NEWS OF THE WEEK.
IT is with deep regret that we record the breakdown of the Bloemfontein Conference. Sir Alfred Milner made certain proposals in regard to the franchise which would have given the vote to all, naturalised aliens who had resided five years in the country, with retroactive effect, and would have also secured a fair number of representatives to the mining dis- tricts. President Kruger, however, would not give the vote except on what was equivalent' to seven years' residence for the greater part of the Outlanders, though those who had been in the country before 1890 were to be able to qualify in two years. In addition, there would be a kind of limbo of two years for every voter, during which time he would have cast off his British citizenship and yet not received that of the Transvaal. In addition, no man could get the vote who had not £200 a year, or did not live in a £50 a year house, and had not possessed political rights in his former country. In addition, the President would only give five Members out of a total of thirty-one to the mining districts, though they are, of course, by far the most populous. Possibly a via media might have been found between these terms, but, unhappily, President Kruger made the whole of his proposals subject to an agreement to refer all differences with the Transvaal to the arbitration of a foreign Power. That, of course, was held, and rightly held, by Sir Alfred Milner to be an absolutely inad- missible condition, and accordingly the Conference broke up. As we have said elsewhere, we might refer a dispute to a Court of three Colonial Chief Justices, but the plan of arbi- tration by a foreign Power is as impossible in the case of the Transvaal as it would be in that of the Nizam.
