cHAp. 111] TREATMENT OF NATIVE RACES 1067 
carry out the wishes of the Governor; in the case of Natal 
the Governor had the abstract right to act, but with no 
adequate security that his wishes would be carried out by 
the officers in question. No doubt, strictly speaking, the 
officers of the Government as officers of the Crown were 
bound to obey the Governor, but for practical purposes 
theoretical obligations of that type are inadequate. At any 
rate, practice showed that the Governor made no effort or 
could make no effort to act independently of ministers, and 
both the report of the Native Affairs Commission and the 
authors of The Government of South Africa state, as a matter of 
fact, that the Governor acted on ministerial advice.! Indeed, 
so unsatisfactory was the conduct of the native affairs in 
Natal, according to a Royal Commission appointed in Natal, 
that it would be a poor compliment to assume that the 
result was due to the action of the Governor. 
The experience of Government in the Transvaal? and the 
Orange River Colony, where the Boer governments recognized 
no equality of white and coloured in church or state, was 
too short to allow of any opinion being expressed with con- 
fidence as to whether it would have developed in any definite 
direction. Tt is not known that any divergence of policy 
between the Governor and the ministers arose during the 
continuance of the position. 
In the case of the Union of South Africa there is, of course, 
no attempt to control the Union in native matters; the 
point was raised in Parliament on the debate on the South 
Africa Bill, only to be at once brushed aside by the Under- 
Secretary of State for the Colonies. It is clear that the 
Government of a new dominion must be assumed to be com- 
petent in such matters. It is, however, provided by s. 147 
of the South Africa Act that the control and administration 
' See The Government of South Africa, i. 133 (correcting i. 22), and clause 
vi of Royal Instructions, July 20, 1893. Cf. Parl. Pap., Cd. 3889, pp. 13 
seq., where it is pointed out that the Parliament was an oligarchy as 
regards the natives, and a scheme of reform suggested. resulting in legisla- 
sion in 1909 (No. 1) and 1910 (No. 29). 
¢ For the amelioration of conditions on annexation, see Parl. Pap., 
Cd. 714, 904.