14 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
the constabulary, and a number of minor services. The net earn¬ 
ings of the railways w^ere used in defraying the expenses connected 
with the loan, the constabulary, and other charges.®^ Thus the two 
new colonies had a common administration of important depart¬ 
ments and local barriers were broken down. The revived customs 
union included all the colonies and the conference in 1903, dealing 
with this question, expressed the hope that the time might not be 
far distant when a Commonwealth of South Africa would be 
created; and it also recommended the appointment of a commis¬ 
sion to study the native problem, so important for all the colonies.®^ 
Prominent among the factors which aroused the people of South 
Africa to a realization of the necessity for union were questions 
connected with the customs, railway administration, labor supply 
for the mines on the Rand, and native policy. The last came 
especially into prominence on account of the Natal rebellion of 
1906 which revealed that the Kaffirs had not lost the martial 
spirit of their ancestors; In the report of the Native Affairs Com¬ 
mission of 1905, attention was called to a situation highly dis¬ 
quieting. Outnumbered more than five to one the whites faced a 
tremendous problem in dealing with native races noted for their 
fecundity and virility. While the old order among them disap¬ 
peared rapidly no new restraining influence seemed ready to take 
the place formerly occupied by the chiefs. And the spread of a 
feeling of racial solidarity, as a result of the Ethopian movement, 
gave further cause for alarm.®® 
All these elements were cleverly utilized by the young English¬ 
men employed in the crown colony administrations of the Trans¬ 
vaal and the Orange River Colony. Their well-written and well- 
documented arguments were finally published in book form entitled 
The Government of South Africa. And in another work. The 
Framework of Union, they showed the characteristics of some of 
the leading federated and unitary governments of the world.®^ 
After the promulgation of self-governing institutions in the new 
colonies the advocates of union found powerful allies among the 
Lord Milner saw great possibilities in the Inter-Colonial Council “affecting much 
more than the two Colonies,” Milner to Chamberlain, April 6, 1903. P.P., 1903, XLV, 
cd. 1641, p. 4. 
^Ibid., cd. 1640, p. 15. 
Ibid., 1905, LV, cd. 2399; The South African Natives: Their Progress and Present 
Condition, edited by The South African Native Races Committee (London, 1908), pp. 
192, 228. 
^ The Government of South Africa (Cape Town, 1908); The Framework of Union 
(Cape Town, 1908). 
