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BOTH SIDES OF THE 
 
 SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION 
 WITH MAP. 
 we 
 
 l—England and the Transvaal, - - + By Sydney Brooks 
 IL—A Vindication of the Boets, - - -— - By A: Diplomat 
 
 ll.—A Transvaal View of the South African Question, 
 By Dr. F, V. Engelenburg, Editor of the “ Pretoria Volksstera.” 
 
 NEW YORE: 
 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW PUBLISHING CO. 
 
opps trie 
 
 "(Reprinted trom The North American Review.) 
 
 North Ame Publishing Company. 
 
 7 
 
 |All Rights Reserved. 
 
i ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 ~ | BY SYDNEY BROOKS. 
 
 m: 
 
 ’ Tue failure of the Bloemfontein Conference is a disappoint- 
 *ment that may prove a tragedy. President Kriger and Sir 
 © Alfred Milner, the Governor of Cape Colony, met to discuss the 
 
 ‘NX Transvaal question with every external circumstance pointing to a 
 «happy issue. The time, the men and the place were all well 
 
 A chosen. In the neat and compact capital of the Orange Free 
 ~ State, the Boer President was among friends of his own race, and 
 the British representative was not among enemies. Both com- 
 _ missioners had behind them the free trust of their respective gov- 
 
 . Be crictiia, 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 Kgypt, 
 
 v ‘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 Baers to mistrust him. 
 %) The portents of international politics were even more pro- 
 pitious. One may doubt whether there has been since Majuba 
 Fiill, 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 
 
 “orebuff, he must have convinced himself that in a friendly debate 
 
 ™ Jay some hope of getting this troublesome mole-hill finally cleared 
 
 Bee 1033239 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 away, and himself left free to make his mark on English history. 
 
 as the first Colonial Secretary with a policy of his own. ‘The peo- 
 ple of Great Britain, still somewhat humiliated by memories of 
 the raid, were never less inclined to be overbearing or more anxious 
 to reach a just. anc vacific solution. There was nothing in the 
 
 political situation in Cape Colony but what would quiet Presi- 
 
 dent Kriiger’s suspiciousness and urge him to moderation. His 
 own kinsmen, the Dutch colonists, are there in control of the gov- 
 ernment, their racial sympathies all on his side, as against forcible 
 interference in the domestic affairs of the Transvaal, their rough 
 business sense counselling justice to the Uitlanders for the good 
 of South African trade. Nothing was to be feared from the mas- 
 terful empire-builder through whose “keen, unscrupulous. course” 
 Great Britain has lost much, even if she has gained more. 
 At the time the conference met, Mr. ‘Bhodes was not even 
 in South Africa. From Germany came no encouragement 
 to obduracy. The Kaiser, indeed, has long since done pen- 
 ance for his telegram, and given the Boers to understand 
 that he can no longer afford to be their friend; and unless every- 
 - thing short of official confirmation is to be disbelieved, the Anglo- 
 German agreement of last summer makes provision for the trans- 
 fer of Delagoa Bay from Portuguese to British hands, and so cuts 
 off from the Transvaal its last hope of reaching the sea. Hven 
 the French who have capital invested in the Rand, have of late 
 put aside their Anglophobia and have been calling upon President 
 Kriiger to set his house in order. England and the Transvaal 
 were thus left face to face, with 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, should’ 
 
 have failed, and failed without a step being gained towards har- 
 
 monious compromise, is a fact that must cause the gravest appre- 
 
 hensions. 
 The conference broke up over the eternal franchise difficulty, 
 
 which, while it is certainly the cruz of the whole dispute, is only 
 one of many points of controversy that will have to be straightened — 
 
 out before long. What is known as the suzerainty question 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 proper bearings. 
 When Mr, Gladstone made peace with the Hest a few 
 
 Seer ar Rt Saat? 
 
 ese pisgetree™ fer IM AD 
 
 ee > — 
 
way, and disputes became so frequent that Mr. Gladstone proposed 
 _a revision of the convention in 1883. Geo as 
 
 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL, 
 
 Tap baiee: 
 
 were 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 
 
 eee ee 
 
 the suzerainty clauses were thrown in to save England’s face, 
 They did _not work well.” "The Boers chafed under an _arrange- 
 
 ment that kept them from dealing with the natives in their own 
 
 held to be a damnosa hereditas before the discovery of gold, and 
 
 pena 
 
 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 
 
 A et Ca eee. 
 
 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 offensive 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 au- 
 thority. “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 Republic, until the same has been ap- 
 proved by Her Majesty the Queen.” This clause again was in- 
 tended chiefly for home consumption. It was often disregarded 
 by the Boers, and it was not thought important enough to be 
 
 BA 
 ~* we ~ - r 
 — ? LA 
 
 S) Oe ‘ 
 
BRITAIN AND 1HE BOERS. 
 
 pressed home by the Colonial Office. The Transvaal in 1884 was 
 a large but barren tract of ground, barely sufficient for the support 
 of 100,000 stock-raisers. It had but a small connection with Brit- 
 ish interests. The one clear thing about it to the mind of Down- 
 ing Street was that it had given England more trouble than it was 
 worth, and that the best thing to do was to leave it alone. 
 
