widely potent consequence will be the closer constructive union of the British Empire and the welding of its scattered and sometimes incoherent systems of defence and legislation and commerce into one mighty whole in which Canada and Australia and South Africa and, in some measure, India will stand together as an Imperial unit. A third and very important result, arising out of the policy of foreign nations during the struggle, should also be the drawing closer of existing ties of friendship and kinship between the British Empire and the American Republic. J. CASTELL HOPKINS. [Illustration: THE RT. HON. SIR BARTLE FRERE, G.C.B. High Commissioner for South Africa, 1877-1881. THE RT. HON. SIR GEORGE GREY, K.C.B. High Commissioner for South Africa, 1854-1862.]