Thh Progress of the World. 



15 



reason whatever for consuUing Colonel Roosevelt as to his 

 wishes or intentions. lie is in every sense available for the 

 nomination if the Repuljlican pirty wants him. No statement 

 of any kind is due from Co'onel Roosevelt, nor from any other 

 available Republicin. 



Which means, I take it, that " Barkis is willin'." 



The Dominion I'arliainent reas- 

 Borden, Laurier. sembles on January loth. The 

 the Tariff. new Premier, iMr. Borden, has 



promised to introduce a Govern- 

 ment resolution for the creation of a permanent 

 tariff commission. Mr. Borden wishes to get the 

 tariff question out of politics. In his friendly address 

 at the dinner of the Canadian Society, held in New 

 York on December 8th, the Canadian Pretnier asserted 

 that, in his opinion, tlie reciprocity idea wasdead beyond 

 resuscitation. This statement has been resented by 

 the Liberals and ex-Premier Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who 

 is stoutly leading the Opposition in Pai^liament. The 

 defeat of reciprocity, Sir Wilfrid has publicly main- 

 tained, was not due to a discussion of the question on 

 its merits, but rather to appeals to anti-American 

 prejudice and to Imperialistic and pro-British senti- 

 ment. Therefore Sir Wilfrid intends to make the 

 introduction of the Premier's tariff commission resolu- 

 tion the occasion for opening the entire tariff (]uestion. 

 In this way he hopes, to keep the reciprocity senti- 

 ment active in the West. 



It is evident that the system of 

 Justice for Blacks fying natives accused of offences 



..,1...'''°!" I against white men or women in 



White Juries. i- .u ir- 11 1 > i u 



South Africa will have to be aban- 

 doned if justice is to be done. An influential 

 memorial from Rhodesia confirms the opinion ex- 

 pressed by Lord Gladstone, and we shall probably 

 sec trial by jury superseded by trial by judges. An 

 interesting article on the need for the proposed 

 change is quoted elsewhere from the Contemporary 

 Keiinv. A correspondent in Johannesburg, who 

 writes me cordially endorsing all that I said in my 

 Open I>etter to White South Africans, says : — - 



I could tell you of the utter inability of the native to obtain 

 justice in a court of la«' if the while man swears against him. 

 \Vc missionaries have given up going with our people to the 

 Law Courts — wc never gel even a hearing. Only yesterday 

 twenty-four "t>oys" in a mine refused to work under an over- 

 seer who ha<l ihrown one of them, in a rage, into a vat of 

 nearly boiling water, whereby he was terribly burned. They 

 were had up before the magistrate, who did not ilispute the fact 

 of the injurii-^ (which were corroborated by the doctor), but he 

 fined all the boy» three months' wages or imprisonment. The 

 case of ihe liousrboy is even harder. Jew mistresses arc very 

 fond of saying, when a boy asks for his first month's wages, 

 " I can'l give it you now, work another monlh." At the end 

 of the second month she picks a quarrel « ith the native, and has 

 him up before the magistrate for "impudence." Result: a 

 week or more's prison for the boy, loss of his pass and his 

 wages. I know one woman who boasts that she has had 

 Iwentv boys and never once paid one. Kxircme harshness mi 

 one hand, or alsurd over-lamiliarity on the other (the latter 

 sometimes resulting in what »c call "a black peril" case) arc 

 the lot of Ihe .avcr.ige houseboy. 



The Right 



of 



Free Speech. 



The same correspondent warns us 



Threatened Outrage that an attempt is being made 



Hum°anity '° ^^''^e on the native facilities 



for getting drink that the best of 

 them do not want. The reason is disguised under 

 various platitudes, but the rt-a/ reason was given by 

 a Dutch cynic in the Transvaal Leader a. few days ago. 

 Writing re the shortage of native labour, this gentle- 

 man maintained that the only way to make the native 

 work harder was to multiply his wants, so that he must 

 work to supply them : — 



The white man drinks and sinks, the native abstains and is 

 thrifty, and he rises. . . . Soon we shall see what we have had 

 hints of already— the low white working for the native ; trgo, 

 Ihe native must drink and sink — let his race die out. Give him 

 liquor, and he will soon sink down to his original savagery. 



A more damnable doctrine was never enunciated in 

 Hell. 



It is really about time that some- 

 lliing definite were done to put a 

 stop to the continual encroach- 

 ment of authority upon the right 

 of free speech. The attack is usually made from the 

 shelter of the blasphemy laws, which are in themselves 

 enough to make any honest man blaspheme, but 

 which still continue to cumber the Statute Book. 

 Only last month two men were sentenced to three and 

 four months' imprisonment at Leeds Assizes for 

 blasphemy, the chief offence being that they expressed 

 in vulgar and vigorous language conclusions which 

 are expressed every day without let or hindrance 

 in the periodical press of the country, on many 

 platforms, and in not a few pulpits. It may, no 

 doubt, be right and proper that the law should 

 interfere to compel peo[)le to observe the decencies 

 of controversy, but it is monstrous to send a man 

 to gaol for three or four months for expressing 

 his opinion concerning the Pentateuch in a way 

 shocking to ears polite. Even this, however, is 

 less monstrous than the way in which the right of 

 free speech is being suppressed in London parks, 

 where magistrates seem to hold that it is sufficient 

 jjroof that the delivery of a lecture will be resented 

 by a mob of rowdies to justify the police, not in 

 dis[)ersing the rowdies, but in arresting the lecturer. 

 There was some talk last month of forming a league 

 for the defence of free speech, and certainly not before 

 time. 



The death of Sir George Lewis, 

 which occurred on December 7th, 

 at the age of seventy-eight, re- 

 moves from the world of London 

 one of its most famous lawyers, and one of the best 

 of men. Sir George Lewis was a 1 ublic benefactor 

 in more ways than one. No one who knew him only 

 as the indefatigable lawyer, the supreme authority 

 whose word was law in all the great causes eelibres of 

 our time, had any idea of the kind of man he was, 

 the good-hearted, generous sym|)athetic friend and 

 confidant. Hut there are hundreds who learned to 

 regard him as a kind of incarnation of omnipo- 



Slr Georee Lewis. 