 ™ But the finding of gold caused British officialdom to change 
 
 its attitude with speed. Thousands of Englishmen, Australians 
 / and Americans swarmed into Johannesburg, and in a few years 
 | converted a bankrupt and disorganized state into the second gold- 
 | producing country of the world. The Transvaal and its be- 
 
 -wildered burghers woke up to find themselves the centre of Euro- 
 
 ! ee intrigue, and the London Convention was discovered to be a 
 
 document of capital importance. 
 
 Le It is, I think, clear by the terms of the abs T have quoted 
 that the South African Republic is not an independent state. Its 
 freedom of action is circumscribed both within and without its 
 own territory. Its boundaries, at any rate on one side, are not 
 only fixed, but fixed immutably. In that direction it is forbidden 
 to expand. It cannot, under the clauses of the convention, in- 
 troduce slavery, either openly, or in any of the veiled forms under 
 which the institution is still countenanced. Especially, and this 
 is the hinge of the whole convention, is its liberty of negotiation 
 and diplomacy placed under restrictions. Now, no state can be 
 properly called independent which is prohibited from managing 
 its foreign affairs in its own way. ‘The Transvaal is free to ar- 
 
 range treaties with the Orange Free State. With all other coun- © 
 
 tries, aS with all native tribes, to the east or west, its relations are 
 ultimately controlled by the British Government. The exact 
 word to describe the position in which the two countries stand to 
 one another is hard to find. “Suzerainty” is a doubtful term of 
 loose application in popular parlance, and of uncertain standing in 
 international law. ‘The word has simply been adopted as a con- 
 venient one to define the peculiar relations of England and the 
 Transvaal. ‘To employ it adds nothing to the real efficacy of the 
 convention of 1884; to drop it does not diminish British authority 
 in any way. Call that authority by what name one will—suzer- 
 ainty, control or the right to veto—the fact remains that the 
 Transvaal, in some most important branches of its national affairs, 
 is finally subject to Great Britain. 
 
 eee eee 
 
png 
 
 — mc 
 
 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 know is that so long as President. Kriger. 
 accepts and acts up to _the terms of _ the. London. Conyen-.. 
 
 PN SES 
 
 ae tion, 1, 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 Orange 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 Krier and 
 the German Emperor that followed the 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 unreasoning; 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 ie a good deal of regret that 
 
 this should be so. The London a_quite 
 undeserved and_factitious ‘sanctity i in a aie eyes. of Engli sh people, 
 
 erence ene ae 
 
 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 South 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 
 there is not much, either in its inception or after-history, to com- 
 mand such perfervid adoration. It was hurriedly and careless] 
 drafted _to bring to its quickest. end_an.issue-ofwhich everyone 
 was wearied; it.was so little thought-of thatthe Boers might claim 
 it has lapsed through frequent unrebuked violations; above. all, 
 “Gt dealt with a state of affairs that has altered in every particular 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS, 
 
 since its promulgation. Wherein does its peculiar virtue consist? 
 Most Englishmen would answer, truly enough, in. the clause that 
 
 nari 
 
 regulates the external affairs of the Transvaal. But what, after 
 
 all, is that clause worth? It has irritated. and humiliated the 
 Boers without benefiting England in a single essential. It has 
 forced the British Government to an undignified and unproductive 
 watchfulness over the doings of Transvaal emissaries abroad. If 
 it was designed as an effective check on foreign diplomacy, then 
 the intimate approaches of Germany proved its worthlessness to 
 demonstration. It is, of course, impossible to believe that any 
 power that thought it worth while to negotiate a secret treaty with 
 the Transvaal would be deterred from doing so by the London ~ 
 Convention; and equally impossible to imagine that, if any such 
 treaty were to be negotiated, the Transvaal would submit it to the 
 approval of the British Government. The obstacle that keeps 
 foreign nations from intriguing with the Transvaal for the over- 
 throw of British ascendancy in South Africa, is not a fifteen-year- 
 old piece of parchment, but the strength and position of the Brit- 
 ish Empire; and that strength and position would remain what 
 they are and be a deterrent of undiminished persuasiveness, were 
 the convention cancelled to-morrow. lHither there is the possi- 
 bility of foreign interference in South Africa, or there is not. If 
 there is, the London Convention is no safeguard against it. If 
 there is not, the London Convention, or at any rate its most promi- 
 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 itself the 
 tremendous responsibility of an attempt to oust Great Britain 
 from South Africa. The true danger to the British position comes 
 from quite another source, from the continued want of harmony 
 and confidence between the English and the Dutch, due to the 
 present turbulent condition of the Transvaal. A civil, not a for- 
 eign, war is the menace to be dreaded. It is in the power.of the 
 Boers to end the uncertainty that paralyzes commerce and. pro- 
 vokes racial antagonism and unrest from Cape. Town to the Zam- 
 besi by reforming their internal administration; and, as an induce- 
 
 ment to set about. the task, a guarantee of independence would:be 
 far more persuasive than the pointed summonses of the Colonial — 
 
