The Union Parliament consists of a Senate having forty members—eight of whom are appointed by the Governor-General, the other thirty-two being elected, eight by each province—and a House of Assembly with 121 members chosen as follows: Cape of Good Hope 51, Natal 17, Transvaal 36, and Orange Free State 17. No voter is disqualified by race or colour, but the members of Parliament must be English subjects of European descent who have lived in the colony for at least five years. Now, a very great deal, so far as the well-being of the native races of South Africa are concerned, depends upon the interpretation that is given to the words “European descent.” In Cuban society every one who is not absolutely black is treated as white, whereas in the United States every one who is suspected of having even a “touch of the tar brush” is treated as black. Though the Federal constitution is very far from giving the native races a standing equal to that of the whites, intelligent government of the natives is promised by a clause which provides that four of the Senate, out of a total of forty, shall be appointed because of their special knowledge of the wants and wishes of the coloured population. If the racial problem is the most pressing, the colour problem is by far the most serious question before the people of South Africa, for the blacks not only outnumber the whites four to one, but there is the ever-present danger that rebellion may spring up among them without the slightest warning. Apart from all other considerations, the very numbers of the natives in South Africa form a dangerous element in the problem, for there are close on five million blacks south of the Limpopo as against a million and a quarter Europeans. If, in our own South, where the blacks are only half as numerous as the whites, there exists a problem of which no satisfactory solution has been offered, how much more serious is the state of affairs in a country where a handful of white men—themselves split into two camps by racial and political animosities—are face to face with a vast, warlike, and constantly increasing native population! In fact, the colour problem which has arisen would be strikingly similar to that in our Southern States were it not that there is a vast difference in type and temperament between the South African native and the Southern darky. The native races are three in number: the Bushmen, the aborigines of South Africa, a race of pygmy savages of a very low order of intelligence, who are fast becoming extinct; the Hottentots, a people considerably more advanced toward civilisation but rapidly decreasing from epidemics; and the Kaffirs, as the various sections of the great Zulu race are commonly known, a warlike, courageous, and handsome people who, since the British Government ended their inter-tribal wars, are rapidly multiplying, having increased fifteen per cent in the last seven years. Although the Europeans in South Africa