D1.8.25: [Untitled]

D1.8.25: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek writes that an upcoming parliamentary session on the forced (re-)annexation of British Kaffraria will likely be 'the most important one in our [p]arliamentary history' due to the unwanted tax burden it forces on Cape colonists. Despite making colonists pay for 'Kafir wars', they do not share in the administration of frontier (and adjoining native) affairs. Bleek finds this unfair. Some fear British Kaffraria's incorporation will validate the Eastern Districts' case for an 'augmented share of self-government'. He believes the provincial government's purview should concern native and frontier affairs, as leaving this to the central government would give them too much power. The transfer of control should be gradual until prerequisites are satisfied. Provincial departments of Public Education would encourage competition and varied approaches to learning, as they did among the German states, each vying to fill prestigious academic seats. Such changes will create groups of prospective homegrown academics for when a real university emerges in the Cape Colony and will prompt other provinces to follow. He discusses how Saul Solomon's Voluntary bill, proposing Solomon's Voluntary System, intends to divest the Church of all Erastianism (i.e., the connection between the state and the subservient church) by ending government subsidies to churches while also pursuing equal treatment of all beliefs by eliminating government aid to what is essentially a corporate entity unfairly immunised to standard requirements. This exceptionalism, culminating with mortmain (perpetual ownership), is an illiberal feudal vestige. Bleek feels that mortmain prohibition laws are the only solution to divesting the church and curtailing its 'evils'. He, therefore, does not endorse Solomon's bill.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

20 April 1865

One cut-out column of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Erastianism (divest the Church of all), Solomon's bill (ending government subsidies to churches), Voluntary System, aid (to churches from the state), corporate rights (of churches), mortmain (no laws against)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Saul Solomon's Voluntary bill would only finally be passed under the Molteno government in 1875. Bleek supports Saul Solomon's intention but disagrees with his method in the case of the Voluntary bill. For Bleek, the anachronism of mortmain and the perpetual income it generates is indistinguishable from annual grants and must be targeted with equal force. Until then, he recommends retaining the current 'mixed arrangements'. Bleek views here align with his campaign against the 'ecclesiastical despotism' of the High Church. Bleek submits that rich churches fallen to corruption transmit narrow ideas across generations.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.