 Secretary. It would seem to be at once an act of magnanimity 
 
 Sonne ircre 
 
 and good policy if the British Government were to renounce its 
 
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 
 az a nation placed beyond question. It galls them, as it would 
 gall any high-spirited people, to find themselves, 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 f guardianshi 1ip over British subjects in the. Transvaal-that.. 
 “the ordinary | law_of nations. does.not.already.secure to the British. 
 ‘Government; and the withdrawal of the suzerainty claims, which 
 “are an AT 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-existent, 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 principles of duty and 
 justice. It really hampers, rather than aids, British ministers in 
 their endeavor to transform President Kriiger’s fascinating me- 
 dizvalism 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 officers 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 workings 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 itis. That point 
 is the limitations contained in the convention on the full sov- 
 ereignty of the Transvaal; and to sweep those restrictions away 
 and place the Republic on an equality with Great Britain, there 
 
z, 
 
 BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 are probably few concessions which he would not be glad to make. 
 There seems at all events to be here. an opportunity for an honor- 
 able_ and id_ satisfactory tory pargain. _An Independent. Transvaal, with — 
 ‘menace to the British position i in 1 South Africa than i is s the Orange 
 ‘Free ‘State. 
 
 ~Sir Alfred Milner, of course, went to Bloemfontein with no 
 such heroic proposals in his portfolio. In the present state of 
 England’s attachment to the convention, one has to admit that 
 no such proposals are possible. National dignity, pride of posses- 
 sion and fears of foreign interference are too keenly aroused to 
 brook the seeming humiliation of retreat, even from a false and 
 unprofitable position. ‘Too much zeal has been spent on the de- 
 fence 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 rock. The President proposed 
 that certain of the matters in dispute should be submitted to arbi- 
 tration. Sir Alfred Milner was obliged to answer, in effect, that 
 on any matter of real importance there could be no arbitration 
 between a suzerain state and its dependency. Such pistolling di- 
 plomacy does not make for a peaceful issue. The concessions that 
 will have to be granted to end the veiled warfare that threatens 
 to disrupt the Transvaal and bathe the whole of South Africa in 
 blood, cannot be expected to come from one side only. It is the 
 President’s misfortune to have put himself morally in the wrong 
 on almost every point of domestic policy. That does not relieve 
 Great Britain from the obligation of considering whether it would 
 not be an act of mingled wisdom and generosity to make the task 
 of extrication as easy as possible. The renunciation of suzerainty 
 ig the only adequate reward in sight that will atone for the com- 
 prehensive surrenders required for the reorganization of the Re- 
 public’s internal economy. It would remove, in great part, the 
 fearfulness of the Boers lest, in yielding to the demands of the 
 Uitlanders, they imperil their own independence; and it would 
 show, as nothing else can, the sincerity and honesty of purpose 
 which animate the English people in their dealings with the 
 Transvaal. 
 
 In the Transvaal itself the situation is almost too fantastic for 
 serious presentation. The Uitlanders, seven-eighths of whom be- 
 
 long to the English-speaking race, outnumber the Boers by more 
 
 tes 4 
 
 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 
 intolerant of any encroachments upon their liberty. The Boers 
 have 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 patriarch 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. N evertheless, 
 they are kept in complete subjection to their bucolic task-masters. 
 They 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 Mr. 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 hardest, not on the capitalists 
 and large mine owners, who.are mostly absentees, but on the law- 
 yers, doctors, business men and the working classes who have 
 settled in the Rand 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 
 ihe Chartered Company, nor the capitalists had anything to do 
 withit. It was a genuine and thoughtful protest from the average 
 working 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 
 Fremier, “have no country.” That may hold good for Coolgardie 
 and the Klondyke, but not for the Transvaal; for gold-mining in 
 the Rand 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 confidence 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- 
 irict, as a whole, will not be exhausted for fifty, and possibly not 
 for seventy or eighty, years to come. This puts the Rand on quite 
 a different footing from the gold-fields of Australia and California. 
 The foreigners who have rushed to Johannesburg are, for the most 
 part, genuine settlers, men who look forward to spending their 
 whole lives either in the employment of the mine-owners, or in 
 the ordinary trades and professions that gather round the centre 
 ofa great industry. They are not of the order of speculative tran- 
 sients, whose interest in their new resting place ceases with the 
 discovery and exhaustion or sale of a “lucky strike.” In other 
 words, they have a country; and that country is the Transvaal; and 
 as men who have taken up a permanent residence in it, they de- 
 mand, 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 
 
Oe 
 
 ENGLANB AND THE TRANSVAAL, 
 
 miners—all speaking the tongue of their hereditary foes—that 
 threatened to overwhelm their independence. ‘To preserve the po- 
 litical status quo, they raised the probationary term of qualifica- 
 tion for the franchise, first to five years and then to fifteen. In 
 1890, as a sop 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 
 First 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, with- 
 out justice, without 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 
 thereby the English might be deprived of their one legal remedy 
 against injustice. Education, except in the Boer taal, is forbid- 
 den above the third standard, in the hope of forcing the English 
 to unlearn their native tongue. And these indignities are put 
 upon the men who are the source of all the country’s prosperity, 
 and its saviours from internal dissolution. 
 
