Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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If our view be right, the problem which South Africa has before it to-day is this: How, from our political states and our discordant races, can a great, healthy, united, organized nation be formed?

This problem naturally divides itself into two parts. For the moment, the first is the most pressing and absorbing, that of the political union of our states; and it must precede the other. Great as are the difficulties which lie in this path at present, difficulties whose extent can only be understood by one who has deeply studied our internal condition, yet so urgent is the practical need for it, so ripe the time, that there are probably men now living who may see it accomplished. It is impossible to study the South Africa of to-day and doubt that within sixty years there will exist here a great centralized and independent form of government embodying the united political will of the people; that with regard to external defence and the most vital internal problems, South Africa will be politically one; its state divisions, while developed and intensified in certain directions, will be relegated to the performance of those invaluable functions of self-government for which they are so admirably fitted. Circumstances and individuals favouring, we may see this accomplished before the next decade is out; it must come at last.