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 BRITAIN 
 
 AND THE... 
 
 BOERS 
 
 BOTH SIDES OF THE 
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION 
 
 WITH MAP. 
 
 I.— England and the Transvaal, 
 IL— A Vindication of the Boers, 
 
 By Sydney Brooks 
 By A Diplomat 
 
 III.— A Transvaal View of the South African Question, 
 
 By Dr. F. V. Engelenburg, Editor of the " Pretoria Volksstem.'* 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING CO, 
 
 t' 
 
(Heprlntod t im The North American Review.) 
 
 Copyright, 1K99, by the 
 North American Kevlew Publishing Company. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 
-■ 
 
 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL 
 
 BY SYDNEY BROOKS. 
 
 The failure of the Bloemfontoin Conference is a disappoint- 
 ment that may prove a tragedy. President KrUger and Sir 
 Alfred Milner, tlie Governor of Cape Colony, met to discuss the 
 Transvaal question with every external circumstance pointing to a 
 happy issue. The time, the men and the place were all well 
 chosen. In tlio neat and compact capital of the Orange Free 
 State, the Boer President was among friends of his own race, and 
 the Br.tish ropresentative was not among enemies. Both com- 
 missioners had behind them the free trust of their respective gov- 
 ernments. The President, with the help of his more liberal fol- 
 lowers, could have forced upon the conservatives of the Old Boer 
 party any agreement he had cared to sign. It was a good omen, 
 after all these years of obstinate warfare, that he had consented to 
 a meeting at all. It was a better omen that he had declared his 
 willingness to discuss "all, all, all, except the independence of the 
 Transvaal." Sir Alfred Milner, as Lord Cromer's right-hand man 
 during the most arduous years of the reconstruction of Egypt, 
 proved himself second only to his chief in farsightedness, tact, de- 
 termination and strenuous common-sense; and nothing he has 
 done or said in South Africa has caused the Boers to mistrust him. 
 
 The portents of international politics were even more pro- 
 pitious. One may doubt whether there has been since Majuba 
 Hill, whether there is ever likely to be again, any such favorable 
 chance for a peaceful settlement of the great issue of South Africa. 
 To Mr. Chamberlain, the success of the conference meant the 
 restoration of personal credit in a matter that has brought him 
 little but discomfiture. Unquestionably, before risking another 
 rebuIF, ]u> must have convinced himself that in a friendly debate 
 lay some hope of getting this troublesome inole-hill finally cleared 
 
.- t/ ■. 
 
 BRITAm AND THE BOERS. 
 av'ay, and himself left free to make his mark on Eiiklish history 
 as the first Colonial Secretary with a p-iliey of his own. The peo- 
 ple of Great Britain, still soraewliat hnmiliatcd by memories of 
 tae raid, were never less inclined to be overbearin- or more anxious 
 to reach a just anc: «aeific solution. There was notliing i^ the 
 political situation in Cape Colony but wliat would qni^t Presi- 
 dent- KrUger's suspiciousness and urcre him to moderation. His 
 own Kinsmen, the Duteli colonicis, are there in control of the gov- 
 ernment, their racial sympatliies all on liis side, as against forcible 
 interference in the domestic aifairs of the Transvaal, their rouo-ii 
 busmess sense counselling justice to the Uitlanders for the good 
 of South African trade. Nothing was to be feared from the mas- 
 terful orapire-builder through whose "keen, unscrupulous course" 
 brreat Britain has lost much, even if she has gained more 
 At the time the conference mec, Mr. Ehodes was not even 
 m South Africa. From Germany came no encouragement 
 to oDduracy. The Kaiser, indeed, has long since done pen- 
 ance for his telegram, and given the Boers to understand 
 that he can no longer alford to be their friend; and unless every- 
 thing short of official confirmation is to be disbelieved, the Anglo- 
 German agi-een:ent of last summer makes provision for tlie trans- 
 fer of Delagoa Bay from Portuguese to British Jiands, and so cuts 
 off from the Trnnsvaal its last hope of rcacliing the sea. Even 
 the French who have ca])ital invested in the Rand, have of late 
 put aside their Anglopliobia and have been calling upon President 
 Krdger to «et his house in order. England and tlie Transvaal 
 were thus left face to face, witli the path towards a reasonable ad- 
 justment of their differences made as smooth as possible That 
 the conference, with all these circumstances in its favor, sliould 
 have failed, and failed without a step being gained towra-ds har- 
 monious compromise, is a fact that must cause the gravest appro- 
 hensions. 
 
 The conference 1)roke up over tlie eternal franchise difficulty, 
 which, wlnle It is certainly tlie crux of the whole dispute, is only 
 one of many points of controversy tliat will have to be s( raightcned 
 out before long. What is known as the suzerainty (piestion is 
 almost as important and considerably more interesting, because 
 more abstract, and I do not apologize for going backwards a little 
 way into history to get its pro]ior l)oarings. 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone made p-ace^witli the Boers, a few 
 
 
FXOLAyD AXD THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 weeks after the defeat of Majuba Hill, he restored to them their 
 former independence, subject to the suzerainty of the British Gov- 
 ernment. Tliis suzerainty was very clearly defined by the second 
 article of the Pretoria Convention of 1881, It consisted of a 
 right to appoint a British Resident, to whom was given a vetoing 
 power over the policy of the Republic towards the Kafirs— a very 
 necessary provision, for the Boers make Deuteronomy their text- 
 book on all native questions; a right to move troops through the 
 State in times of war; and a right to control and conduct all diplo- 
 matic intercourse with foreign powers. Some such restrictions 
 wore necessary to make the surrender palatable to the British pub- 
 lic, but neither Lord Derby, then Colonial Secretary, nor his suc- 
 cessors cared much about enforcing them. The Transvaal was 
 held to be a damnosa liemlitas before the discovery of gold, and 
 the suzerainty clauses were thrown in to save England's 'faoe. 
 They did not work well. The Boers chafed under an arrange- 
 ment that kept them from dealing with the natives in their own 
 way, and disputes became so frequent that JMr. (Jiadstone proposed 
 a revision of the convention in 1883. 
 
 The conference that led to the signing of the London Conven- 
 tion of the following year attracted very little notice. The British 
 public was tired of the whole business. The spirit of Imperialism 
 had not yet descended on the Colonial Office. The Boers 
 badgered and badgered and got almost everything they wanted. 
 All but complete independence was granted them in domestic 
 affairs. The title of Resident was dropped to gratify their suscep- 
 tibilities, and the British representative at Pretoria became a sort 
 of consul-general on a reduced salary. The word "suzerainty" 
 was omitted as olfensive to Boer sentiment. The convention regu- 
 lated the western boundaries of the Republic and pledged the 
 Boers not to seek an extension of them. It laid an inderdict on 
 slavery or any "apprenticeship partaking of slavery." In one 
 clause .only did the British Government assert its external a -- 
 tliority. "The South African Republic," says this clause, "will 
 conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation other 
 than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the east- 
 ward or westward of the Ro])ublic, until the same has been ap- 
 proved by Ilor majesty the Queen." Tliis clause again was in- 
 tended chicHy for home consumption. It was often disregarded 
 by the Boers, and it was not thought important enough to be 
 
BRITAIN AXD 2HE BOERS. 
 pressed home by the Colonial Office. The Transvaal in 1884 was 
 
 of Son'!) rr '•'''' "^rr^' ^^^^^^ ^^«^^^«^^ f- ^he support 
 of 100 000 stock-raisers. It liad but a small connection with Brit 
 i«h mtcrcsts. The one clear thing about M to tlie mind of Down- 
 ing Street was that it had given England more trouble than it was 
 woraiand that the best thing to do was to .eave it alone 
 
 if. ^h\ )' .^""^ '^/'^^ '""^'^ ^''^^'^' officialdom to change 
 ts attitude with speed. Thousands of Englishmen, Australians 
 and Americans swarmed into Johannesburg, and in a few y ar 
 converted a bankrupt and disorganized state into the second g d 
 producing country of the world. The Transvaal and its be- 
 wildered burghers woke up to find themselves the centre of Eu o- 
 pean mtngue, and the London Convention was discovered to be a 
 document of capital importance. 
 
 ihJll''^ *^i°^/^''' ^^^ *^' *""^^ 0^ «^e clauses'l have quoted 
 td m ^-^^\.f --.Republic is not an independent slate. Its 
 wif te'ri L;^^^^^^^ circu„.scribed both within and without its 
 
 ofln territory. Its boundaries, at any rate on one side arc nof 
 
 to expand.- It cannot, under the clauses of the eonvention in 
 oduoe slavey either openly, or in any of the veiled fo™ nider" 
 v.lneh the institution is still countenanced. Especially aid th » 
 .s the hinge of the whole convention, is its lnJt7TnJou2' 
 and diplomacy placed under rcstrietions. Ifow no state elf h! 
 properly called independent which is prohibited Z^tZin, 
 Its foreign affairs in its own way The Ti-nn,v,,i <■ . ® ^ 
 
 —tt-tai^t^tr^:---— r^ 
 
 loose application in popular parlance, and of uncertain tndin" ,„ 
 mternational law. The word has simply been a ^ «, a "° " 
 
 SrlT^Tof T "•! T''- '■^'^'■"'■^ <" En land anVh 
 lrans^aal. To employ it adds nothing to the real eineapv of the 
 
 convention of 1884; to drop it does not diminish Britisl authority 
 » any way. Call that authority by what name one w ll!^u r 
 tZZ " "" "«'" *° "'"-'"^ '-* remain that the 
 
 >f 
 
ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 The dispute between the two governments over this point is, 
 therefore, at bottom largely verbal and sentimental. Whether the 
 amount of control possessed by Great Britain over the Transvaal 
 constitutes a suzerainty cannot be settled, until we know exactly 
 what a suzerainty is; and that nobody can tell us. The really 
 important thing to knew is that so long as President Kr tiger 
 accepts and acts up to the terms of the London Conven- 
 tion, he is bound to the clause which carries with it the veto of the 
 British Government on all the diplomatic negotiations of the 
 Transvaal, except those connected with the dange Free State. 
 
 It is one thing to believe in the reality of British control, and 
 quite another to approve its necessity. The first is a question of 
 fact, the second of policy and opinion. Great Britain stands com- 
 mitted to the maintenance of the London Convention by the sup- 
 posed necessities of her position as the paramount power in South 
 Africa; and, after the coquetting between President Krflger and 
 the German Emperor tluit followed tlie Jameson raid, the fear of 
 foreign intrigue is too strong for any British ministry at present 
 to allow the Transvaal the same latitude in foreign, as it enjoys in 
 internal, affairs. The fear may seem unreas -^ning; to many it does 
 seem unreasoning; but, though less potent to-day than it was three 
 years ago, it is still vivid enough to make the preservation of the 
 convention appear a sacred duty and any revision of it a sacrifice 
 of imperial rights. There is room for a good deal of regret that 
 this should be so. The London Convention has attained a quite 
 undeserved and factitious sanctity in the eyes of English people. 
 From seeing their government constantly at work defending it 
 against real or alleged breaches, they have come to think it some- 
 thing very well worth defending. It is spoken and written of as 
 a sort of Magna Charta of British dominion in Soutli Africa, with- 
 out which Cape Colony, Natal and the whole of Rhodesia would 
 fall a ready prey to some designing power in alliance with the 
 Transvaal. The question of its real value and of the possibility of 
 revising its hasty clauses has never been squarely considered. Yet 
 tliere is not much, either in its inception or after-history, to com- 
 mand such perfervid adoration. It was hurriedly and carelessly 
 drafted to bring to its quickest end an issue of which everyone 
 was wearied; it was so little thought of that the Boers might claim 
 it has lapsed through frequent unrebuked violations; above all, 
 it dealt with a state of affairs that has altered in every particular 
 
BRITAIN AKD TBI: BOEItS. 
 Since its promulgation. WLerein does its peculiar virtue consist? 
 Mort EngI,Amen would answer, truly enough, in the cTausTthat 
 regulates the external affairs of the Transvfal But wC ,jte 
 all, IS that clause worth? It has irritated and hunumted the 
 Boers w.tlr„u enefiting England in a single essential It has 
 ore d the Ii.,t,sh Uoveruu,ont to an undignified and unprodueUv. 
 alchfuluess over the doings of Transvaal emissaries abroad If 
 was designed as an cirectivc check on foreign diplomacy then 
 
 ™I tatn^'T^''";' ''"""'^ f ""* "^ wo^-thlesS'es 't: 
 G(mon»tiation, It is, of course, impossible to believe that luv 
 
 Ijower that thought it worth while to negotiate a secret Ireltyw'th 
 
 the Iransvaal would be deterred from doing so by the London 
 
 tonvention; and equally impossible to imagine thalf any such 
 
 ;zr:f « le' iV'r'f' "^ ''""^™^' ™"'^ 3ubmit7to he 
 
 appio^al of tlie British Government. The obstacle that ieens 
 
 throw of British ascendancy in South Africa, is not a fifteen-year- 
 
 M piece of parchment, but the strength and position of the Bri - 
 
 h Empire; and that strength and position would remain what 
 
 bey are and be a deterrent of undiminished persuasiveness were 
 
 he convention cancelled to-morrow. muJmJuZ'Zi- 
 
 b lity of foreign interference in South Africa, or there i not if 
 
 there IS, the London Convention is no safeguard against! ' If 
 
 there is not, the London Convention, or at anf rate i f Z Imi 
 
 nent clause, is superfluous. ^ 
 
 As a matter of fact, we know now that neither Germany nor 
 any other power had serious thoughts of taking upon Ttself tl" 
 tremendous responsibility of an attempt to oult Orea B itl 
 rom &ou h Atnea. The true danger to the British position ms 
 oin quite another source, from the continued wan't of harrn; 
 »i.d confldence between the English and the Dutch due to the 
 piesent turbulent condition of the Transvaal. A civ 1 not a fo 
 eign, war is the menace to be dreaded. It is in the power of fle" 
 Boers to end the uncertainty that paraly.es commeL and p t 
 okcs racial antagonism and unrest from Cape Town to the Zam- 
 besi by reforming their internal administration; and, as an indu™. 
 n.ent to set about the task, a guarantee of independence wiuld be 
 
 icloZ^^irV "f ^r'"^ '™""'"^''^ "' *'« Colonial 
 -ccretaiy. It would seem to be at once an act of maimanimitv 
 
 and good policy if the British Government were torloZTZ 
 
 •1 
 
 -.31 
 
I 
 
 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL, 
 
 claims to a suzerainty and, if need be, abolish or revise the con- 
 vention, in return for the grant of those concessions to the 
 Uitlanders which can alone make the Transvaal a contented and 
 friendly state. The Boers are keenly anxious to have their status 
 as a nation placed beyond question. It galls them, as it would 
 gall any high-spirited people, to find themseh s after all these 
 years of struggle, still in a position of semi-dependence. From 
 the British and imperial point of view, there is nothing in the Lon- 
 don Convention to compare with the vital obligation of securing 
 justice for the Uitlanders, and inducing the two races to live side 
 by side in peace. Its abolition would involve the surrender of no 
 right of guardianship over British subjects in the Transvaal that 
 the ordinary law of nations does not already secure to the British 
 Government; and tlie withdrawal of the suzerainty claims, which 
 are an incessant source of bickerings between the two peoples, and 
 bring no real profit to Great Britain, would do more than any- 
 thing else to reconcile the Boers to an adequate measure of reform. 
 On the bare terms of the London Convention, as a matter of 
 technical legal right, it is more than doubtful whether Mr. Cham- 
 berlain is strictly justified in protesting against any of the features 
 of the President's domestic policy. Yet no one can doubt that, 
 had the convention been non-existcut, the protests would have 
 flowed in just the same, and possibly with greater force and bold- 
 ness. The convention, at best, throws but a dubious legality upon 
 a course of action already founded on broad i)rinciples of duty and 
 justice. It really hampers, rather than aids, British ministers in 
 their endeavor to transform President Kriiger's fascinating me- 
 diajvalism into something approaching a modern system of gov- 
 ernment. No sooner are the Uitlanders shackled with fresh fet- 
 ters, than a brilliant and quite interminable debate springs up be- 
 tween the law oilicers of the Crown and the legal luminaries em- 
 ployed by Mr. Kriiger, as to whether the new imposition is or is 
 not a breach of the convention; the fetters, meanwhile, remain- 
 ing where they were placed. The net v.'orkings of the conven- 
 tion have all along favored the Fabian tactics which the Presi- 
 dent knows so well how to pursue; and, but for one point, he would 
 probably be quite well satisfied to let it remain as it is. That point 
 is the limitations contained in the convention on the full sov- 
 eieignty of the Transvaal; and to sweep tliose restrictions away 
 and place the Republic on an equality with Great Britain, there 
 