 There can be little doubt that, had President Kriiger yielded 
 to the demand for the franchise when it was first made, he would 
 have to-day, in the gratitude and contentment of his new citizens, 
 the best guarantee for the 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 has been saved more by the mistakes of its 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 epponents than by the President’s own shrewdness. If the ex-- 
 istence of the Republic seems to be imperilled to-day, President 
 Kriger has chiefly himself to thank for it. His resistance to a 
 just demand has driven the Uitlanders, by a process common to 
 most political agitations, to put forward other and less reasonable 
 claims. A section of the excluded settlers has started the theory, 
 based on Great Britain’s suzerainty, that the taking of the oath 
 of allegiance to the Transvaal does not involve the surrender of 
 sritish citizenship. If the contention were sound, President Krti- 
 ger would be well within his rights in refusing the franchise to all 
 such hybrid citizens. But the argument will not hold water for . 
 a moment. Mr. Chamberlain and all the best legal authorities in 
 Kngland have condemned and disowned it. A British subject on 
 swearing the oath of allegiance to the South African Republic, or 
 any other state, forfeits at once all his rights of British citizen- 
 ship, and becomes, suzerainty or no suzerainty, a foreigner. It 
 is a pity a contrary plea was ever urged. It has only served to 
 misrepresent the intentions of the average Uitlanders.. Asa body, 
 the Uitlanders demand, firstly, such an alteration of the present 
 franchise law as will give them at least an effective minority rep- 
 resentation; secondly, permission to educate their children in their 
 own tongue; and thirdly, a rearrangement of the tariff. The pres- 
 ent tariff mulcts the whole of Johannesburg for the benefit of a 
 few Boer farmers, and forces the price of the necessities of life to — 
 an inordinate figure. Between the omnipotence of a few large 
 capitalists and the fiscal exactions of the Boers, which press as 
 hardly upon Natal, the Orange Free State and Cape Colony as 
 upon Johannesburg, the middle and working classes in the Rand 
 district, in spite of the high rate of wages, are hard put to it to 
 make both ends meet. 
 
 The capitalists have grievances of their own, which their 
 enormous influence in a country of poor men has managed to 
 keep well to the front. The nature and continuance of these 
 grievances show to what lengths the distrust felt by the Boers to-. 
 wards the British will carry them, even to the detriment of the 
 national exchequer. The government of the Transvaal has made 
 it its policy to hamper in every way the development of the mines 
 from which the public treasury is filled. A French expert has 
 calculated that better legislation and administration would de- 
 crease the cost of production by about thirty per cent. Heavy 
 
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 increase 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 Dutch stockholders. The dynamite monopoly 
 was granted to a German firm some years ago, and securely hedged 
 around by a prohibitive duty on the imported article. The usual 
 censequenccs 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 inthe 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 Rand into the hands of two 
 or three capitalists. 
 
 It must not be supposed that President Kriiger 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 of South 
 
 Africa,” a book the value and thoroughness of which are hardly to be inferred 
 from the modesty of its title, 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 hardly less desirous than the Uitlanders of seeing the unrest at 
 Johannesburg put an end to. The heavy tariff on wool, wines, 
 brandy and food-stuffs all but closes the richest market in South 
 Africa to their staple exports; and they, like everyone south of the 
 Zambesi, feel the effects of the discontent that radiates from the 
 ‘Transvaal, paralyzing commercial 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 effect, 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 Boer 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 the Cape, across the wilderness, and 
 founded a Republic 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 British officers, that the raid of 1895 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 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 Republic would not become an Eng- 
 lish Republic with an English 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 persuaded ‘the President, and through 
 
ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. 
 
 him the Boers, that their fears, if not baseless, are very unlikely 
 to be realized. So long as the reasonable grievances of the Uit- 
 landers are 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 English children in English. A revision of the 
 dynamite and railroad monopolies, and a rearrangement of the 
 tarifl schedule, would give the capitalists 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 snspicions policy of denial 
 
 ard opposition has only e ity if was foolishly 
 mea Safeguard. ‘The best hope for the independence of the 
 
 state must Tie 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 régime 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 medieval 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 
 have 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. 
 
oo 
 
 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 A REJOINDER TO MR. SYDNEY BROOKS. 
 
 BY A DIPLOMAT. 
 
