assented to which sanctions any condition of service or residence of a
servile character." We have been invited to use the word "slavery" or
the words "semblance of slavery," but such expressions would be
needlessly wounding, and the words we have chosen are much more
effective, because much more precise and much more restrained, and
they point an accurate forefinger at the very evil we desire to
prevent.

I have now finished laying before the House the constitutional
settlement, and I should like to say that our proposals are
interdependent. They must be considered as a whole; they must be
accepted or rejected as a whole. I say this in no spirit of disrespect
to the Committee, because evidently it is a matter which the Executive
Government should decide on its own responsibility; and if the policy
which we declare were changed, new men would have to be found to carry
out another plan. We are prepared to make this settlement in the name
of the Liberal Party. That is sufficient authority for us; but there
is a higher authority which we should earnestly desire to obtain. I
make no appeal, but I address myself particularly to the right hon.
gentlemen who sit opposite, who are long versed in public affairs, and
who will not be able all their lives to escape from a heavy South
African responsibility. They are the accepted guides of a Party
which, though in a minority in this House, nevertheless embodies
nearly half the nation. I will ask them seriously whether they will
not pause before they commit themselves to violent or rash
denunciations of this great arrangement. I will ask them, further,
whether they cannot join with us to invest the grant of a free
Constitution to the Transvaal with something of a national sanction.
With all our majority we can only make it the gift of a Party; they
can make it the gift of England. And if that were so, I am quite sure