BRITAIV AND THE BOERS. 
 
 are probably f™ conccssionB which he would lot be glad to make 
 There 8eem, a „ 1 events te be here an opportunity for an honori 
 ab e and safsfaCory bargain. An independent Tran,vaal. ™th 
 the U.tlanderB admitted to the franchise, would be no mojea 
 
 FrrLte ^""'°° '" '°"* ^''"^ "■"■^ '» «•« O^ai: 
 
 Sir Alfred Miner, of course, went to Bloemfontein with no 
 
 uch heroic proposals in his portfolio. In the pre ent Iwe of 
 
 England's attachment to the convention, one hafto adm f that 
 
 sTon™;nd''Lrof T '"""r /^«°"^' *«''"^' P"^« o" 
 6,on and fears of foreign interference are too keenly aroused to 
 
 brook the seeming humiliation of retreat, even from a fate and 
 
 unproli able position. Too much zeal has been spent on he de 
 
 cnce of the convention to make its surrender seem anything but 
 
 a gross betrayal. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the confer 
 
 ence foundered in part on this very rook. The pfesident proposed 
 
 ttt on Ti ?' Hrr " ''^^"'^ *™'^ ''^ submitted'torbt 
 tiation. Sir Alfred Milner was obliged to answer, in effect that 
 
 on any matter of real importance there could be no aAitra ion 
 
 b tween a suzermn state and its dependency. Such pistoU ng d° 
 
 wmTave L7 "t/r ' P^"™*"' '™'=- T''^ concessions ttat 
 wil have to be granted to end the veiled warfare that threatens 
 
 blo^r" *\^™^™»" >■«' "ko the whole of South Afr c. to 
 blood cannot be ejcpected to come from one side only. It is the 
 President's misfortune to have put himself morally in the wron^ 
 
 Cre! T>"7 P"".' "' "■""^'"^ P"'-^- That /oes not rXv! 
 Great Britain from the obligation of considering whether it would 
 not be an act of mingled wisdom and generosity to make thrtask 
 
 tTTT T '' """'"" 'f'"' renunciation of su erato y 
 .s the only adequate reward in sight that will atone for the corn- 
 
 Puluri:rT'"' "^"""^ *" *' reorganisation of tl oT 
 public 8 internal economy. It would remove, in great part the 
 
 Litlanders, they imperil tlieir own todependence; and it would 
 show as nothing else can, the sincerity 'and honesty of pZ e 
 
 ttzr "' ^''«"''' ^'"^ " "'^'^ ^™>'"ss -"h *: 
 
 In the Transvaal itself the situation is almost too fantastic for 
 
 ngTorC°h' '"^ ''"'^°''^"^' ^^"-^'^^^^^ of whom ! 
 iong to the English-speaking race, outnumber the Boers by more 
 
 I 
 
ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 than two to one. They own half the land and contribute nine- 
 teen-twentieths of the public revenue. It is through their brains 
 and energy that the Transvaal has been raised from bankruptcy 
 into its present prosperity. They are citizens of the most progres- 
 sive countries in the world, accustomed to self-government and 
 ii' tolerant of any encroachments upon their liberty. The Boers 
 ])ave altered little, if at all, since the days when the Dutch East 
 India Company planted them at the Cape, except to add some of 
 the vices of the nineteenth century to the ignorance of the seven- 
 teenth. "In some of the elements of modern civilization," says 
 Mr. Bryce, a witness of inspired impartiality, "they have gone 
 back rather than forward." A half-nomad people, of sullen and 
 unsocial temperament, severed from Europe and its influences for 
 over two hundred years, living rudely and contentedly on the 
 vast, arid holdings where their sheep and cattle are pastured — each 
 man as far as may be from his neighbor— disdaining trade, dis- 
 daining agriculture, ignorant to an almost inconceivable degree of 
 Ignorance, without music, literature or art, superstitious, grimly 
 religious, they are in all things, except courage and stubbornness 
 of character, the very antithesis of the strangers settled among 
 them. The pairiarch Abraham in Wall Street would hardly make 
 an odder contrast. The Uitlanders have an even greater share of 
 the intelligence of the country than of its wealth. Nevertheless, 
 they are kept in complete subjection to their bucolic task-masters. 
 1'hey are not allowed to vote, except for a legislative chamber that 
 cannot legislate; they have no voice in the spending of the money 
 taken from their pockets; they see millions of dollars lavished on 
 the secret service and fortifications at Pretoria, while Johannes- 
 burg remains a pest-hole; their language is proscribed in the 
 schools and law-courts of a city where not one man in a thousand 
 speaks anything but English; a clipped and barren dialect, as much 
 beneath pure Dutch as Czechish is beneath Russian, is enthroned 
 in its place; and their children are forced to learn geography and 
 history from Dutch text-books after passing the elementary stand- 
 ards — the President, with a directness that would have come home 
 to the late ]\rr. Dingley, seeking to popularize his native taal by a 
 tax of one hundred per cent, upon foreign books. 
 
 It is grotesque to think of Englishmen and Americans being 
 treated in this fashion, and it is quite beyond imagination that 
 they should rest passive in such a house of bondage. The restric- 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 tions on franchise and education fall liardest, not on the capitalists 
 and largo niin(> owners, wlio.are mostly absentees, but on the law- 
 yers, doctors, business men and the working classes who have 
 settled in the Kand district less as a speculation than to make it 
 their home and earn a living and bring up their families The 
 recent petition from the Uitlanders to the Queen was entirely the 
 work of professional men and laborers. Neither Mr. Rhodes, nor 
 the Chartered Company, nor the capitalists had anythiixr to do 
 with It. It was a genuine and thoughtful protest from the average 
 ^vorkmg immigrant against the intolerable oppression to which he 
 IS subjected. Even raids and poets laureate cannot weaken the 
 solidity of these grievances. "Diggers," ventured an Australian 
 Premier have no country." That may hold good for Coolgardie 
 and ^le Klondyke, but not for the Transvaal; for gold-mining in 
 the liand is less hazardous and uncertain than elsewhere A 
 payable reef once found, there is little anxiety of its suddenly pe- 
 tering out Its owner can reckon with some coniidence that deep 
 borings will show the same percentage of gold to rock as appears 
 near the surface; and this unique assurance makes it possible to 
 speculate approximately on the duration of the mines The 
 opinion of the most competent specialists seems to be that the dis- 
 trict, as a whole, will not be exhausted for fifty, and possibly not 
 for seventy or eighty, years to come. This puts the Eand on quite 
 a different footing Irom the gold-fields of Australia and California 
 a he foreigners who have rushed to Johannesburg are, for the most 
 part genuine settlers, men who look forward to spendin- their 
 whole ives either in the employment of the mine-owners° or in 
 he ordinary trades and professions that gather round the centre 
 of a great industry. They are not of the order of speculative tran- 
 sients, whose interest m their new resting place ceases with the 
 disc^overy and exhaustion or sale of a "lucky strike." In other 
 
 ri t7 T '77''''"' '"^ '^''' ''""*^y '' *'^« Transvaal; and 
 as men who have taken up a permanent residence in it, thev de- 
 inand not unreasonably, that it should be made politically and 
 socially endurable. ^ 
 
 Before the discovery of gold any settler in the Transvaal could 
 secure the electoral franchise after a residence of two years. The 
 Boers welcomed the money that flowed into the exchequer when 
 the value of the Rand district became known; but they took in^ 
 stant alarm at the stream of capitalists, engineers, traders and 
 
 ft 
 
ENOLANt} AND THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 hiiners— all speaking the tongue of their liereditary foes— that 
 threatened to overwhelm their independence. To jjreserve the po- 
 litical status quo, they raised the probationary term of qualifica- 
 tion for the franchise, first to five years and tlien to fifteen. In 
 1890, as a soj) to the inevitable clamor for representation, they 
 created a Second Volksraad for the members of which aliens might 
 vote after taking the oath and residing for two years in the coun- 
 try. As the Second Volksraad is not allowed to discuss matters 
 of taxation and as all its decrees are subject to the approval of the 
 lirst Volksraad — which can legislate without requiring the assent 
 of the inferior chamber — the concession is not worth much. At 
 present no immigrant can vote for the First Volksraad unless he 
 has passed the age of forty and lived for at least fourteen years in 
 the country, after taking the oath and being placed on the govern- 
 ment lists, lists on which, according to Mr. Bryce, the local au- 
 thorities are nowise careful to place him. Even the niggardly re- 
 forms proposed by the President at the end of last May were nega- 
 tived by his burghers. Practically, the Uitlanders are disenfran- 
 chised. In every other state, Dutch and English stand on the 
 same equality. In the Transvaal, the English are treated like 
 Kafirs. They have not only taxation without representation, but 
 taxation without police, without sanitation, without schools, witii- 
 out justice, witliout freedom of the press, without liberty of as- 
 sociation. Johannesburg is ill-paved, ill-lighted and abominably 
 deficient in drainage and water-supply, because it is English. The 
 courts of law have been prostituted to the whims of the Legisla- 
 ture, in defiance of the written Constitution of the Republic, that 
 tliereby the English might be deprived of their one legal remedy 
 3ainst injustice. Education, except in the Boer taal, is forbid- 
 "'U above the third standard, in the hope of forcing the English 
 . nleam their native tongue. And these indignities are put 
 upon the men who are tlie source of all the country's prosperity, 
 and its saviours from internal dissolution. 
 
 There can be little doubt that, had President Krfiger yielded 
 to the demand for the franchise when it was first made, he would 
 have to-day, in the gratitude and contenfment of his new citizens, 
 the best guarantee for tlie independence of the Republic. The 
 suspiciousness and conservatism of the Boer character dictated a 
 policy of refusal and delay and unfulfilled promises, from the ef- 
 fects of which the state luis been saved more by the mistakes of its 
 
BRITAW.'.ND THE BOEltS. 
 
 epponents than by the President's own shi-rndncss If the ei 
 istcuce of tlie liei.ublic seems to be imperillcl to-iliiv Presicfcnt 
 Kr ger has chiefly himself to thank for it. His ^^tano to a 
 Jiist demand has driven the Uitlanders, by a proeese clmon t^ 
 most politieal agitations, to put forward oU,er 'and 3 Znab 
 laims. A sec , on of the excluded settlers ha, started f 1 c Z y 
 baaed on Great Britain's suzerainty, that the taking of he oa'h 
 01 allegiance to the Transvaal does not involve the su render of 
 Jlntish eitizenship. If ,he contention were sound, Presid™t KrO 
 t-er wou d be well within hi, right, in refusing th tan h "e to aH 
 such hjbnd ejtizens. But the argument will not hold er fo 
 
 England have condemned and disowned it. A British subicct on 
 sweanng the oath of allegiance to the South Afrie n Lpu c or 
 
 Z° a"; b f ' '"*'" " °"" °" '"» "«"'= °' ^"«* -"-- 
 y p.ty a contrary plea was ever urged. It ha, only served to 
 misrepresent the intention, of the average Ditlander,. ^AsTbodv 
 he U.tlander, demand, firstly, such an alteration of the prcS 
 ftanchise law as will give them at least an effective minorir ep 
 resentafon; secondly, permission to educate their children nlhX 
 own tongne; and thirdly, a rearrangement of the tariff. The pre 
 ewBtr fT'"" "^"J'* °' •'""annesburg for the ben fit Ta 
 
 an inordi'rr °"* '^T "'^ "^^ °' *« "»«-'«=' "^ '"« to 
 c,o».l . , I ""• ^'""■"^ "■'^ omnipotence of a few lar™ 
 
 naraiy upon Natal, the Orange Free Slate and Cane Colonv a, 
 
 Sctir:;ueTtb''rf '^ "" "°*™»" eiasse:-^ *,! eLi 
 
 mletth entmeef '"*' "'" °' "«'^' ""= '^"^ ■"■* "> " '» 
 The capitaUsts have grievances of their own which their 
 
 keep well to the front. The nature and continuance of t le^ 
 gne vanec, show to what length, the distrust felt by the Boer^ ^ 
 ward, the Bnt.sh will carry them, even to the deitaen rf the 
 ut p'o irvtT"- ■"" «°^'™"'™' °' "•" Transvaa ,1 m d 
 
 caleuIatcrthat%S V ''*'^ " "^ """"* '""°'' '™ 
 
 crease Z ! * . legislation and administration would de- 
 
 crease the cost of production by about thirty per cent. Hea^ 
 
 4 
 
 ■*IU^ 
 
■n 
 
 m 
 
 ■If 
 
 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 duties are levied on machinery and chemicals; the tariff more than 
 doubles the price of maize, which is the chief food of the native 
 workmen; and the liquor laws, by making it easy for Kafirs to get 
 drunk, reduce the supply of regular labor and greatly incrtaoe the 
 number of accidents. But the loudest complaints are directed 
 against the dynamite and railroad monopolies, from the first of 
 which the state derives not a penny in compensation, and from 
 the second a mere fraction of the sum that goes into the pockets 
 of German and Butch stockholders. The dynamite monojjoly 
 was granted to a German firm some years ago, and securely hedged 
 around by a prohibitive duty on the imported article. The usual 
 consequences have followed. The dynamite is poor in quality 
 and nearly fifty per cent, higher in price than it ought to be. The 
 Netherlands Company, which owns all the railroads in the Trans- 
 vaal, joins in the merry war of extortion with a series of out- 
 rageous freight charges. Taken altogether, these impositions 
 make a difference of three or four per cent, on the dividends of 
 the best mines, threaten the prospect of any dividend on the sec- 
 ond best, and make it useless to persevere with those of a still 
 lower grade; the state treasury, of course, suffering in proportion.* 
 One most unwholesome result of this policy is that the rich mines, 
 which can bear the exactions, buy up the poorer ones that cannot, 
 and so tend to bring almost the entire Eand into the hands of two 
 or three capitalists. 
 