 One of the principal arguments used against the Boers 1s 
 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 
 
 eans 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 mags 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 1n- 
 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 indifference, and the open 
 opposition of France to their claims, have already told us; and, 
 in 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 offers 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- 
 
 \ 
 
A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 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 Norty 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 Kriiger 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 the Suzerainty question. From this de. 
 scription 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. 
 
 sionate attachment of the Boers to their independence and by a 
 lesser tenacity of feeling on the part of the English, two conven- 
 tions were concluded—one at Pretoria, the other in London; the 
 last of which, although giving away a great deal of the authority 
 maintained by England over the Transvaal, notwithstanding the 
 defeat at Majuba Hill, still kept the Republic in a state of sub- 
 jection to English control in one or two things. Mr. Brooks 
 goes on to say, and he proves it vigorously, that this right of par- 
 tial control—call it “suzerainty” or anything else, the term has 
 ne importance—to which England clings with great fervor, espec- 
 ially since the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, constitutes a 
 worthless instrument in her hands, whereas it is wormwood and 
 gall to the Boers. Finally, Mr. Brooks suggests—and this sug- 
 gestion should be particularly noticed, because it embodies his 
 idea of a solution of the Transvaal question—that the total sur- 
 render of this right of control on the part of the English should 
 and might be a means of achieving a settlement of the affairs in 
 dispute, because “there are probably few concessions President 
 Kriger would not be glad to make, in order to sweep away the 
 limitations on the full sovereignty of the Transvaal and place the 
 Republic on an equality with Great Britain.” 
 
 Now, here I part from Mr. Brooks. If it is an illusory ad-_ 
 vantage for England to claim suzerainty over the Transvaal, as 
 granted by the London convention, it would be no less illusory 
 a concession to the Republic to free her from the effect of mere 
 empty words. Undoubtedly, the Boers would derive a moral sat- 
 isfaction from the proclamation of their complete independence; 
 but, before making a bargain in that direction, President Krtiger, 
 of whose shrewdness | Mr. Brooks is. tightly. assured, , must see to. 
 it that he does not give very valuable wares.in exchange for false 
 coin. _Why,. if the proposition.of_Mz..Brooks. means anything at. 
 all, it signifies. thatthe. privilege of freeing itself from an insig- 
 nificant state of dependency is to be acquired by the Transvaal” 
 for the enfranchisement..ofthe-Uitlanders—that is to say, for a 
 weapon with which the English will obtain a complete mastery 
 over it... There is mockery in Mr. Brooks’ advice; although he 
 may deny this by saying, as in fact he does say in the course of 
 his argument, that the enfranchisement of the English will not. 
 lead to any substitution of authority in the Transvaal. He may 
 say £0; but who can help smiling at such a declaration. ‘However, 
 
A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS, 
 
 this aspect of the case should not concern us just yet. Let us 
 first look into the matter of enfranchisement, considered as a 
 grievance of the Uitlanders, and speak of it together with their 
 other complaints. 
 
 The whole Transvaal issue eee on one question: Have the 
 Boers the right to 
 
 have the English the e right to to interfere with the _ form. of “govern-. 
 “ment, administration. and life that the Boers. ts have chosen foray 
 themselves?_.The answer to “this query involves Ives considerations of 
 public and international law which are of great importance. 
 
 It is the practice of those Powers who have embarked on coloni- 
 zation 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. Challenged to prove the 
 justifiableness 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 part 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 doc- 
 trine has sprung up. Undoubtedly, the substitution of enlight- 
 ened Enropean 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, since, 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 by 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 bottom of colonization, as from a deeper, 
 though vaguer, source of misgiving. If we exert our minds to 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS, 
 
 give body and shape to this feeling, we recognize in it the in- 
 stinctive revolt of our nature against anything that threatens the 
 foundations of society; and this the colonial doctrine does, be- 
 cause it is the indirect negation of the principle of property, 
 whether individual or national. That this is so, and that it con- 
 tains the germ of shocking disturbances to the peace of the world, 
 —a germ whose growth helps to render even more farcical the 
 meeting of the conference which recently sat at the Hague—is 
 strikingly proved by what is going on in China, and, what is of 
 more special interest to us, by the events hurriedly preparing in 
 the Transvaal. 
 
 From being applied only to the savage populations of Africa 
 and Asia, the principle of the rights of superior races and civiliza- 
 tions has come, by a steep incline, to mean also that it has refer- 
 ence to countries like the Celestial Empire and the Boer Repub- 
 lic. Between the Zulus and the Boers, what is the difference? 
 Only one of degree. Fine reasoning clears the way for the per- 
 petration of any outrage on the liberty and sovereignty of minor 
 or weak States. 
 
 ae I do not mean to contradict my former statement, which is 
 sincere, notwithstanding the irony it seems to contain, regarding 
 the general profit arising from the substitution of civilization for 
 barbarism—especially when the barbarism is of a sanguinary kind 
 —and the justification of transfer of territory in such cases; but 
 what I want to point out is that, invented in an hour of need, 
 a principle has been laid down which is false, because it is loose _ 
 in its aim and wording, and thus leaves the door open to abuse. 
 We are thus confronted with the angry claims of the English to 
 - govern in the Transvaal—enfranchisement means nothing else— 
 followed by threats of war if they are not satisfied. 
 
 The demonstration of the inferiority of the Boers is eagerly 
 undertaken by Mr. Brooks, who calls the situation in the Trans- 
 vaal “almost too fantastic for serious presentation.” On the one 
 hand, we are presented with a bright sketch of the qualities and 
 achievements of the Uitlanders; on the other, with a sombre pic- 
 ture of the Boers, which represents them as being in a semi-bar- 
 barous condition. Mr. Brooks says: 
 
 “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 neigh. 
 
