South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
Burghers of 18 are entitled to vote for Field Cornets and Field
Commandants. To vote for a member of the Volksraad or for the President
a burgher must be 21, must have been born in the State,--when no
property qualification is necessary,--or must be the registered owner of
property to the value of £150, or be the lessor of a property worth £36
per annum; or have a yearly income of £200, or possess moveable property
worth £300.
From this it will be seen that the parliamentary system of the Republic
is protected from a supposed evil by a measure of precaution which would
be altogether inadmissible in any Constitution requiring the sanction of
the British Crown. No coloured person can vote for a Member of
Parliament. However expedient it may be thought by Englishmen to exclude
Kafirs or Zulus from voting till such changes shall have been made in
their habits as to make them fit for the privilege, the restrictions
made for that purpose must with us be common both to the coloured and to
the white population. We all feel that no class legislation as to the
privilege of voting should be adopted and that in giving or withholding
qualification no allusion should be made to race or colour. But the
Dutch of the Free State have no such scruple. They at once proclaim that
this privilege shall be confined to those in whose veins European blood
runs pure. I will here say nothing as to the comparative merits of
British latitude or of Dutch restraint, but I will ask my readers to
consider whether it be probable that a people who have not scrupled to
make for themselves such a law of exclusion will willingly join
themselves to a nationality which is absolutely and vehemently opposed
to any exclusion based on colour.
In the Free State the executive power is in the hands of the President
in which he is assisted by a Council of five, of whom two are official.
There is now a bench of three judges who go circuit, and there is a
magistrate or Landroost sitting in each of the thirteen districts and
deciding both civil and criminal cases to a certain extent. The religion
and education of the State will both require a few words from me, but
they will come better when I am speaking of Bloemfontein, the capital.
The Revenue of the country is something over £100,000 a year, and the
expenditure has for many years been kept within the Revenue. It has been
very fluctuating, having sunk below £60,000 in 1859 when the war with
the Basutos had crippled all the industries of the country and had
forced the burghers to spend their time in fighting instead of
cultivating their lands and looking after their sheep. There is nothing,
however, that the Boer hates so much as debt, and the Boer of the
Volksraad has been very careful to free his country from that incubus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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