The Diamond Fields are in a condition very little like that of South Africa generally. They are now, so to say, in the act of being made a portion of the Cape Colony, the bill for this purpose having been passed only during the last Session. They were annexed to the British Dominions in 1871, and have been governed since that time by a resident Sub-Governor under the Governor and High Commissioner of the Cape Colony. The district will now have a certain allotment of members of Parliament, but it has not any strong bearing on the question we are considering. The population of the district is of a shifting nature, the greater portion of even the coloured people having been drawn there by the wages offered by capitalists in search of diamonds. The English have got into the way of calling this territory the Diamond Fields, but its present proper geographical name is Griqualand West. We then come to Natal with its little handful of white people,--20,000 Europeans among 320,000 Kafirs and Zulus. Natal at present is under a separate Governor of its own and a separate form of government. There is not a Parliament in our sense of the word, but a Legislative Council. The Executive Officers are responsible to the Governor and not to the Council. Natal is therefore a Crown Colony, and is not yet afflicted with any danger from voting natives. I can understand that it should be brought into a Confederation with other Colonies or Territories under the same flag without any alteration in its own Constitution,--but in doing so it must consent to take a very subordinate part. Where there is a Parliament, and the clamour and energy and strife of parliamentary life, there will be the power. If there be a Confederation with a central Congress,--and I presume that such an arrangement is always intended when Confederation is mentioned,--Natal would demand the right to elect members. It would choose its own franchise, and might perhaps continue to shut out the coloured man; but it would be subjected to and dominated by the Institutions of the Cape Colony, which, as I have endeavoured to show, are altogether different from its own. The smaller States are generally those most unwilling to confederate, fearing that they will be driven to the wall. The founders of the American Constitution had to give Rhode Island as many Senators as New York before she would consent to Federation.