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 are 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 
 that government, although primitive and slowly progressive, as 
 I 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- 
 pression of another State. No 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 influences 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 
 
BRITAIN AND 1HE BOERS. 
 
 its right to shape its destinies as it pleases, provided it does not 
 tend to become a source of immorality—it was, I say, because, 
 by opposing the spread of what is called civilization within its 
 confines, it hoped to discourage the influx of foreigners, in whose 
 presence, especially in that of the English, it immediately detect- 
 ed the germ of a great danger to its independence. - In fact, the 
 inertia of the Boers in the matter of reforms, and their activity 
 in creating obstacles to the development of industry and com- 
 merce and to the use of the English language, are inspired as 
 much by this thought as by their constitutional aversion to what 
 the English are free to call “the blessings,” and what they are 
 free to call “the curses,” of civilization. If there is one duty to 
 which a State is more particularly pledged than to any other, it 
 is the obligation to maintain its existence, and to prefer its own 
 interests to those of other Powers. With this object in view, the 
 Boers are distinctly justified in overlooking the complaints of 
 the British; and there are States which have gone a much greater 
 length in their indifference to the choice of means in devising 
 plans for the national safety, without international law allowing 
 of interference on the part of their neighbors. _ 
 
 The safety and interest of the State are the supreme law of 
 nations. . 
 
 The methods it suggests very often take the form of downright 
 wnscrupulousness and cruelty, which is far from being the case 
 in the Transvaal; and, if any Great Power ever thinks of making 
 representations to another on this head, which it can only do in 
 a friendly and officious way, it is because it does not see the beam 
 in its own eye. Need I quote Russia and Germany in this con- 
 nection? Need I quote the United States? Nay, need I quote 
 England herself? Who is ignorant of the painful aspects of the 
 “language” and “religion”? questions in the Empire of the Ro- 
 manofis, and in that of the Hohenzollerns? Are the United 
 States free from the pangs of conscience in the matter of the In- 
 dians; and, in excluding a whole race, the Chinese, from estab- 
 lishing themselves in American territory, have they not used in- 
 comparably more rigor, in order to defend the economical sit- 
 uation of the country, than the Boers in putting difficulties in the 
 way of English immigration, in order to defend the very exist- 
 ence of the State? Or is Great Britain less open to criticism in 
 this relation—she, who is the essence of liberalism when her own 
 
A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 people are concerned, but who does not scruple to practice the most 
 despotic principles, when it suits her purpose, in dealing with 
 conquered and alien races; she, who, to quote a curious instance 
 ot 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 threatened 
 independence, are obliged to spend nearly all their money on for- 
 tifications and the secret service. 
 
 Because they cannot obtain redress, fieorch 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 
 theory 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 the 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 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 France, from being very liberal in this matter are now undergo- 
 ing the effects of a reaction. In England, a clause of the law on 
 naturalization provides the Home Secretary with the power 
 to ultimately use his own discretion. But, even in those coun- 
 tries which are most distinctly favorable to naturalization, the 
 practice of adopting aliens is in no way viewed as resulting from 
 an obligation, moral or other, but from the consideration of their 
 own convenience and interest, and it is subject to their own con- 
 ditions. Nay, in the matter of naturalization, the opinion of the 
 State ig so absolutely considered to be all, and the opinion of 
 the individual nothing, that the alien is often naturalized against 
 lis will, as is the case in the South American republics. In fact, 
 the question is one that 1s connected to such an extent with the 
 rights of sovereignty, that it can be only regulated by treaty. 
 There is no treaty binding the Transvaal on this head; therefore, 
 the Boers are perfectly free to oppose the English demands. But, 
 says Mr. Brooks, the English are two to one in the Transvaal. If 
 anything, that is an additional reason for refusing to naturalize 
 them, and we know-why. That a majority should be governed 
 by a minority is an anomaly; but it is an admitted situation 10 
 public and international law. \ In India, a handful of English- 
 men govern 300,000,000 of natives. In the Transvaal, the case of 
 the governing minority 1s strengthened by the fact that their au- 
 thority does not proceed from invasion and conquest, which is 
 a vitiating element in the position of England in India, but from ~ 
 a prior establishment in the land, and is exercised against the ma- 
 jority in the defence of a settled order of things, which has re- 
 \. ceived the sanction of international law. |. 
 
 ~~" T Jeave it to the appreciation of my feaders to decide whether 
 the foregoing pages do not contain sufficient proofs of the un- 
 righteousness of the quarrel England has picked up with the ~ 
 Transvaal, and of the justifiableness, nay more, the positive meri- 
 toriousness of the attitude of the Boers, whom no generous na- 
 ton can do otherwise than admire for the pluck and stubborn- 
 ness with which they are defending their sovereignty. Might I 
 explain here that I have purposely adopted the darkest colors of | 
 Mr. Brooks’ palette to reproduce the picture of the Transvaal, 1 
 order to strengthen my argument, by showing that, even if things 
 are quite as the English represent them to be, the Uitlanders can- 
 not make out a case for themselves. As a matter of fact, the 
 
A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 Boers, whether they will it or not, are submitting much more 
 than the English will admit to the intrinsic force of modern ideas. 
 They 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- 
 standing 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 great 
 nation. — 3 | 
 
