56 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT [PART I
element of difficulty and confusion, and the adoption of
the form of government could only be justified by the fact
that so recently after a grave war there would be risk in
entrusting the Government to a responsible ministry, which
would be likely to voice the sentiments of one only of the
two sections of the people and to neglect the interests of
the other. Moreover, by some advocates of the rights of the
natives it was felt that their interests would receive more care-
ful consideration from a Government which was under the Tm.-
perial control than from a local executive responsible only to
a legislature in which the natives were, in accordance with the
terms of the surrender of the Boers, entirely unrepresented.
There were other reasons of convenience in favour of the
maintenance of the representative form of government as
a preliminary stage : it was recognized on every side that it
would be well that the Orange River Colony should not
be constituted under a responsible government until the
experiment had been tried first in the Transvaal, but so
long as the two Colonies were under the Imperial control
it would be easy to maintain the working of the Tntercolonial
Council which had been called into being in order to manage
the railway and police affairs, amongst others, of the two
Colonies. On the grant of responsible government to one
Colony it was felt that it would be very inconvenient if the
other were still under the Colonial Office. But these con-
siderations were deemed inadequate by the Imperial Govern-
ment, on the formation of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s
administration, to justify the trying of an experiment in a
form of government which had never been yet a permanent
success, and which would only in any case be a tempo-
rary measure. They decided, therefore, to introduce full
ministerial responsibility for the general government of the
two Colonies, the letters patent for the Transvaal being
introduced first of all, and then those for the Orange River
Colony? The arrangement by which the Intercolonial
Council managed the railways of the two Colonies as one
* On December 6, 1906. Cf. Hansard, ser. 4; clxvii. 939 seq., 1063 seq.
On June 5, 1907.