 It must not be supposed that President 'Krtiger has carried 
 with him the unanimous support even of his own countrymen in 
 making repression the keynote of his policy. There has always 
 been among the Boers a small and liberal minority that favors re- 
 forms, and sees in the persistent refusal of the franchise a weapon 
 of offence placed in the hands of their enemies. This minority is 
 still further incensed by the President's importation of Hollanders 
 to fill the government offices, and by his reckless defiance of the 
 Constitution in making the Supreme Court subservient to the 
 Volksraad. Nor have the more enlightened Dutch of Cape 
 Colony and the Orange Free State stood unreservedly on the side 
 of their northern kinsmen. It is true that if any attack were 
 made on the independence of the Transvaal, their racial sympa- 
 thies might bring them to the support of the Boers; but they are 
 
 •I am Indebted for these and other facts to Mr. Bryce's " Impressions qf South 
 Africa, ' a book the value and tborougbnesB of wbicn are bardly to be Inferred 
 from the modesty of its title. 
 
 -J 
 
BRITAIN AXD THE BOEliS. 
 hardly less desirous than the Uitlanders of seeing the unrest at 
 Johannesburg put an end to. The heavy turilf on wool, wines, 
 i)randy and t'ood-stufl's all but closes the richest market in South 
 Africa to their staple exports; and they, like everyone south of the 
 Zambesi, feel the eil'ects of the discontent that radiates from the 
 Transvaal, i)aralyzing comuiercial enterprise and development, 
 and wrapping the whole country in a cloud of uncertainties. 
 While opposed to any forcible interference with the domestic af- 
 fairs of their kinsmen, they have used their influence more than 
 once, but never with much ctl'ect, in the direction of peace and 
 moderation. The President's strength lies in the aptitude of his 
 appeals to the spirit and prejudices of the Old lioer party. These 
 stalwart conservatives concentrate all their hatred and contempt 
 for foreign ways and customs upon the British, the only enemies 
 they have known. It was to escape from British rule that their 
 forefathers struck out from tiie Cape, across the wilderness, and 
 founded a Eepublic of their own. The incidents of the Great 
 Trek in the thirties, of which the President is the last survivor, 
 are still held in patriotic memory. The British annexed the new- 
 born state under pledges delayed so long that the Boers took up 
 arms to enforce them and won back their old independence. The 
 British stopped the expansion of the Transvaal on the north by 
 occupying Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and on the west by 
 pouncing upon Bechuanaland. It was with British gold, and 
 under the command of Biitish officers, that the raid of 1895 was 
 planned and carried out. Small wonder that the Boers saw and 
 still see in tlie demand for the franchise only another British plot 
 to rob them of their independence. The Uitlanders had come 
 into the country uninvited and undesired, seeking only gold, and 
 with full warning that it was a Boer Republic they were entering. 
 By what right could these strangers of yesterday claim to be put 
 on a level with the old burghers, who had fought and bled to keep 
 the state free from alien control? And what Boer, looking to the 
 past experiences of his people with the English, could guarantee 
 that their capture of the franchise would not lead to their capture 
 of the entire state, that the Eepublic would not become an Eng- 
 lish Republic with an lOnglish President, and its original founders 
 a despised and oppressed minority? 
 
 It would have been a high achievement in diplomacy if Sir 
 Alfred :Milner could have pcisuaded the President, and through 
 
 ;/i 
 
 ,u^. 
 
unrcBt at 
 ol, wines, 
 in South 
 ith of the 
 from tlie 
 L'lopment, 
 M'tuinties. 
 nestic af- 
 lore than 
 )eace and 
 (le of his 
 ■. These 
 contempt 
 ■ enemies 
 hat their 
 less, and 
 be Great 
 survivor, 
 the new- 
 took up 
 3e. The 
 lorth by 
 west b;,' 
 3ld, and 
 895 was 
 saw and 
 tish plot 
 id come 
 old, and 
 ntering. 
 ) be put 
 to keep 
 g to the 
 larantee 
 capture 
 m Eng- 
 oundera 
 
 y if Sir 
 through 
 
 *. 
 ^ 
 
 E.WLAND A\D THR TRANSVAAL, 
 
 him the Boert, that their fears, if not baseless, are very unlikely 
 to be realized. So long as the reasonable grievances of the Uit- 
 landers arc met with an obstinate non possumus, the Transvaal 
 runs the risk of perishing suddenly and in violence. The danger 
 can only be avoided by altering the franchise laws to give Johan- 
 nesburg a voice, not necessarily a preponderating voice, in the 
 government of the country; and by removing the barriers upon 
 the education of Knglish children in Knglish. A revision of the 
 dynamite and railroad monopolies, and a rearrangement of the 
 ttiriir schedule, would give the ca[)itnlists all the privileges they 
 care for, and at the same time add largely to the revenue of 
 the Republic. It is clear that the old suspicious policy of denial 
 ar,d opposition bas only endangered the security it was foolishly 
 nneant to safeguard. The best hope for the independence of the 
 state must lie in the happiness and contentment of its citizens; 
 and that contentment can only be reached by abolishing racial 
 discriminations and putting British and Boer on an equality be- 
 fore the law. Under a rigime of frankness and conciliation, the 
 two peoples will be able in time to forget their former animosities 
 and come together in harmony and good-fellowship, as they did 
 in the early days of the American colonies, as they still do in Cape 
 Colony. The newly enfranchised citizens, no more the victims of 
 a mediiEval oligarchy, will then be as little tempted to hoist the 
 British flag over Pretoria as the French in Canada to return to 
 their old allegiance. The people of England have no hostility 
 towards the Boers, and no ambition to annex their country. They 
 have, on the contrary, an uncomfortable feeling that, in their 
 clashes with the Transvaal, the British reputation for fair-deal- 
 ing, which so long as it is deserved is the backbone of the Empire, 
 has not been altogether maintained. They admire the old Presi- 
 dent's pluck and shrewdness and wish him well in his struggle, 
 even where they have to condemn his methods of carrying it on. 
 They cannot find much in his policy that is defensible except its 
 object, and yet they feel that, were they in his place, they would 
 liave done much as he has done; and it is because they are sincere 
 in wishing the Transvaal to outlast the life-time of its rugged 
 champion, that they look to him even at the eleventh hour to 
 overcome prejudice and rebuild his state on the only foundation 
 that has in it the promise of permanence. 
 
 Sydney Brooks. 
 
A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 A EEJOINDER TO MR. SYDNEY BROOKS. 
 
 BY A DIPLOMAT. 
 
 One of the principal arguments used against the Boers is 
 that they are not only a stationary, but a positively retrograde, peo- 
 ple. Among the proofs adduced to substantiate this charge, no 
 one has thought, "et pour cause," of mentioning the fact that 
 they are totally ignorant of the art of using the press as a 
 means of influencing public opinion. 
 
 The English, with whom, through centuries of initiation, the 
 press has become such a mighty instrument of combat or propa- 
 ganda, have flooded the world with a mass of publications de- 
 signed to ruin the Boer cause in both hemispheres. The success 
 of this campaign has been facilitated by the fact that foreign in- 
 terests in the Transvaal, other than English, could only hope to 
 benefit by it simultaneously with the English interests. Thus, 
 the United States and even France have endorsed the British view- 
 of the question. On the other hand, the Boers have done noth- 
 ing to meet their adversaries on this most important field of in- 
 ternational warfare. Trusting exclusively to diplomatic action 
 and military resistance to foil the purpose of the English— with 
 what success in the former line the ostentatious passage of the 
 German Emperor from sympathy to indifl^erence, and the open 
 opposition of France to their claims, have already told us; and, 
 m the latter line, England's determination makes it only too easy 
 to predict— they have totally neglected to enlist public sympathy 
 in foreign countries on their side; and yet their case ofl'ers aspects 
 which, properly presented, could not fail to cause the impartial 
 mind to pause and deny the righteousness of the English demands. 
 Whether this feeling would take the form of any practical ad- 
 
 :1 
 
.1 VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 5. 
 
 Boers is 
 rade, peo- 
 large, no 
 fact that 
 'ess as a 
 
 tion, the 
 )r propa- 
 tions de- 
 e success 
 reign in- 
 hope to 
 . Tims, 
 iish view 
 ne noth- 
 Id of in- 
 e action 
 h — with 
 e of the 
 he open 
 is; and, 
 too easy 
 anpathy 
 I asj)ect3 
 npartial 
 emands. 
 ical ad- 
 
 f 
 
 
 •vantage to the Boers, is more than questionable; but it is al- 
 ways desirable for a nation, if only in the interest of morality and 
 its own reputation, to establish its innocence and proclaim the 
 guilt of the aggressor. 
 
 It has struck the writer of these pages that what the Boer gov- 
 ernment and citizens have refrained from doing, a foreigner, 
 totally unconnected with them, might think of achieving, prompt- 
 ed thereto simply by his sympathy with the persecuted, and by the 
 innate impulse of man to disprove error and combat injustice. 
 By placing myself on the broad grounds of public and interna- 
 tional law, natural equity and history, I hope to cover the whole 
 subject of the debate now raging between the "Paramount Power" 
 in South Africa and the Boers, and so help in popularizing the 
 conclusion that the Transvaal is only fighting for dear life against 
 a foe who is meditating a crime nearly as great as was the sup- 
 pression of Poland. 
 
 Before going deeper into the matter, I should like to express 
 the sentiment that, in constituting myself the champion of the 
 Boers, or rather of international faith and honesty, in a United 
 States Review, I address myself more particularly to that section 
 of the American people whose inborn love of truth and justice 
 will not allow their judgment to be obscured by sympathy of race, 
 or by a certain analogy of situations and methods of solution be- 
 tween what was the Cuban Question for the Americans, and what 
 is the Transvaal Question for the, English. 
 
 The July number of the NoiiTii American Review contains 
 a very interesting article by Mr. Sydney Brooks, dealing with the 
 subject we have in hand from the English point of view. It has 
 occurred to me that an excellent way of carrying out my object 
 is to follow Mr. Brooks in his very complete statement of the case, 
 esteeming that, if I can prove the appreciations of this earnest 
 and well equipped upholder of the Uitlander Credo to be false, I 
 shall have achieved a sufficient triumph for the Boers. 
 
 After deploring the breakdown of the negotiations between 
 President KrUger and Sir Alfred Milner, in which sentiment 
 everybody must join, Mr. Brooks prefaces his account of the 
 present condition of affairs in the Transvaal with a short review 
 of what is known as tlie Suzerainty question. From this de- 
 Bcrii)tion we gather that, as a result of a struggle reaching far 
 back into the beginning of the century, and marked by the pas- 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 Bionate attachment of the Bopr« +n f^.- • j ' , 
 lesser tenacity of k^VmTonZ iJ^l'^^'^'fr' »"<' ''^ » 
 tioi,s were concI„ded-„„e at lS» t f."*' ■"'' "'° '=™^«'- 
 last of which, althou-^h rivil ,? ' """^ '" ^°°'^°''; *'« 
 maintained b^ Enind over ll t ' ^'■'"" '"'"" °' "» ™'horily 
 defeat at Ma/uba H il etm ktt .1™ «™",' """-"'-'"ding the 
 iection to Eilish conC n te or r"'' T'" ' »""^ »' -b- 
 goes on to say, and he Drove, ifT , """S^- M"-- Broolia 
 tial control-iali it Watat J S™" .'^■'''"' *'= "«" »' P^- 
 no importance-to which Cl!n,lr°"^''''"« '''='' "■" t"™ ^'s 
 ially since the diselve; of^^j 'n .r T "' "™"^™'-' ^'P-" 
 worthless instrument in herCd 'h' f™"'' '=™="""« » 
 gall to the Boers. Finallv Mr R ? " " "■''™«ood and 
 
 gestion shonld bo pLtteuhrlf „„^i °? r^^'^''-^"^ ""^ ™«- 
 Mea of a solution !t the Tr nsv^» ' l""'"''^ " '^""'°*<'» ^^ 
 render of this right o control i^"'""'""''" "'" '»" sur- 
 o-d might be a mean Ta 'bt ^' ""■' °' "'^ '^'>8lish should 
 
 dispute: becanseThere arc Xil'' f ""'™' ■" "'^ »«•"« - 
 Krager would not be glad to It ^- '^"'/™'^^=^i™= ftesident 
 "imitations on the full fZl^lt .1% '' *° T"" ""^ *"» 
 Kepnblie on an equality w.tif !:[ B^IS •™' "" "'"^ '"^ 
 
 vantarfor^EnglS tt"!'''' ''™*- " " '^ ^ "'-"■7 ad- 
 grantfd by tttndon%tr.°oT t': "17, '"^ ^"''^™''- "' 
 a concession to the lienuMn , ,' f "^ '" '"' '"^ '""=<"■/ 
 empty words. Undoubted; h 7 " '""■ •'■" "^f'^' <" ""^ 
 isfaction from the pr3i ! f^ """' """" " ""''l ^»*- 
 lut, before makin. a b r„ *f . v" ™'"l'''^'« '"dependence; 
 of whose shrewdtss Mr T I "' '''"'^•'""' ^''''^i''™' Krllger 
 i< that he doe noTgi " ;,f;::th,;'«"'^ "^"^''' »-' -'to' 
 <"in- Whv, if the nro„o,iH„., f > '"i"''' '" '""''""f^' '^ f"'*" 
 
 an it signmes tt 2';^ g:?/^'- :f ^^ ^ '"^■"■'"* ^' 
 
 iHficant state of don-^nrlpnr^r • . "^^"*^^"^^ ^^^elf from an insi-r. 
 for the enfranchi emen Tthl V^^' T'"l '' '"» T"-™''' 
 weapon with whicl "he E^^.th': trf ' '' J" "^' '" ^ 
 over it. There is mockery in Mr Lm" , """'''''*' ™''«y 
 may deny this by saying 7s 'in Z lltl tT^"""" '1 
 "s argument, that the enfranchisement „t,?F , ""'T "' 
 lead to any substitution of authority in the T *^ ,"'' "'" °'" 
 ^a.so; '<utwhocanhelpsmi,i„g;;t:h:deJ:rn"- H^ev:^ 
 
nee and by a 
 I two conven- 
 London; the 
 the authority 
 standing tlie 
 state of sub- 
 Mr. Brooks 
 right of par- 
 he term has 
 ervor, espec- 
 •onstitutes a 
 'mwood and 
 id this SUO-- 
 inbodies his 
 e total sur- 
 flish should 
 le affairs in 
 5 ^'resident 
 P away the 
 J place the 
 
 llusory ad- 
 ansvaal, as 
 ss illusory 
 3t of mero 
 moral sat- 
 pendence; 
 t KrUger, 
 list see to 
 ? for false 
 ything at 
 an insi-x- 
 rransvaal 
 !ay, for a 
 mastery 
 lough he 
 'ourse of 
 will not 
 He may 
 lowever. 
 