 I will nowrevert 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 carly 
 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 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 intention, not of satisfying a whim, but of modifying the legisla- 
 tion of the Transvaal in a way to make it meet their views. ‘They 
 cannot hope to do so without having a majority. Therefore, 
 they aim at outnumbering the Boers in the Raad; and, once this 
 desideratum has been fulfilled, the government of the country will — 
 have passed into the hands of men who, following the ordinary 
 
 impulses of flesh and blood, will transform the Boer State into 
 an English dependency—notwithstanding any assurances to the 
 contrary or even the taking of the oath of allegiance. Can any- 
 body contest this view? Is it at all conceivable that a large body 
 of Englishmen, invested with the power to rule in the Transvaal, 
 will continue to submit to the direction of a President and gov- 
 ernment representing a helpless minority, and belonging to what 
 they consider an inferior race? In many things the enfranchised 
 Uitlanders may quarrel with one another, but they will act like 
 one man to Anglicise the State. Is the contrary technically pos- 
 sible in a State founded on the play of liberal institutions? Be- 
 sides, do not circumstances point to the existence of a deep-laid 
 scheme, on the part of England, to annex the Transvaal? Has 
 it not been made evident that, in pursuance of a gigantic concep- 
 tion, England is forging the links of a dominion that will extend 
 from the North to the South of Africa, and that the Transvaal 
 will be the next of these links? The Republic is an obstacle—geo- 
 graphical, ethnical and political—to English expansion. Even if 
 it did not stand seriously in their way, history teaches us that it 
 would yet be impossible for the English to resist the temptation 
 of occupying, for convenience’ sake, a country that, being weak, 
 iz at the same time deprived of the traits that might render it 
 sacred, as Greece is for example, in the eyes of the world, and pro- 
 vide it with friends in the hour of need, even among the Philis- 
 tines themselves. There is, what for want of a better and less flat- 
 tering term I will call a sense of the artistic and esthetic in the 
 spirit of expansion, a sense which revels in conceptions of beau- 
 tifully rounded and delicately finished frontiers, and uninter- 
 ruptedly national tracts of territory; and the Transvaal, if for no 
 better reason, is marked out for suppression, because, in the eyes 
 of the English Imperialist, it takes the aspect of an absurdity 
 and an eye-sore in the midst of uniformly British possessions, and 
 spoils the whole map of South Africa with the glare of its color 
 umpertinently asserting itself within a huge mass of British pink. 
 
A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS. 
 
 I shall make myself better understood by recalling the instinct of 
 the individual landed proprietor, who is not happy until his es- 
 tate shows continuity and unindented lines. 
 
 _ Mr. Brooks affirms 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, he endorses the appre- 
 hensions of the Boers. What he says is too precious not to be 
 literally repeated: 
 
 “The President’s strength lies in the aptitude of his appeals to 
 the spirit and prejudices of the Old Boer Party. These stalwart con- 
 servatives concentrated 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 the Cape, across the wilderness and founded a Res 
 public 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, 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 Matabeleland 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 1895 
 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 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 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 peo- 
 ple with the English could guarantee that their capture of the franchise 
 would not lead to their capture of the entire State, that the Republic 
 would not become an English Republic with an Engiish President and 
 its original founders a despised and oppressed minority ?” 
 
 Following up this amusing piece of treachery, of which he is 
 unwittingly guilty toward himself and his thesis, Mr. Brooks 
 goes on to say that it would have “been a high achievement of 
 diplomacy if Sir Alfred Milner could have persuaded the Presi- 
 dent, and through him the Boers, that their fears, if not baseless, 
 are very unlikely 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 is 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 the backbone of the Empire, has not been altogether maintained. They 
 admire the old President’s pluck and shrewdness* and wish him well 
 in his struggle, even when they have to condemn his methods of carry- 
 ing it on. They cannot find much in his policy that is defensible, ex- 
 cept its object; and yet they feel that, were Hee in his place, they would 
 have done much as he has done. 
 
 If ever there was truth in the saying, “I can cope with my 
 enemies, but, oh, God! save me from my friends,” it would be in 
 its application by the English to Mr. Brooks. 
 
 To quote this gentleman’s words for the last time, he says 
 that “so long as the reasonable grievances of the Uitlanders are 
 met with an obstinate non possumus, the Transvaal runs the risk 
 of perishing suddenly and in violence.” In other words, it is 
 threatened with war. 
 
