Some readers may perhaps think that I have taken the Colonial Parliament
rather severely to task. But to any reader who holds
with Bacon, that "the pencil hath laboured more in describing
the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon," I would say:
"Do, if we dare make the request, and place yourself in our shoes."
If, after a proper declaration of war, you found your kinsmen
driven from pillar to post in the manner that the South African Natives
have been harried and scurried by Act No. 27 of 1913, you would,
though aware that it is part of the fortunes of war, find it difficult
to suppress your hatred of the enemy. Similarly, if you see
your countrymen and countrywomen driven from home, their homes broken up,
with no hopes of redress, on the mandate of a Government
to which they had loyally paid taxation without representation --
driven from their homes, because they do not want to become servants;
and when you know that half of these homeless ones have perforce
submitted to the conditions and accepted service on terms
that are unprofitable to themselves; if you remember
that more would have submitted but for the fact that no master has any use
for a servant with forty head of cattle, or a hundred or more sheep;
and if you further bear in mind that many landowners are anxious
to live at peace with, and to keep your people as tenants,
but that they are debarred from doing so by your Government
which threatens them with a fine of 100 Pounds or six months' imprisonment,
you would, I think, likewise find it very difficult to maintain a level head
or wield a temperate pen.

For instance, let us say, the London County Council decrees
that no man shall rent a room, or hire a house, in the City of London
unless he be a servant in the employ of the landlord, adding that
there shall be a fine of one hundred pounds on any one who attempts