 ' f 
 
 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 this aspect of the case should not concern us just yet. Let us 
 lirst look into the matter of enfrancliisement, considered as a 
 grievance of the Uitlanders, and speak of it together with their 
 other complaints. 
 
 The whole Transvaal issue hinges on one question: Have the 
 Boers the right to govern themselves as they choose; or, rather, 
 have the English the right to interfere with the form of govern- 
 ment, administration and life that the Boers have chosen for 
 themselves? The answer to this query involves considerations of 
 public and international law which are of great importance. 
 
 It is the practice of those Powers who have embarked on coloni- 
 zntion to occupy territories belonging to savage or semi-savage 
 populations, without much reference to the lawfulness of the op- 
 eration. In this way, England, France, Germany, ill-advised 
 Italy, and, recently, the United States have spread their domin- 
 ion over immense tracts of country. ChallengeJ to prove the 
 justiliableness of their conduct, they will begin by solemnly invok- 
 ing the clauses of conventions concluded with local potentates; and, 
 when the flimsiness and utter hypocrisy of this line of defence are 
 denounced — for we all know the i)art that intimidation and gin 
 play in these transactions — they fall back on the plea that they 
 are acting in the name of the higher interests of humanity; nay, 
 some say, and they have said it in verse (vide Kipling's poem on 
 "The White Man's Burden"), that they are sacrificing them- 
 selves in behalf of a high notion of duty. Thus, quite a new doe- 
 trine has sprung up. Undoubtedly, the substitution of enlight- 
 ened European or American rule for the primitive and too often 
 ferocious modes of savage administration benefits mankind and 
 the natives themselves, for whom it is not much of a gain, but 
 still a gain, to die from gin instead of by murdering one another. 
 Yet it would seem that there is something lame in the colonial 
 doctrine, si'-ce, even in the most flagrant cases of incapacity on 
 the part of barbarous races to govern themselves, the violent or 
 stealthy occupation of their territories causes a secret unrest to 
 the public conscience and mind. This uneasiness does not re- 
 sult so much from the long standing conviction, confirmed l)y the 
 accusations imprudently hurled by the Powers against one another 
 in their spiteful moods, that national, and sometimes only per- 
 sonal, greed is at the biutom of colonization, as from a deeper, 
 though vaguer, source of misgiving. If we exert our mimls to 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS 
 
 give body and shape to this fppllr,,, 
 
 «tinctive revolt of our nature at °f ^° T^^^^^^^« ^^ it the in- 
 foundations of society and t. If "''f''''^ *^^* "^^^^^^^^ ^ho 
 -use it is the indirect negal" th ""-^ ''^*"^^ ^^^^ '- 
 wiiether individual or national Th!f . v ^"''"^^^ ^^ P^^P^^^^', 
 tains the germ of shocking dLbLo...r ''' '"' *^^* ^^ ^«^- 
 -a germ u-hose growth Lin to ?' . ^'''' "^ *^^ ^°^^J' 
 
 ^"eeting of the confer nee v'ich T, '''^ ""''' '''''''' '^^ 
 
 strikingly proved by w'aTi g ' on' 'p?' '' '''' ^«°"^-- 
 more special interest to us bv t fe . ? ?''''' '''^' ^^^* ^« ^^ 
 the Transvaal. ' ^ *^'' '^'^^^ ^""^^dly preparing in 
 
 -d Ast ttliT^t'oHlfe tit :?"'" '°^"^^"^^^ °^ ^^-- 
 tions has come, by a steep ncZ ^^'"'T ''''' ^^^ ^^^^^^a- 
 
 . ence to countries like the Ce sS, % "^'.'^ ^^^° ^^^^ ^t has refer- 
 !-• Between the Zulus and thr/"^"^^"' "^^ ^^^ ^^I-b- 
 Ouly one of degree. F ne rea oni. ? '"^'* ^^ "^^ ^i^^^^^^^? 
 petration of any outra'on S , ^'^'^'j '^' ^'^>^ ^^^ the per- 
 or weak States. "^ ^'"' ^'^''^^ ^°<^ sovereignty of minor 
 
 I do not mean to Gciniraii{r,4- j- 
 Bi-cere, notwithstanding the i onvT '"""■ '*'"™'''='' "'"'^k « 
 the general proflt arising fomT ,T' '° ™'"'""' '^Sarding 
 barbarism-espocially vhenae h T '""''"" "' ""lizatlon for 
 -and the jnslifleation o" f of/^f "' ^ ^""^^--T Mnd 
 what I want to p„i„t „° t fe^w i T'f ^ '^ ™''' '='""'^; but 
 a principle i,as h^en mZ^t^^T^^^- '""' »' "-J- 
 in Its aim and wording anri fi V '''^' ^^'^ause it is looso 
 
 We are thus confrold ^ tTant? f^ ^"T "P^ '» abuse: 
 govern in the Transvaal-enfran,h,f ^ "'"" °^ '''" '="«"* '» 
 lolloped by threat, of ^^Ji^C'TT T"' ""'^'"S <"=«- 
 
 The demonstration of *L ^ ™' ''"'""<"'■ 
 undertaken by Mr Zots Jh "tn";,'" °' ""^ ""'''' ^ »«g"'y 
 vaal "almost too fantastielr , "" '''"""'"' '- ">e Trans^ 
 
 hand, we are P-senteTwi^ra TSTr^'r'' "^ *'- "^ 
 achievements of the Uitlander, "ft ,f t^ "^ *« 1™li«« and 
 tare of the Boers, whieh rep^s'ents t '^ """ " ^''""'" P'- 
 barous condition. Mr. Brooks ™t' '' ^'"°=" '" " =™i-bar- 
 
ize in it the in- 
 lat threatens the 
 'ctrine does, bo- 
 5le of property, 
 and that it con- 
 ee of the world, 
 ore farcical the 
 the Hague — is 
 md, what is of 
 'j preparing in 
 
 tions of Africa 
 es and civiliza- 
 it it has refer- 
 3 Boer Eepub- 
 he difference? 
 y for the per- 
 ?nty of minor 
 
 ent, which is 
 in, regarding 
 vilization for 
 guinarj kind 
 2h cases; but 
 our of need, 
 se it is loose 
 en to abuse. 
 3 English to 
 thing else — 
 
 's is eagerly 
 the Trans- 
 On the one 
 aalities and 
 sombre pic- 
 a semi-bar- 
 
 ent, severed 
 ears, living 
 their sheep 
 ^ his Qeigh< 
 
 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 bor— disdaining trade, disdaining agriculture, ignorant to an almost 
 inconceivable degree of ignorance, without music, literature or art, 
 superstitious, grimly religious, they are In all things, except courage 
 and stubbornness of character, the very antithesis of the strangers 
 settled among them." 
 
 And yet, horribile dictu, these strangers arc kept "in complete 
 subjection to their bucolic task masters." Thus, out of the su- 
 periority of the Uitlanders arises a demand for a share in the 
 legislation of the Transvaal; and, because this is opposed, it be- 
 comes an additional grievance, the principal one. 
 
 Now, what are the specific grievances originally formulated by 
 the Uitlanders? Mr. Brooks speaks of bad administration, as il- 
 lustrated by the absence of sufficient police and sanitary arrange- 
 ments, by the prostitution of the law courts to the whims of 
 the legislature, and by the adoption of prohibitive measures 
 against commerce and industry and the spread of the English lan- 
 guage. Even if this is a correct representation of the state of 
 things in the Transvaal — and it may be, except in its reference to 
 justice, which is susceptible of reservations — the English cannot 
 make it a plea for the suppression of Boer government, because 
 tliat government, although primitive and slowly progressive, as 
 1 can afford to admit it is, does not come within the class of in- 
 stitutions which are an outrage to the moral feelings of man- 
 kind and provide the only excuse a State can invoke for the sup- 
 pi ession of another State. Xo Englishman, I hope, will deny 
 that the essential notions of morality, if not of civilization, pervade 
 the Transvaal State. What is missing in it, is a set of institutions 
 and ideas productive of well being and luxury. The faculty of a 
 people to dispense with these, calls forth the frequent commenda- 
 tion of the English themselves in their political and social litera- 
 ture, as well as in their current talk, with the help of expressions 
 such as "healthy simplicity of life," "freedom from the enervating 
 and corrupting intluences of civilization," and so forth. Be- 
 sides, the unfriendliness of the soil, as well as the geographical 
 situation, of the Transvaal, together with other circumstances, 
 conspired to maintain the Boer community in the state of 
 primitiveness to which it adhered as a matter of temperament, as 
 well as of social and religious principle. If, even after the discov- 
 ery of the gold mines, it did not adopt the Anglo-Saxon ideal of a 
 State, it was — supposing there be any necessity to justify a be- 
 lated form of existence in a nation on other grounds than that of 
 
^^JI'AIN AND 2HE BOERS 
 
 by opposing the spread of U"™ ol [7'- T' ' ^»^' ''»'"■»« 
 confines, ,t hoped to diseoura^e the .■"« ?"'""««■> '"thin its 
 P'osence, especially i. that oml p'iT ° '"'"■«"^^«' i" >vhose 
 «i the germ „f ^ great da JrT„ j^ f'f ' " '""nediatelj- deleet- 
 ™rt,a of the Boers in tkoZtte Ifj" ""'■ ^" '"='■ '"e 
 tt creating obstacles to the dev![ °™'' "<> "'«■• activity 
 
 »«>-ce and to the use of (L r^^r"' "' '"'<'"s''y and com 
 2% b, t^, thought a b!'th^;tt"5-«^' are'insp- .cd™" 
 the Enghsh are free fo eal -'"-*-"-'°"al aversion to what 
 
 tee call "the curses," of V .'''™f/' ""'l 'vhat /% ^e 
 "h-ch a State is more Mrt cul„rlv 7; f "'™ » ™^ duty t^ 
 « the obligation to nia.ntata il. ^ ^f'"^ *"'' *» «W other t 
 -terests to those of other We^'tr;.""' '" ^'^''^ "» «»» 
 Boers are distinctly justiiiedT-> , ' ""''"^ '" "w. the 
 
 the British; and there are Sht "Jf ""^ng the complaints „? 
 '^»«th in their indifenee t jh ",' '"' ^°"^ » »«Cater 
 pans for the national saTty,'; tut tf °?'""' '" '^^'^B 
 
 "h:x:nd in?n°' *<■''-" s^^^^^^^ '^^ "'-^^-^ 
 
 .ations. '^ °"^ '«-' Of the State are the supreme ,aw of 
 
 «-cru;„ttnt"ard1:*itr f r "° "- ^°™ ^^ ^o™right 
 -the Transvaal; and, if anf G^rk" '" '""' '"^^ * " ^ 
 "presentations to another o^n tUsl^'r T^ """''= »' """'"g 
 * 'nmdly and olTieious way i, !„ ''' "*"='' " <=«" only do in 
 " 'ts own eye. Need I „t .1 ; "'"' ',' '"'"'' ■">' =» the beaS 
 neet-on? Need I ,note tC Untd ".f"" f^™'""^ » *'» con" 
 England herself? ?vho is ign„™ „f f '' ^'^>' "^d I quote 
 ••language" and "religion" a°T ° P""^"' ^^P^cts of the 
 
 "anoffs, and in that^f the hT' '"n"'° ''"'"'"'" "« K- 
 f-tates free from the pangs of eon,, ""'"""'■ '''" "-o United 
 ."J*"*; and, in exeludingllT"™"^" '" ""^ "'"«''■• of the In- 
 l^hing themselves in Zen an t 'T "'" *^'"'«'^<'' f™m tab- 
 "omparably m„re rigor in ™I 7T' '""' ">''y not used in 
 ^•ation of the country! than thBoe ''"" ">" ^'"-omieal si? 
 
 -*»n-she,w.hoisttt-tiS--i"i 
 
ovided it does not 
 IS, 1 say, because, 
 ization within its 
 ■•eigners, in whose 
 mediately detect- 
 »ee. ^In fact, the 
 'nd their activity 
 dustry and com- 
 > are inspired as 
 aversion to what 
 d what they are 
 e is one duty to 
 to any other, it 
 » prefer its own 
 ect in view, the 
 complaints of 
 a much greater 
 ns in devising 
 'i law allowing 
 
 jpreme law of 
 
 I of downright 
 eing the case 
 'ks of making 
 'n only do in 
 see the beam 
 
 in this con- 
 leed I quote 
 'Pects of the 
 
 of the Bo- 
 
 the United 
 r of the In- 
 fi'om estab- 
 lot used in- 
 lomical sit- 
 Ities in the 
 very exist- 
 riticism in 
 a her own 
 
 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 people are concernec!, but who does not scruple to practice tlie most 
 despotic principles, when it suits her purpose, in dealing with 
 conquered and alien races; she, who, to quote a curious instance 
 of inconsistency on her part, thunders against the intolerable 
 abuse of the quarantine system in other countries, and yet ap- 
 plies the same system herself in Malta? 
 
 If the Transvaal State is against the development of com- 
 merce and industry on principle, it is within its rights to be so, 
 as much as the United States in adopting the McKinley and 
 Dingley tariffs. It is a matter of opinion, moral or social in 
 the Transvaal, economic in the United States. If the English 
 were more logical and more careful to avoid the reputation of be- 
 ing over-bearing with the weak, they would no more think of 
 calling the Transvaal to account for its economic policy, than 
 they would of challenging the United States for theirs. What 
 Mr. Brooks calls the prostitution of the law courts to the whims 
 of the legislature, does not apply to the ordinary dealings of jus- 
 tice in the Transvaal, but to the political situation, which, as we 
 have explained, must be governed by the principle of the safety 
 of the State. Finally, if the police and sanitary arrangements are 
 not better, Mr. Brooks himself offers us the best possible explana- 
 tion: it is because the Boers, in order to defend their ^ihreatened 
 independence, are obliged to spend nearly all their money on for- 
 tifications and the secret service. 
 
 Because they cannot obtain redress, through the Boers, for their 
 imaginary grievances, the English claim a share in the govern- 
 ment of the Transvaal, insisting that they have a right to be 
 represented in the Raad; and, being denied this privilege, they 
 make it their principal grievance. On what is this claim found- 
 ed? Certainly not on the doctrine or practice of other States. I 
 defy anybody to prove that any State or, for that matter, any 
 tlieory of international law, considers it an "obligation" for gov- 
 ernments to enfranchise aliens, however great their services to 
 the country in which they reside, however great their contribu- 
 tions to its exchequer, however marked their superiority over the 
 natives. Representation, where it exists, is a consequence of 
 citizenship. "Well, then, we have a right to Transvaal citizen- 
 ship," say tiiC English. Again, why? Some States show a tendency 
 to favor the naturalization of foreigners, especially the American 
 republics; others, like Russia, are opposed to it; and some, like 
 
BRJTATN AND THE BOERS 
 
 naturalization provide, ti.o Ilot t! ttar ^ith " '" "'' 
 to ultimatelj- uso his own discretion ,,,^ "'."' "'» P^ver 
 tries uhioh are most dlunn If ^ ' '™ '" *'""« «"»"'- 
 p.actico of ado rtS; l,,t ■; ^ 'rr '» naturalization, tl>e 
 ".. obligation, iral "ratter but fr ^^r"" "' "='"""'8 ^""^ 
 own convenienco and Lt 5 and *''?»->»«''="'"»■' of their 
 dilions Nav i„ 7^: ""f""'' """l " '» subject to their own con- 
 
 State I tlCZ;'^,tT:T'7' '"r ""^'"'^ "' *'^^ 
 the individual nothing th.t ,1, , ! ' ""' ""' "f'"'"" »' 
 
 Wa will, as is 1^0=^ in the S ]\"T °"™ '""'^"'^'<' "S'^'^t 
 the que tion is one that it 'A'"'"™"'''''"''"™- I" '»<='- 
 righte of sov re™ntv tVy > "f '° ™'^'' '"' ^^'''" -^t" 'ho 
 Ttreisn trc™;Mnfth T™ '' "."^^ 'f*"'"''' ^^ "^"'y- 
 the Boers are pe Ltlv Z * *°^. "" ^'"^' *''''''°'^' 
 
 says Mr, BrX tte L f\ "T" *" '^''«"^'' '^'=""">^- B-' 
 anything that isl «'l^ "''' ™ '° °"' '" "" '^'"'''™°'- " 
 
 hj a minority is an a^aly but 1^°"'^*™'" ''' 8°™™=' 
 public and internationTr, t , ^ ^ "'^'°'"«' ^""""on ^ 
 
 -en govern 3otooo ooo „ ^^^^^^^^^^^ L lV"''"',°' '=°«""'- 
 the governing minorifv i^T .,' . Transvaal, the case of 
 
 thorL docs\o pr"cld om^tv™ '' '^' '^"' ""' '"^'^ »- 
 a vitiating elemonUn the nn v ""?™ "'' '"■"J-'^st, which is 
 
 a prior esfabl irenuft ,e nr,° ""' '" '"*"' ''"' ''°"' 
 jority in the defence o£ a Jh, ', ," '■'"'™'*'' "«"">=' "" '^^• 
 coived the sanctit'of ."fte^lLra.tr °' '"■'^=' ''"''' '^^ - 
 
 righteoufness° o'f « e „„arrelT'>" Tf ""* P™"'' °' «- ""- 
 Transvaal, and of the list fill * '"^ ''''''''^'^ "P "'"• *« 
 toriousnei of the atti tad tf tT'^n ""^ "T' ""= P"^""''^ ™ri- 
 tion can do othe^i e tht ,T T'' '""'» »° «»"«'» "a- 
 ness with whi h Z * If T ^Z '^' P'"* "-"^ »""''>«"■ 
 explain here St I !,?„? i"" ."""^ sovereignty. Might I 
 Mr Brooks' plete to r „^^?"" 7."'°'"'''' "'^ ''"*'=»' ™'»-^ »* 
 order to street n m/::;'rt t' "r""^ "' *^ T™"--'- '■> 
 are quite as th*e ^nZl!;Xl'l:XT^'^T'f """«' 
 not mate out a ease for themselves" As'-^at^'^trft; 
 
 'V' 
 
 > V! .... 
 
now undergo- 
 * of the law on 
 th the power 
 in those coun- 
 ralization, the 
 resulting from 
 ration of their 
 heir own con- 
 )pinion of the 
 le opinion of 
 alized against 
 lies. In fact, 
 tent with the 
 3d by trejaty. 
 id; therefore, 
 iiands. But, 
 ransvaal. If 
 to naturalize 
 be governed 
 situation in 
 of Engllsh- 
 , the ease of 
 lat their au- 
 it, which is 
 a, but from 
 nst the ma- 
 lich has re- 
 de whether 
 of the un- 
 5 with the 
 iitive meri- 
 nerous na- 
 stubborn- 
 Might I 
 t colors of 
 msvaal, in 
 1 if things 
 nders can- 
 fact, the 
 
 A VINDICATION OF TUB BOERS, 
 
 Boers, ' hether they will it or not, are submitting much more 
 than tht English will admit to the intrinsic force of modern ideas. 
 Thoy are certainly not in a hurry to make a complete surrender 
 to the tide of innovation and reform; but to depict them as 
 radically refractory to the notions of progress is an injustice. 
 The political situation is more to blame for their backwardness 
 than their old-fashioned conservatism; and, as to the bitter com- 
 plaints concerning the want of proper administration in the Trans- 
 vaal, these might be proved on closer inspection to be con- 
 siderably exaggerated, and to be more the result of the animosity 
 of the English against the Boers, than of a real sense of annoy- 
 ance and discomfort on the part of men who belong to a class ac- 
 customed to rough it, and who, moreover, knew exactly what they 
 had to expect in crossing the borders of the Republic. 
 
 I think it is also necessary to recall to mind that, notwith- 
 etanding the depth of his convictions in his differences with the 
 English, and however great his stubbornness at heart in thwart- 
 ing their purposes, Mr. Kriiger has not pressed his case with all 
 the force it derives from absolute legitimacy and from the im- 
 portance of the points at issue; and that he has not only avoided 
 provocative forms, but has actually made concessions, the value 
 of which may be a matter of discussion, but whose existence is 
 nevertheless proof of his desire to spare the pride of a groat 
 nation. 
 
 I will now revert to the important question of the franchise — 
 the one that dominates the whole situation in the Transvaal and 
 has absorbed in itself all the other grievances of the Uitlanders. 
 Following Mr. Brooks, I have once or twice taken up a stand 
 on his own ground, that of the harmfulness or innocuousness of 
 enfranchisement granted to the English. Although I have been 
 hitherto more concerned with the legal aspects of this question, a 
 practical view of it forced itself upon my attention at an early 
 stage of this discussion, and I contended against Mr. Brooks, apart 
 from all considerations of legitimacy or non-legitimacy, that, as 
 a matter of opportuneness, the franchise should not be granted by 
 the Boers to the English, because it would lead to the loss of 
 their independence. I will now prove it. 
 
 When representation is claimed, it is done with the idea that 
 it will be efficacious; else why claim it? When the English de- 
 mand representation in the Boer Parliament, they do so with the 
 
Ill ffflf 
 
 . BlilTAIX AXD THE BOEns 
 
 t»nnot dope to ,Io «, „itil ,"'""■'"'"»■'■• view,. Thcv 
 '"'T ai,„ at o.,n,„„C,- ;':,'-■;« « ™ioHty. T„o„fo,^ 
 dos,den,t„„, Ua. boon fi,I(in„ (W^ J" ""^ """''; ""d- o«oo this 
 «ve l««e,i into tho handf V'^f rTu' "'"'""''"'^y "i' 
 m|>.;to of flosh ami l,|o„,l ,,iM ,m ' '°""'S ">« "■■.linary 
 »■' agJisl, <lopomI™cj_„„t„" ' "'""''™ ""^ J^°" Stale into 
 o-trar, or ovo„ t,,o .«ki-™ tt ".t"!/?,^ "^'""-"^ '» tj 
 My contest tl.is vie,,? J, it „. „f, °''"' "' ''"'-■«i«>ce. Can any. 
 « ling,^,,„,™, i„„^,^^ " ;;' °-;"vab e that a large bo/y 
 
 "'" """"""o '0 submit to ti,e lee f /"'" '" "» T-'-nsvaal, 
 cnment representing a helnZ n , . °' " '''•^*'<''''" ""d gov 
 
 tte^ consider an inferior rae'r In m'af'.r"'' '^'""S-S to ,fh t 
 t. (landers „,ay ,„„„„ ,vith „„e "7 '.'"^ *'' '"fra-ohised 
 «ne man to Anglieise the State I ",. "' '"" "'"3' -^i" act like 
 «;Me in a State founded on t ,; , ? ! """"■"'^ technically pes- 
 ^'" -. do not eireumstanees p^n t"'.? ' "''°™' ■»»«tutio„s Be. 
 «"cme. „u the part of EnZd , " '"'"""' »' " deep-Wd 
 « fot been made evident that Tn '"'"'■' "'^ Transvaal? ni, 
 ;-. England is forging t,t , in" CTr" "' ' ''^'"^'^ -'4 
 f>;om the Sorth to the South" f .1° ^"""T" "«" '*•"' "lend 
 «dl be the next of these linfe Tht « ' ,?" """ ""^ Trans,-aal 
 StapMcal, ethnical and politali;" ""p"" '^ "" °tetacle-ge„. 
 « d:d no. stand se'ioeslv in tb *''"'' "l"'Osion. Even if 
 
 7'd >-ct be imrossiblertbrEn^^Sb'f "^ *^-"- - "«" 
 01 oceupyi„g_ for eonvenienee' sal/ '° '''^'''' "'" temptation 
 '■' "t the same time deprived „»' ! °°'"'"'^ *''»'' l-eing ,veal 
 ^aored as Greece is for example L ^ "'" """ "'*'"" ™^" " 
 "de ,t „.ith friends in thihnuvZ 7°' "' "'" ""rfd, and pro 
 taes themselves. There s ,vl * / '""^' "™ """"ng the I'M s 
 toting term I „,i, J ^a en 1 „/^' "''"" "' " ''""" »d »,'„ " 
 
 *' ^ .^-ded and delieatelyfinrhed T T"''""'' "^ ''o-- 
 "Pledly nation.' tracts of .errito^ ^ /u™"""^' ""d "ninter. 
 better reason, is marked out f„r ^n'o ^ . "' '^""'™'"' « ^of "o 
 »' the English Imperialist i'tt.l'^'^?^""'' '"=™»<^. « the eves 
 
 
ying the logisla- 
 ir views. They 
 ■y- Therefore, 
 
 and, once this 
 l>e country will 
 S the ordinary 
 ^oer State into 
 urances to tiie 
 'CG. Can any. 
 t a large body 
 the Transvaal, 
 3ent and gov- 
 •gJn^' to what 
 
 enfranchised 
 
 will act like 
 'hnically pos- 
 tutions? Be- 
 f a deep-laid 
 nsvaal? Has 
 ^tic concep- 
 
 will extend 
 e Transvaal 
 stacle — ^geo- 
 n- Even if 
 s us that it 
 ton-iptation 
 eing weak, 
 t render it 
 i, and pro- 
 tJie Philis- 
 d loss llat- 
 -tic in tile 
 s of beau- 
 f uninter- 
 
 if for no 
 I tJie eyes 
 absurdity 
 ions, and 
 its color 
 ish pink. 
 
 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 I shall make myself bettor understood l)y recalling the instinct of 
 the individual landed proprietor, who is not happy until his es- 
 tate shows continuity and unindented lines, 
 
 Mr. Brooks ailirnis that the English have no designs on the 
 Transvaal; yet, at the same time, with a contradiction which does 
 not in the least disturb his equanimity, ho endorses the appre- 
 hensions of the Boers. What In. says is too precious not to be 
 literally repeated: 
 
 "The Prpsldenfa strength lies In the ;ptltude of his appeals to 
 the spirit and prejudices of the Old Boer Party. These stalwart oon- 
 dervatives concentrated all their hatred and contempt for foreign 
 ways and customs upon the British, the only enemltc they have 
 known. It was to esci^pe from British rule that their forefathers 
 struck out from the Cape, across the wilderness and founded a Re- 
 public of their own. The incidents of the Great Trek in the thirties, 
 of which the President is the last sur/lvor, are stlP held in patriotic 
 memory. The British annexed the new-born State under pledges, de- 
 layed so long, that the Boers took up arms to enforce them and won 
 back their Independence. The British stopped the expansion of the 
 Transvaal on the north by occupying Ma'abeieland and Mashonaland 
 and on the west by pouncing upon Bechuanaland. It was with British 
 gold and under the command of British officers that the raid of 1S93 
 was planned and carried out. Small wonder that the Boers saw, and 
 still see, in the demand for the franchise, only another British plot 
 to rob them of their independence. The Uitlanders had come into the 
 country uninvited suid undesired, seeking only gold and with full 
 warning that It was a Boer Republic they were entering. By what 
 right could these strangers of yesterday claim to be on a level with 
 the old burghers who had fought and bled to keep the State free 
 from alien control, and what Boer InokiiKj to the pant expcrlviiccH of hi." pco- 
 pic loKh the BnfjUsh could quarnntce that their capture of the franchise 
 would not lead to their capture of the entire State, thai the Repuhlic 
 would not become an EnyWih Repuhlic with a:i English President and 
 its original founders a despised and opprfscd minority/" 
 
 Following up this amusing piece of treachery, of which he is 
 unwittingly guilty toward himself and his thesis, Mr. Brooks 
 eoes on to say that it would have "been a high achievement of 
 <Iij)lomacy if Sir Alfred Milner could have persuaded the Presi- 
 dent, and through him the Boers, that their fears, if not baseless, 
 are very unlikelv to be realized." I need not point to the de- 
 licious effect of the words, "if not baseless, are very unlikely to be 
 realized." But the crowning point of Mr. Brooks' originality is 
 to be found in the following passage: 
 
 "The people of England have no hostility toward the Boers and 
 no ambition to annex their country. They have on the contrary an 
 uncomfortable feeling that, in their clashes with the Transvaal the 
 British reputation for fair-dealing, which so long as It is deserved ia 
 
BRITAIN AXD THE DOEIiS. 
 
 ;n hlH .truK^lo. even X th ; ha^e to I'^'r ""r '^"" ^^■'«^' '"'" -«'' 
 inK It on. They cannot fl..d muorm .^ .T" ^"' '"^"'^"^« "' ^^rry. 
 
 Its appl,calio„ by the. U.gli^l, t„ Ji^. Z.kl ' """ ^ '" 
 
 ti.a. ;ri:,'„v;n,f;:" -."» '» »- >-* .!„,„, ..e .,, 
 
 met w th an obstimifo ♦,«» ^ fe"t^\a»ces ot the Litlanders are 
 
 Of perishing ti',r/a Tv;:";;: ^i 'T"";;' ™- ;"^ ™^ 
 
 threatoncl will, war. " ""'" ""''''='' " « 
 
 whether they vLw or in! , 1 ''"°""""- "'"^ ""J- "' "'« »">", 
 in case it s laTE„l„T , ". °™-'' '!" ''°™ "" ''"'>'"»'^= '»■■ 
 l.»r upon them thSf 1?™"",';'' '° ''""8 "" ''" ""S>'t to 
 capacity willTot saveXri- "V ' "'"' ''™'''"-^ '">'• """"iK 
 
 can h„; to a°hi::°n» a Ztit't:^ '"'™""°"- ^'^ 
 gaining .„„« battles, but th 'wlA.^J hcro.e re»,.tance, by 
 ti.em, as they must bs nv„L V , ' "" ""'crial avail to 
 the eonMen ean treasTd 'nTr "" '''"'™ '" "'° '"''■ ^""■ 
 triumphs in Egyp ^1^^ ^^ '""'''°'"' ''"'^•'''' <">"• ''cr 
 can p^^blcm ift'r^o .„ w 1 " 7'^ '° "'"" '"^ ^''°""' ^f"" 
 choiee of the Boers, the end simsi i7/°"- ™'""'" ""^ 
 of us will probably live toJ,Z , "iT'-oaching. Most 
 
 the tragedy now enVrnJntl I aTr '",'''" T "" '"'' »'' »' 
 of the Transvaal. Europe will '„], °""'™*' "'" ^Pfc^sion 
 <-™t Britain, atthezemtl !r ' i"' ""' ''°' ^"'■J '""i 
 
 Will continue to shoot n 1 e fci, IT'V"^ ^'"^ '""' P"'^!'""^-. 
 and uncontrollable orb u„i If ""fnftional politics, a fiery 
 
 from the East, borne on 1 lit T/ttl" ''" '""' "= "™8 
 and which is slowly but stendik 1 ^"'ocracy and Orthodoxy, 
 tl.e heavens will rLg Ld , ' "^IH,"/'" '""" "°"'- Then 
 we shall witness the Ltlor flebn "'./""'""'"'■^ clash, and 
 -l.at there is no end toll" t :f^Sr".';°"f i """^ 
 only grow and spread her Empire and tl.l '■ ' ''"= ''™ 
 
 »he will achieve durability in fe midst if ' '""'""' '" ^°""'' 
 •T ^,„ ^ miast of supreme nowpr 
 
 *;_."^* 
 
ilntalned. They 
 I wish him well 
 L'thods of carry- 
 I tlefenalble, ex- 
 tlac, ihcy would 
 
 cope with my 
 it would be iu 
 
 time, he says 
 Jitlanders are 
 runs iJie risk 
 ■ words, it is 
 
 isvaal, of sui- 
 OT the other, 
 ioomed; for, 
 lier might to 
 and military 
 ;tion. They 
 Jsistance, by 
 fial avail to 
 end. With 
 ed from her 
 South Afri- 
 hatever the 
 ling. Most 
 ' last act of 
 suppression 
 t stir; and 
 prosperity, 
 tics, a fiery 
 >t is rising 
 Orthodoxy, 
 til. Then 
 clash, and 
 ?lish creed 
 at she can 
 to Rome, 
 )ower. 
 
 A TRANSVAAL VIEW OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN 
 
 QUESTION. 
 
 BY DR. F. V. ENGELENBURG, EDITOR OF THE " PRETORIA VOLKSSTEM.' 
 
 Jlty to 
 
 ao« 
 
 South Africa is poor, extremely poor, in spite of its gold 
 outi)ut of nearly two millions per month and its diamond export 
 of five millions per year. 
 
 The disabilities from which South Africa suffers are manifold. 
 The climate is glorious, the soil fertile, but the rainfall is uncer- 
 tain and irregular. There are large tracts where rain falls only 
 once every four or five years; and, where circumstances are more 
 ftivorable, there are no natural reservoirs in which water can be 
 stored, or certainly none to any appreciable extent. The rivers, 
 dry in summer-time, become foaming torrents in the rainy season, 
 and pour the whole of their waters into tlie sea. If tlie Witwa- 
 tcrsrand were not situati.l alongside an extensive formation of 
 dolomite, which absorbs rainwater, and stores it up like a sponge, 
 it would have been utterly impossible for its unrivalled gold in- 
 dustry to attain its present condition, and the Boers to-day would 
 be enjoying the rest and peace which they have ever longed for 
 and deserve. 
 
 In addition to the dearth of water, South Africa has had to 
 contend with many other drawbacks, resulting from its clumsy 
 topographical configuration. On its northern confines, it is de- 
 fenceless against the ravages of nature, which sweep like a whirl- 
 wind through the whole of the southern continent. From olden 
 days, Africa has been known as the land of plagues and calami- 
 ties. Einderpest sweeps down from the north, and its latest at- 
 tack, in 189H, brought ruin to both white and black; from the 
 rorth, too, come the locusts and other noxious insects; from the 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 north, come the hot tropical winds, bringing drought and ward- 
 ing off the beneficent rain; and from the north have many clouds 
 arisen casting sinister shadows on this part of the continent. 
 The clumsy configuration of South Africa, to which I have 
 alluded, is the natural result of its plateau-form, with 
 its abrupt descent to the Indian Ocean. The region is de- 
 void of navigable rivers; the seacoast is an endless, monotonous 
 line without fiords, without estuaries, without inlets of any kind, 
 and therefore without harbors. The west coast is, moreover, sepa- 
 rated from the interior by wastes of sand dunes; the east coast 
 is unhealthy and haunted by the tsetse fly. No wonder that 
 Phoenicians, Arabs and Portuguese, after their first experience 
 of the country, had little inclination to colonize it, and to make it 
 tl.ieir home. The only white men who manage to adapt them- 
 selves to the exigencies of the southern continent and build up a 
 stalwart nation are the Afrikanders. They are destined to oc- 
 cupy the land for exer, and to thrive here when diamonds and 
 gold shall be things of the past. 
 
 And the blacks? I have already said that South Africa is 
 poor, and has never possessed any large population, for the rea- 
 son that it could not support it. The Bushmen live like beasts 
 of prey in the wilderness; the Hottentots were subject to con- 
 tinuous decinution through sickness and famine. When the war- 
 like Zulus, several centuries ago, came down along the east coast, 
 tney drove before them the few handfuls of human beings they 
 encountered, like leaves before the wind, became masters of the 
 best sub-tropical portion of tlie eastern provinces, murdering and 
 slaying like swarthy Huns, and pressed down to Natal. But al- 
 tliough their social organization was higher than that of the 
 nomadic tribes which they superseded, the poverty of South 
 Africa constrained them to continue M'ar amongst themselves. 
 As soon as one Zulu tribe commenced to thrive and increased in 
 weaii^h of cattle, it became necessary to obtain more land— in 
 other words, to wage war against its neighbors; for South Africa 
 was not able to give shelter to any dense population. That is 
 M-hy the Zulus could only manage to exist either by internecine 
 strife or by occasional emigration, to the natural detriment of 
 the weaker races. Both the legendary and documentary history 
 of South Africa's blacks tends to prove that, when sickness had 
 not to be reckoned with, war inevitably became the means of re- 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION, 
 
 ducing the population of this region to its normal sustaining 
 ciij)acity. In recent years, the supremacy of the whites has ma- 
 terially affected internecine war as a limiting factor 'vith regard 
 to native population; but its place has been filled in some measure 
 by disease and drink. There is no doubt, however, that the black 
 population is greatly on the increase, now that thev are not per- 
 mitted to indulge in war amongst themselves. But, at the same 
 time, the importation of foreign "mealies" (maize) — the staple 
 food of the Kaffirs — ^has also steadily increased; in 1897, the 
 South African Republic imported nearly 36 million pounds of 
 mealies; in 1898, the total importation had risen to over 44^ mil- 
 lions. There will come a day when the natives will cease to get 
 V/'ork at the mines, when the mines will be exhausted. Then the 
 importation of South American cereals will fall off, and South 
 Africa will be expected to provide food for its own native popula- 
 tion. Will it be equal to the task? The history of the past sup- 
 plies an eloquent answer. 
 
 But with the industrious European colonist, schooled and dis- 
 ciplined by labor, can South Africa not produce what is neces- 
 sary for his support? The white population of this part of the 
 world amounts, in round numbers, to two millions — a very gen- 
 erous estimate— inhabiting a vast extent of coimtry, larger than 
 France, Germany and Italy together. This population is de- 
 l»endent on the outside world, not merely for the products of 
 technical industry, but also for those of agriculture. We import 
 ])otatoes and frozen meat from Australia, wood from Canada and 
 Xorway, eggs and butter from Europe, meal and mules froni 
 America. The sugar and tea grown in Xatal cannot compete with 
 the products of Mauritius and Ceylon, without the aid of protec- 
 tion. In order that these two millions of whites may be commer- 
 cially accessible to the outside world, and that this huge import 
 trade may be practicable, more than fifty million pounds sterling 
 have been devoted to railway construction. Every week sees nu- 
 merous steamers arriving from all parts of the world, laden witll 
 every conceivable kind of goods, to supply the limited South 
 African community with many necessaries of life. Should this 
 means of supply ever be cut off, a large portion of our white and 
 other population would simply stance, or at any rate be deprived 
 of the comforts of life. Only the Boers, who eke out a fruga\ ex- 
 istence on their secluded farms, and have not yet become depend- 
 
BRITAIN AND TEE BOERS. 
 ent on frozen meat, European butter, American meal and Aus- 
 tralian potatoes— only the Boers, who, with rare endurance, the 
 heritage of their hardy race, boldly face years of drought, rinder- 
 pest, locusts and fever, could survive such a collapse of the eco- 
 nomic machinery of a country so severely dealt with by nature. 
 The remaining Europeans would gradually disappear, just as the 
 Plioenicians and the Arabs disappeared in the days long past. As 
 long a.s the gold mines and the diamond mines can be worked and 
 made to pay, so long will the abnormal economy of South Africa 
 preserve its balance; but as soon as South Africa has swallowed 
 up its capital to the very last bit of gold, the Uitlander will have 
 to seek for fresh fields for the exercise of his nervous energy, and 
 the Afrikander will be abandoned to his struggle with the inim- 
 ical elements, as has ever been his lot in the past. By the sweat 
 of his brow he will have to lead his carefully stored-up water to 
 the fields continuously threatened by locusts, he will have to 
 shield his flocks from plague and theft, he will have to preserve 
 continual watch against the inroads of the ever-increasing blacks. 
 Ihe Boer— that is the agriculturist— is destined to be the Alpha 
 and Omega of South Africa's white culture; he alone, in this 
 quarter of the globe, can save civilization from the ultimate gulf 
 of bankruptcy. To say that South Africa is a rich land, or to 
 paint its future in glowing colors and to dilate on the brilliant 
 prospects that it offers to an unlimited white population, is only 
 possible to an extraordinarily superficial observer, to an un- 
 scrupulous company-promoter, or to an over-zealous emigration 
 «gent, whose salary is in proportion to the number of his victims. 
 The first European power which acquired a firm footing in the 
 East Indies, the Portuguese, simply ignored South Africa. The 
 Portuguese were succeeded by the Hollanders, who, not until 
 after much hesitation and two futile attempts to conquer Mozam- 
 bique, decided to take possession of Africa's southern extremity. 
 And the English, in common with the Hollanders, never desired 
 aught but the few harbors which South Africa possesses; the in- 
 terior had no value in the eyes of the European maritime powers, 
 which only looked to the opulent East. A clear illustration of 
 this IS furnished by the fact that, although possessing Walvisch 
 Bay, England quietly acquiesced in Germany's protectorate over 
 the hinterland; and another instance is to be found in the anxiety 
 which England has recently shown to get hold of Delagoa Bay 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 
 and Beira. The possession of these harbors would give to the 
 British Empire control of the sea-way to the East, and to the 
 English merchants such trade with the interior of South Africa 
 as circumstances might permit. Neither the Dutch East India 
 Company nor the British rulers bestirred themselves in any way, 
 in connection with he steady expansion of the white colonists 
 in the hinterland. And this interior colonization had barely 
 acquired any importance before there arose both petty and ma- 
 terial disturbances with the authority representing the purely 
 European factor. This was not at all difficult to understand. 
 The community at the Cape was composed of administrators and 
 merchants who amassed considerable fortunes by means of the 
 uninterrupted trade between Europe and India; the luxury 
 which reigned at the foot of Table Mountain was proverbial; all 
 the comforts of -European civilization could he enjoyed in sunny 
 South Africa, untroubled by the shadows of the Old World. In 
 vivid contrast to this luxurious life of ease, the burdens of the 
 inland colonists were, indeed, grievous to be borne; rough, hardy 
 pioneers of the wilderness, their life was one prolonged struggle 
 with poverty, with ravaging beasts of prey, and with stealthy 
 Bushmen and Hottentots. No wonder, therefore, that, little by 
 little, a social gulf was created, that a marked dissimilarity of 
 character was gradually developed between the up-to-date Cape 
 patricians, treading the primrose paths of luxury, and the no- 
 madic shepherds of the veldt, independent of aught save their 
 fowling-pieces, and undisputed lords of the limitless plateau be- 
 hind the mountains fringhig the coast. No wonder, therefore, 
 that the mere handful of conquerors of the Great Karroo had little 
 love for the arbitrary rule of a Proconsul in Cape Town Castle, 
 on behalf of an autlioritv having its headquarters in Europe. 
 
 Under the Dutch East India Company friction often arose 
 between the two white elements of the Colony, and when the 
 Cape fell into the hands of the British, in the beginning of the 
 present century, the old antagonism continued to exist. I once 
 heard it said that when Napoleon surrendered to the British m 
 1815, there was some talk of assigning to him, as a final resting- 
 place, that pretty country estate of the early Dutch Governors, 
 not far from Cape Town, but that this idea had to be given up on 
 account of distrust of the feelings of the inland colomsts, there 
 being some fear that South Africa might see a repetition of the 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 Elba incident. As long as the Imperial authorities left the inland 
 colonists to themselves, and only exercised a general repressive 
 jontrol, the relationship between the two white communities of 
 South Africa remained satisfactory, but as soon as the strings 
 were pulled too suddenly from Europe, and the Cape authorities 
 had to carry out a grasping, despotic policy, the two elements in- 
 evitably came to loggerheads. The best South African politicians 
 —both British and Boer— are those who have frankly admitted 
 that the political key to South Africa lies in an intelligent insight 
 irto the limit which should be allowed to Briton, Boer and 
 Black. In other words, let each of the three fulfil the mission 
 which nature has allotted to him, and then this much-vexed con- 
 tinent will enjoy the rest and peace of which it so urgently stands 
 ill need. 
 
 Is it necessary to give a resum6of the painful episodes which 
 thronged upon one another in South Africa in the nineteenth 
 century ? Ilie result of a hundred years of incompetency, weak- 
 ness, vacillation, and reckless greed culminates to-day in the aw- 
 lul probability of an insensate strife between two hardy vital 
 races, races unique by reason of their capacity for colonial ex- 
 pansion, races of similar origin and religion, races whose internal 
 co-operation could have made this country, if not exceptionally 
 prosperous, at least a particularly happy land, so that the dream 
 of one of its most gifted children, Thomas Pringle, might have 
 been fulfilled in gladsome measure: 
 
 "South Africa, thy future lies 
 Bright 'fore my vision as thy skies." 
 
 The first beneficent breathing-space which was granted to 
 South Africa by the fatal British policy, was when, in 1852 and 
 1854 — after numberless mistakes had been committed by the Im- 
 perial authorities, mistakes which no historian now attempts to 
 deny— the South African Republic and the Free State were re- 
 spectively left to their own resources, by solemn covenants with 
 the British Government— in other words, when the formal prin- 
 ciple was adopted by England that the Briton should be "baas" 
 of the coast and the Boer of the hinterland. The circumstances 
 under which this took place had in the meantime become very 
 grievous: the Boer States never had a fair start; the British mari- 
 time colonies levied enormous duties on goods consigned to the 
 ipterior, and squeezed as rmir-h out of the Afrikander republics as 
 
 I 
 
ihe inland 
 repressive 
 unities of 
 le strings 
 uthorities 
 ments in- 
 )oliticians 
 admitted 
 at insight 
 Joer and 
 e mission 
 exed con- 
 tly stands 
 
 les which 
 ineteenth 
 cy, weak- 
 a the aw- 
 rdy vital 
 onial ex- 
 ! internal 
 sptionally 
 he dream 
 ght have 
 
 anted to 
 1852 and 
 r the Im- 
 cmpts to 
 were re- 
 ints with 
 nal prin- 
 )e "baas" 
 mstances 
 jme very 
 ish mari- 
 id to the 
 mblics as 
 
 TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 
 they possibly could. And thus whilst the British merchants at 
 Cape Town, Port P^lizabeth, East London and Durban waxed fat 
 and wealthy, the Boers became more and more impoverished. But 
 they were sustained in their struggle against poverty by the hardy 
 spirit which was their peculiar heritage from their forefathers. And 
 although the Free State and the Transvaal languished in their ma- 
 terial development, and Natal and the Cape battened upon them, 
 the Boers were satisfied, like the lean dog in the fable who did not 
 envy the lot of his richer brother, because the latter had to wear 
 a heavy collar of gold. 
 
 The generous policy of 1853 and 1854 was only too short- 
 lived. The lucid moments of the Anglo-African politicians have 
 been, alas! few and far between. First came the ruthless annexa- 
 tion of Basutoland by the British authorities, just at the moment 
 when the Free State had clipped the wings of the Basutos and 
 rendered further resistance futile. Then came the unrighteous 
 annexation of Griqualand West, which suddenly found favor in 
 the eyes of the British on account of the discovery of diamonds, 
 and on which arose the Kimberley of to-day. This was followed 
 by the annexation of the Transvaal by Sir Theo])hilus Shep- 
 Btone, with all the bitter feeling that naturally resulted there- 
 from. And then the Sir Charles Warren expedition, by which 
 the Boers were deprived of Bechuanaland, because Mr. Eliodes— 
 whose fortunate career at the Kimberley Diamond Fields enabled 
 him to give the rein to his restless ambition— wanted to open up 
 a pathway to the north, to the Ehodesia of to-day, Tlien came 
 the establishment of the Chartered Company, followed by the 
 notorious Jameson Raid. Such petty incidents as the Keate 
 Award, the Swazieland Muddle, the Annexation of Sambaan's 
 Land, I will pass over, for brevity's sake. In short, the beneficent 
 policy of 1853 and 1854, which was for a moment revived under 
 the Gladstone Ministry of 1881— when the independence of the 
 South African Republic was restored— has been the exception 
 during the century now speeding to its close. British statesmen 
 apparently failed to see that South Africa could only be served 
 by giving each race the domain which destiny had prepared for it, 
 viz., the Boer the hinterland and the Britisher the coast, to- 
 gether with the rights and obligations connected ^herewith. The 
 welfare of the interior states has ever been the life-buoy to which 
 the whole of South Africa has clung, in times of darkness and 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS, 
 
 depression. Let the interior have a fair opportunity of thriving 
 us well as the peculiar circumstances of the country permit, and 
 the subjects of Queen Victoria will be able to enjoy the manifold 
 pleasures of life without one drop of English soldiers' blood hav- 
 ing to be spilt. 
 
 The immediate motive which prompted Sir Theophilus Shep- 
 stone's annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 was the commence- 
 ment made by President Burgers of the long-cherished railway 
 to Lourenyo Marques. Natal and Cape Colony were not satisfied 
 with squeezing the inland States by means of '^eavy duties, high 
 postal tariffs, and enormous trade profits; they sought the com- 
 plete economic dependency of the Republics, by jirohibiting all 
 railway traffic except through British ports. The selfishness of a 
 commercial community knows no limit. 
 
 The second attempt to annex the South African Eepublic — 
 with which the names of British politicians were connected — was 
 not the result of a commercial policy, but it furnishes a striking 
 illustration of the capitalism which has become such an impor- 
 tant factor in South African policy, since the amalgamation of 
 the diamond companies of Kimberlcy into one mighty body. 
 The fact that to-day — whilst these lines are being written — this 
 unhappy continent is on the eve of a helium omnium contra 
 omyies, can only be explained by the overwhelming infiuence ac- 
 quired by certain "nouveaux riches"— whose social existence de- 
 pends upon the Transvaal gold industry— among those who on the 
 British side are shaping the fate of South Africa. 
 
 During the course of the present century, this oart of the 
 world has witnessed a variety of "agitations." It was the negro- 
 philist agitation which drove the Boors in bitterness ol spirit be- 
 yond the boundaries of Cape Colony; and it was an administrative 
 agitation which for a long time impeded their progress and threw 
 all manner of obstacles in their way; it w^^s the politics of the 
 counting-houoe which suggested the annexation of the Diamond 
 Fields and the annexation of the Transvaal; and it is a stock ex- 
 change organisation which is pulling the strings of the movement 
 of to-day. Oi all these agitations, the last— that of the financiers 
 —is the most despicable, the most ominous, the most dangerous, 
 and the most unworthy of the British nation. The Boers can 
 forgive Dr. Philip for his nogrophilistic ardor, they can forgive 
 Sir Harry Smith, Sir Pliilip Wodehouse, Sir Bartle Frere, and 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 Sir Owen Lanyon for their excess of administrative zeai, but no 
 Afrikander will bow down at the bidding of a group of foreign 
 
 speculators. 
 
 When the Witwatersrand gold fields were discovered, the 
 Transvaalers had already had some experience of the advantages 
 and disadvantages attendant on the possession of mineral wealth. 
 In the early seventies, .ne opening up of the alluvial deposits at 
 Pilgrim's Kest, in the northeast of the Republic, was the cause 
 of considerable immigration. In the eighties, there was a rush 
 to the diggings at Uekaap, of which Barberton became the centre, 
 the Afrikander element being strongly represented. From tlie 
 very beginning, the law-makers of the Transvaal dealt very len- 
 iently with the miners, the vast majority of whom were foreigners. 
 The Boers knew of the mineral wealth of their country at an 
 early date, but they never felt constrained to exchange the 
 quietude of their pastoral life for the feverish existence of the 
 gold-seeker. The Boers have never endeavored to turn the pres- 
 ence of gold in their soil to practical account, and make it a direct 
 source of national income; as, for instance, the Chartered Com- 
 pany has done, expropriating a large portion of tlie profits of the 
 "Old fields. An instance of this liberal legislation, more strikmg 
 than a long array of figures, is furnished by the jniblic lottery of 
 gold claims-some of which are extremely vaiuable-«-liich is 
 now taking place, and in which both burghers and Titlanders can 
 narticipate without distinction. 
 
 The exceptionally generous legislation of the Boers with re- 
 gard to mining matters was eflected with the sole object of foster- 
 ing agriculture; this has, however, only been realized in part, 
 owing to the fact that the expansion of the mining industry 
 gradually made native labor dear, and thus heavily handicapped 
 fhe agriculturist. The administration of the Boers m the days o 
 PilgrL's Rest and Barberton compares very fawably with that 
 L Diamond Fields of Cape Colony. The TVansvaah^s .ere 
 good-natured, but they had no inclination to be trifled ^^ ith. In 
 those davs there was no talk of Uitlanders' grievances, nor e en 
 dur ng the early years of Johannesburg. The Witwatersrand is 
 no seated liU Pilgrim's Rest and I^rberton, m an^ nifi^ 
 quented part of the country, but it lies to ^^--^^ff^^^^ 
 of Pretor a, between Potchefstroom and Heidelberg, "^ th^J^^y 
 heart of the Boer States. Johannesburg sprang up with aston- 
 
:!fl 
 
 BRITAIN AND IHE BOERS. 
 
 ish'mg rapidity, and offered special attractions to the large num- 
 ber of South African adventurers who, like Mr. Micavvber, were 
 only "waiting for something to turn up." From their farms in 
 the Free State, from their wayside stores in Cape Colony, from 
 their plantations in Natal, from their broker offices in the Dia- 
 mond Fields, they gathered together— men of every type and 
 every class, but united in their feverish thirst for wealth. The 
 expectations of the most sanguine were realized; they reaped a 
 rich harvest in the shajjc of large exchange profits, although 
 many of tlieir number knew practically nothing about mining or 
 imancial administration. Then came the inevitable collapse in 
 J 889, wluch only si)ared the most fortunate; and the great ma- 
 jority of this strangely mixed community were gradually com- 
 pelled to make room for more competent men from. Europe and 
 America. These brought brains and experience into their work, 
 and placed the industry upon a more solid basis; but they also 
 inoculated the Uitlanders with the hacilli of discord and revolu- 
 tion, much to the detriment of the shareholders across the sea. 
 The appearance of the present-day Uitlander— that is to say, 
 the grievance-bearing or rather grievance-seeking stranger— dates 
 from the period when qralified experts satisfied themselves as to 
 tJie uniquely favorable situation of the precious metal in Wit- 
 watersrand— from the time when wild speculation began to make 
 room for a genuine exploitation of the mines. The preliminary 
 period to which I refer above was the cause of an influx of immi- 
 grants into the Republic. Thpy spread themselves over the face 
 of the country, penetrating into the most outlying spots, in order 
 to procure material for the flotation of mining companies This 
 period also saw the birth of the "Land and Estate" Companies 
 who generally bought up the most uninhabited or uninhabitable 
 farms for speculative purposes. By reason of foreign ownership 
 oi. large tracts of land, the argument is often advanced that an 
 onormous portion of the South African Republic no longer be- 
 ongs to the Boers. It may be remarked, en passant, that, whilst 
 the Boer has been severely condemned for his slothfulness in 
 maiters agricultural, practically none of the land companies has 
 ever devoted more than a few acres to the growing of crops. 
 Uhen the period of wild speculation suffered a collapse, the Uit- 
 ^uider no longer spread himself over the whole of th- itepublic 
 henceforward, the Witwatersrand was the exclusive scene of his 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFIilVAN QUESTION. 
 
 labors, and here he elected to pitch his tent. Outside the Katid, 
 he conlined himself to the ordinary occuputiouri of tlie olden days 
 — that of storekeeper for the folk of the few rustic centres, and 
 bank manager, hotelkeeper, and clergyman in the solitary country 
 towns. 
 
 After the crash of 1889, Johannesburg slowly became the 
 Uitlander town j)ar excellence. It deserves to be recorded tlmt, 
 as the output of gold began to show a continual increase, tlie 
 "Uitlander question" accpiired a proportionate magnitude. In 
 every country where foreigners are to be found in appreciabk 
 numbers, there is an Uitlander question. It exists in France, in 
 regard to the Italians and Belgians living there; in Japan, in re- 
 gard to the Americans and Britishers; in London, in regard to 
 the Poles; in the Middle Ages the Jews were in nuniy cases a 
 powerful "Uitlander' element. During the last century, the 
 Germans in Russia have been "Uitlander-s" and, according to 
 the Czechs and Hungarians, they are so in Austria to-day. But 
 the Uitlander question in the South African Kepublic dill'ers 
 from the Uitlander question elsewhere, as it has been made the 
 cause of an international dispute between two States of unequal 
 strength. In its present form, the Uitlander question is only 
 the mask of a financiers' plot, of a piece of IvKchange Jobbery. It 
 has steadily kept pace with the gold output. In 1889, £1,500,000 
 was produced. In that year, J()liannesl)urg was horrified by a 
 ecries of stealthy murders which were only explained as the bandi- 
 work of "Jack the Ripper." No one tliought at tbat time, how- 
 ever, of saddling the Transvaal Government with responsibility 
 for them, or of sending plaintive petitions to England as to tbe 
 danger of life in the South African Rei)ublie! Everyone under- 
 btood, then as now, that gold-tlelds oiler peculiar attractions to 
 questionable characters of all classes. In March, 1890, during 
 a visit of President Krugcr to the Golden City, the Transvaal 
 flag was pulled down from the Government buildings. It sub- 
 sequently transpired that tliis was only tbc work of some drunken 
 rough, and the mining and mercantile communities lost no time 
 in expressing their disapproval of the incident. The realization 
 of the practical value of tbe deep-level theory— in other words, 
 the ultimate conviction as to the indisputable durability and 
 wealth of the Witwatersrand gold-fiolds— has, in the meantime, 
 become the signal for an agitation against the Government and 
 
¥ i 
 
 S .:^ 
 
 BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 the people of the South African Republic. From this 
 })triod dates li^ngland's claim to suzerainty over the South African 
 Republic and the paramount-powership in South Africa, of 
 which hitherto no mention had over been made. In 1894, the 
 tlien Iligli Commissioner, Sir Henry Loch, was present at some 
 (liamond-ilrill experiments at the Hand, which proved beyond 
 dispute the continuous nature of the goid-bearing reef at a con- 
 siderable depth, and at an important distance from the outcrop 
 reef. During this visit, Sir Henry Loch made a promise to the 
 mining magnates — as per letter of Mr. Lionel Phillips, then the 
 Chairman of the Joliannesburg Chamber of Mines* — to stir up 
 the Transvaal Government on condition that the "Uitlander" 
 agitation increased in intensity. The Transvaal Gieen Book pro- 
 vides instructive reading even for to-day; it contains extracts from 
 private letters from Air, Phillips to his London friends. On the 
 10th of June, 1894, he wrote to Mi. Beit: 
 
 "As to the franchise, I do not think many people care a flg about 
 It." 
 
 On the 1st of July of the same year, he wrote to Mr, Wemher: 
 
 "S."r H. Loch (with whom I had two long private Interviews alone) 
 asked me some very pointed questions, such as what arms we had in 
 Johannesburg, whether the population could hold the place for six 
 days until help could arrive, etc., etc., and stated plainly that If there 
 had been 3,000 rifles and ammunition here he would certainly have 
 come over. He further Informed me, In a significant way, that he had 
 prolonged the Swaziland agreement for six months, and said he sup- 
 posed in chat time Johannesburg would be better prepared — as much 
 as to say, if things are safer then we shall actively Intervene." 
 
 Tliis conversation took place at Pretoria, where Sir Henry 
 
 Loch, as the representative of Her Majesty's Government, was 
 
 the honored guest of the Transvaal people! On the 15th of July 
 
 of the same year, Mr, Phillips wrote to Mr. Beit: 
 
 "We don't want any rov/. Our trump ca, 3 is a fund of £10,000 
 or £15,000 to improve the Volksraad. Unfortunately the Gold Com- 
 panieb have no Secret Borvice Fund." 
 
 Ail this happened in 1894, when the gold output had already 
 rf.ached a total of nearly 7| millions sterling. In 1895, it had 
 7'isen to 84 millions; the '"'trump card" had also risen and amount- 
 ed to £120,000, with which sum the Reform movement at Johan- 
 nesburg was partially financiered — a movement which came to an 
 untimely end at Doornkop. 
 
 • Vide Transvaal Green Book, No. 2, of 1896. 
 
TRANSVAAL VIKW OF SOUTH AFRTCAN QUESTION. 
 In 1897 the inquiry by the official Industrial Commission 
 took place, the result being a substantial lowering of railway 
 tariffs and import dues. But the "grievances" still remained, and 
 increased in 1897 in sympathy wiUi the gold output, which had 
 now reached the large figure of Hi millions. Still more "un- 
 boarable" were these "grievances" in 1898, during which year IH 
 nillions of gold was dug out of Transvaal soil. This was the 
 year of the Edgar atl'air and of the Uitlandcr Petition, and m the 
 ^ame year forty-five gold companies of the Hand (the share capital 
 issued being £20,294,075) paid out in dividends no less than £5,- 
 089,78.5-an average of 25 per cent.! The output for 1899 has 
 already been estimated at 22^ millions, and the number of divi- 
 dend-paying companies increases every month. 
 
 In 1896 the rural population were visited ly a series of griev- 
 ous plagues-by rinderpest, by drought, by locusts, and by the 
 dreaded fever. ' While the Uitlanders of the Rand were reported 
 to be groaning under the oppression of their Egyptian taskmas- 
 ters, and European shareholders were depicted as helpless victims 
 of a corrupt Krtlger regime, the Boers were "taking up arms 
 against a sea of troubles" M'hich threatened to overwhelm them, 
 and of which we heard exceedingly little, either in the local papers 
 or in the cable columns of the London press. AVhilst thousands 
 of Boer families saw the fruit of long years of toil plucked away 
 by the hand of God in a single season, the campaign of ibel on 
 behalf of the Uitlanders was vigorously prosecuted with the help 
 of money won from Transvaal soil by mining magnates, he 
 princely munificence displayed by whom in London and other 
 places outside South Africa wa. occasionally referred to m he 
 Lai papers as a joyous chord between the "grievance' sympho- 
 nies that were struck in the mi. lor key. 
 
 I have little inclination to expatiate on the true character of 
 tlie present movement against the Boers; but I do say that o sup- 
 port the latest type of agination against the white population 
 he inferior of South Africa is unworthy of the traditions o the 
 Ang^^-taxon race. The South African Republic is not without 
 polftical blemishes; as in every other country, we have our ad- 
 m'n rative scandals, both great and small; we have our social 
 Tnd econoiuic plagu -spots, wliich must be made to disapp ar. 
 i-fell never Jere fountains of pure -o-Hty nor are they 
 in South Africa. Has one ever pictured the future of the 
 
BRITAIN ASD lUE BOERS, 
 
 most civilized country of the Old World if a second Johannesburg 
 were to spring up in mushroom fashion? 1 do not wish to speak 
 ovil of the wire-pullers of the present agitation against the Afri- 
 kanders; but, surely, those j)ersuns whose princely palaces have 
 been built with Transvaal gold, and who cry out so loudly against 
 our government, should be the last to throw stones against the 
 liepublic. The ''oligarchy" at Pretoria — to use Mr. Chambei* 
 Iain's recent expression — consists of barely a few dozen Boers; 
 there is, therefore, strong evidence in favor of this "oligarchy" 
 in the fact that it has been able to offer such prolonged resistance 
 tii the well-disposed and undoubtedly disinterested attempts d' 
 such gentlemen as Lionel Phillips to "improve" them from 
 Johannesburg and London. Such an "oligarchy" is without a 
 parallel in modern times. It forms a striking contrast to the 
 ■worship of the golden calf on the Witwatersrand, from which 
 Pretoria is only distant about three hours on horseback. Such 
 an "oligarchy" deserves to be carefully preserved rather than de- 
 stroyed, as we preserve from total extinction seme rare plant or 
 peculiar species of animal. 
 
 There are undoubted grievances in the South African Re- 
 public, but they are not the exclusive property of the Uitlanders; 
 a discreet silence is observed with respect to the wrongs of the 
 Transvaal burghers, and I do not feel it to be my task to dilate 
 upon them now. But still they exist, although the absorbing 
 selfishness of the mining magnates keeps back the light of day; 
 the lust for gold stifles all generosity, compassion, mercy, brother- 
 ly love, and respect for the rights of the weak. What Jlonomo- 
 tapa was to the Phoenicians and Arabs, Witwatersrand is to our 
 present gold-seekers, and to most of the Uitlanders — a temporary 
 land of exile, which they only endure for the sake of the gold. 
 Can we picture the wise king Solomon demanding the franchise 
 for his subjects in the realms of the Queen of Sheba? 
 
 South Africa is poor; it will remain poor, in spite of its gold 
 and its diamonds. It will never be able to pay back the cost of a 
 bitter strife, unless the gold-bedecked princes come fonvard with 
 the treasure which they have wrung from the land. As long as 
 the Boers allow the modern Phoenicians to dig the precious met- 
 alti out of Transvaal soil without heavy impositions, and to have 
 a free hand in the administration of the country and the govern- 
 ment of the native population, it will be found that the best busi- 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION, 
 
 ncss policy will be to loiive the Boers in undisturbed possession 
 ol" tlioir country, free to rule it by their own heulthy instinct and 
 according to the good old traditions of their forefathers, with 
 tiieir own language, their own rulers, their own aspirations — 
 even with their own faults and prejudices. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that, from the earliest days of the 
 gold-fields, the Uitlanders knew that the South African Repub- 
 lic was an ''oligarchy"; they knew that the Boers were "illiter- 
 ate," "stupid," "ignorant," and a great deal besides; they knew 
 that a dynamite monopoly existed, and that President KrUger 
 was a "hard nut to crack." Notwithstanding this knowledge the 
 "Uitlanders" have flocked in by thousands, and foreign capital 
 has been invested amounting to several hundreds of millions 
 sterling. During the lirst five months of the present year, Trans- 
 vaal gold and other companies were registered here with a com- 
 bined capital of over £15,3i)l,389. In July last— in the middle 
 of the crisis— five new companies were registered with a capital 
 of £1,159,000. And of all the Uitlanders only a section of the 
 British subjects are genuinely dissatisfied. Notwithstanding 
 that the "oppression" of the Transvaal "oligarchy" has been told 
 and retold, until the world has become sick and weary, immi- 
 grants are still pouring in from all quarters of the globe. 
 
 The Boers do not ask for mercy; they ask for justice. Those 
 who keep up the unfair agitation against the South African Ke- 
 public are the last men, however, to listen to the voice of right- 
 eousness, or to be guided by any noble impulse; political corrup- 
 tion is the seed they sow, and l)y their unexampled opportunities 
 they feel confident of reaping their criminal harvest. Lp to the 
 present they have gathered only tears; a still more bitter time 
 of reaping has yet to come. In the past the Boers have been ab 
 to fight against immensely superior odds. They feel that the 
 final victory will be theirs; for they know they nave right on 
 
 ''" Ven'would it be for the British nation if they could but 
 realize the significance of those words of Russell Lowell: 
 
 .■Truth forever on the -a«°ld. ^on. fo^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 IIS a:r"tr IL'sharrKeTp^n, watch ahove His own." 
 
 F. v. ENQELENBURa. 
 
 Pretoria, August, 1899. 
 
ft 
 
 4 
 
 North American Review 
 
 1899, 
 
 MAY CONTENTS. 
 
 The War with Spain— I. 
 
 Major-Oeneral Nelson A. Miles. 
 
 China and the Powers. 
 
 Lord CH^BLES Bebesford, R. N., C. B., M. P. 
 
 The l{eligious Situation in England. 
 
 Ian Maolaren. 
 The Nicaragua Canal tbohas b. keed. 
 
 What Spain Can T.ach America. 
 
 Nicolas Estevanbz. 
 
 England in Egypt and the Soudan. 
 
 Colonel Charles CiiailliS Long. 
 The New Poetry William Dean Howells. 
 
 Conditions and Needs in Cuba. 
 
 Major-General Leonard Wood. 
 
 Courts Martial in England and America. 
 
 The Rt. Hon. Sir F. H, Jeone. 
 
 The Curse in Education. 
 
 Rbbeooa Hardinq Davis. 
 
 Work of the Joint High Commission. 
 
 A Canadian Liberal. 
 
 WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY : 
 
 Its Origin and Development o. Marooni. 
 
 Its Scientific History and Future Uses. 
 
 J. A. Fleming. F. R. S. 
 
 JULY CONTENTS. 
 
 A Channel Passage, l&$5. 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
 Ex Oriente Lux I A I'iea for a Russo- 
 Americac Understanding. 
 
 Prince £. Ookhtomset; Vladihik Uolmstkem. 
 " Americanism," True and False. 
 
 The Rev. William Barrt, D. D. 
 Universal Peace.. .Baroness Bertha von SOttneb. 
 
 England an«! the Transvaal stdnet Brooks. 
 
 Our Public Schools. A Reply. 
 
 Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer. 
 The Government of Greater New York. 
 
 Bird S, Coler. 
 Pig Iron and Prosperity George h. hull. 
 
 The Logic of Our Position in Cuba. 
 
 An Officem of the Army of Occupation. 
 The Tercentenary of Veiasque?. 
 
 C'^iABLES WhIBLEY. 
 
 The War with Spain— HI. 
 
 Major-General Neibon A, Milks. 
 Qolf from a St. Andrews Point of View. 
 
 Andkkw Lang. 
 
 JUNE CONTENTS. 
 
 Conditions and Prospects of the Treasury. 
 
 Ltman J. Gage. 
 
 Israel Among the Nations maxNordau. 
 
 Jeffersonian Principles William J. Bbyan. () 
 
 The Imbroglio in Samoa henrtc. ids. 
 
 Commercial Education. 
 
 The Rt. Hon. James Bryce, M. P. 
 
 The Industrial Commission s. n. d. north. 
 
 The Reverses of Britomart Edmund gosse. 
 
 Taxation of Public Franchises. 
 
 state Senator John Ford. 
 
 The Outlook for Carlism. 
 
 The Hon. James Roch»', M. P. 
 
 The War with Spain— I!. ■. 
 
 Major-Qeneral Nelson A. Miles. V 
 
 Present Aspects of the Dreyfus Case. 
 
 Joseph Reinach. 
 
 The Peace Conference : Its Possible Practical 
 Results A Diplomatist at the Hague. 
 
 AUGUST CONTEiNTTS. 
 
 Woman's International Parliament. 
 
 Thu Countess of Aberdeen; 
 Kasbandka Vivaria. 
 
 The Paramount Power of the Pacific. 
 
 John Barrett. 
 Constitutional ConHict in Finland. A 
 
 A Membfk of tue FiNNibH Diet, 'a 
 The Case Against Christian Science. v 
 
 . ,, _ .,..,. W. A. PURRINGTON. U 
 
 Anti-Trust Legislation Joseph d. Sayers. a 
 
 Japan's Entry into the Family of Nations. / 
 
 „. „. . .. T. R. Jernigan. \ 
 
 The Zionist Movement. () 
 
 .... . „ ,. . . Prof. Richard Gotthbil. /') 
 
 Atbletics for Politicians. \ 
 
 Sir Charles W. Dilke. Bt., M. P. (/ 
 
 The Censorship of the Stage in England. /) 
 
 . _ , , „ , G. Bernard Shaw. )\ 
 
 A Century of Salons. (/ 
 
 Kli;?abeth Robins Pennell. d 
 
 Girls' Novels in France. a 
 
 Yktta Blaz:: De Bury. \ 
 
 The rlSSaSfcs Sf PoYcfiy Max O'Rfll. \ 
 
^ 
 
 Q 
 
 The North American Review 
 
 EDITED BY GEORGE B. M. HARVEY 
 50 Cents a Copy. 55.00 a Year 
 
 SEPTEMBER CONTENTS. 
 
 The Agnostic's Side (^Republished). 
 
 Robert G. Inoeksoll. 
 
 logersoll's lofluence. 
 
 The Rev. Henry M. Field, D.D. 
 
 Ex Oriente Lux: A Rejoinder. 
 
 Abohibald Little. 
 
 ^ The Foreign Service of the United States. 
 
 Francis B. LooaMis, 
 17. S, Minister to Venezuela, i 
 
 A Vindication of the Boers. 
 Legal Aspect of Trusts. 
 
 A Diplomat. 
 Joseph S. Aderbach. 
 
 Progress of Antomobllism in Prance. 
 
 Marquis De Chasseloup-Laubat. 
 
 American Universities. 
 
 Kdocard Rod. 
 
 The ••America" Cup Race. 
 
 The Hon. Charles Russell. 
 
 Aguinaldo's Case Against the United States 
 
 A Filipino. 
 
 OCTOBER CONTENTS. 
 The Peace Conference and the Moral Aspect 
 
 of War. Captain A. T. Mahan, U. S. N. 
 
 U. S. Delegate to the Huyue Conference. 
 
 In the Clutch of the Harpy Powers. 
 
 R. M. Johnston. 
 The Picture Gallery of the Hermitage— I. 
 
 Claude Phillifs. 
 A Transvaal View of the South African Question. 
 
 Dr. F. V. Engelenburg. 
 Editor of the Pretoria "Volkastem." 
 
 The Present Literary Situation in Prance. 
 -...,, „ . Henry James. 
 
 The Alaskan Boundary. Prot. j. b. moore. 
 
 ij-merly Assistant Secretaru of State. 
 
 Some Social Tendencies in America. 
 
 The Right Rev. H. C. Potter, D.D. 
 
 Bishop of New York. 
 
 A Trained Colonial Civil Service. 
 
 E. G. Bourne. 
 Professor of History in Yale University. 
 
 The French Press and the Dreyfus Case. 
 
 M. DE Blowttz. 
 Paris Correspondent of the London " Times." 
 
 THE ANGLOSAXON RIVALS: 
 Five Years of American Progress. 
 
 M. G. Mulhall, F.S.S. 
 The Decline of British Commerce. 
 
 A. Mavrioe Low. 
 America and England In the East. 
 
 The Rt. Hon. Sir Chas. W. Dilke, Bt., M.P. 
 The Restless Energy of the American People. 
 
 Ian Maolaren. 
 
 BY an examination of the foregoing Contents pages of The North American Review A 
 for the past six months the reader cannot fail to notice with what timeliness A 
 and authority the current topics of interest are discussed from month to month. 
 Each number contains several articles which no scholar or student of public affairs 
 can afford to overlook. 
 
 I. 
 
 2. 
 
 Any of these numbers from May to September will be sent, as sample 
 copies, for lo cents each (five 2-cent. stamps). 
 
 The October, November and December numbers will be sent for 50 
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 A remittance of the yearly subscription price, $5.00, for 1900 will entitle 
 the sender whose name is not now on our list to the October, Novem- 
 ber and December numbers also. Fifteen months for $5.00. 
 
 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW 
 
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 The North American Review under its new control has changed not so much as to its cloth- 
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