 Therefore, it is a choice of two evils for the Transvaal, of sui- 
 cide or death at the hands of another. One way or the other, 
 whether they yield or appeal to arms, the Boers are doomed; for, 
 in case it is war, England is determined to bring all her might to 
 bear upon them this time, and then all their bravery and military 
 capacity will not save them from defeat and destruction. ‘They 
 can hope to achieve new distinction by a heroic resistance, by 
 gaining some battles, but this will be of no material avail to 
 them, as they must be overpowered and beaten in the end. With 
 the confidence and increased energy of purpose derived from her 
 triumphs in Egypt, Great Britain means to settle the South Afri- 
 can problem in her own way and at any cost. Whatever the 
 choice of the Boers, the end seems to be fast approaching. Most 
 of us will probably live to see the curtain fall on the last act of 
 the tragedy now enacting in the Dark Continent, the suppression 
 of the Transvaal. Europe will look on, but will not stir; and 
 Great Britain, at the zenith of her power and glory and prosperity, 
 will continue to shoot in the skies of international politics, a fiery 
 and uncontrollable orb, until she meets the star that is rising 
 from the East, borne on the wings of Autocracy and Orthodoxy, 
 and which is slowly but steadily moving on the same path. Then 
 the heavens will ring and shake with the tremendous clash, and 
 we shall witness the truth or falsehood of the proud English creed 
 that there is no end to the mission of Great Britain, that she can 
 only grow and spread her Empire, and that, superior to Rome, 
 she will achieve durability in the midst of supreme power. 
 
 “I wonder what else “shrewdness’*means here but the faculty to see 
 through English schemes. 
 
A TRANSVAAL VIEW OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN 
 QUESTION. 
 
 BY DR. F. V. ENGELENBURG, EDITOR OF THE “ PRETORIA VOLKSSTEM.” 
 
 Sourn ArFrica is poor, extremely poor, in spite of its gold 
 output 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- 
 iain and irregular. There are large tracts where rain falls only 
 once every four or five years; and, where circumstances are more 
 favorable, there are no natural reservoirs in which water can be 
 stored, or certainly none to any appreciable extent. The rivers, 
 dryin summer-time, become foaming torrents in the rainy season, 
 and pour the whole of their waters into the sea. If the Witwa- 
 tersrand were not situated 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. Rinderpest sweeps down from the north, and its latest at- 
 tack, in 1896, brought ruin to both white and black; from the 
 north, 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 
 their 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 oe- 
 cupy the land for ever, 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 decimation through sickness and famine. When the war- 
 like Zulus, several centuries ago, came down along the east coast, 
 they 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 the eastern provinces, murdering and 
 slaying like swarthy Huns, and pressed down to Natal. But al- 
 though their social organization was higher than that of the 
 nomadic tribes which they superseded, the poverty of South 
 Africa constrained them to continue war amongst themselves. 
 As soon as one Zulu tribe commenced to thrive and increased in 
 wealth 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 1s 
 why 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 
 capacity. In recent years, the supremacy of the whites has ma- 
 terially affected internecine war as a limiting factor with 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 they 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 443 mil- 
 lions. There will come a day when the natives will cease to get 
 work 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 country, larger than 
 France, Germany and Italy together. This population is de- 
 pendent on the outside world, not merely for the products of 
 technical industry, but also for those of agriculture. We import 
 potatoes and frozen meat from Australia, wood from Canada and 
 Norway, eggs and butter from Europe, meal and mules from 
 America. The sugar and tea grown in Natal 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 witk 
 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 starve, or at any rate be deprived 
 of the comforts of life. Only the Boers, who eke out a frugal ex- 
 istence on their secluded farms, and have not yet become depend- 
 
 “4 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 
 ent on frozen meat, European butter, American meal and Aus- 
 
 -4ralian potatoes—only the Boers, who, with rare endurance, the 
 
 * heritage of their hardy race, boldly face years of drought, rinder- 
 
 Yn SO 
 
 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 
 Phoenicians and the Arabs disappeared in the days long past. As 
 long as 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. 
 The 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 
 agent, 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 Hast. 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 Hast India 
 Company nor the British rulers bestirred themselves in any way, 
 in connection with the 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 be 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 fringing 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 authority 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 in 
 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 colonists, 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 
 gontrol, 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 
 —hboth British and Boer—are those who have frankly admitted 
 that the political key to South Africa lies in an intelligent insight 
 into 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 
 in need. 
 
 Is it necessary to give a résumé of the painful episodes which 
 thronged upon one another in South Africa in the nineteenth 
 century? ‘The result of a hundred years of incompetency, weak- 
 ness, vacillation, and reckless greed culminates to-day in the aw- 
 ful 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—aiter 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 
 yaterior, and squeezed as much out of the Afrikander republics as 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 they possibly could. And thus whilst the British merchants at 
 
 Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban waxed fat a 
 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 1852 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 Theophilus Shep- 
 stone, 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. Rhodes— 
 whose fortunate career at the Kimberley Diamond Fields enabled 
 bim to give the rein to his restless ambition—wanted to open up 
 a pathway to the north, to the Rhodesia of to-day. Then 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 1852 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 therewith. 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 
 as 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 hay- 
 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 Lourengo Marques. Natal and Cape Colony were not satisfied 
 /with squeezing the inland States by means of heavy duties, high 
 
 / postal tarifis, and enormous trade profits; they sought the com- 
 
 plete economic dependency of the Republics, by prohibiting all 
 railway traffic except through British ports. The selfishness of a 
 commercial community knows no limit. | 
 
 The second attempt to annex the South African Republic— 
 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 Kimberley into one mighty body. 
 The fact that to-day—whilst these lines are being written—this 
 unhappy continent is on the eve of a bellum omnium contra 
 omnes, can only be explained by the overwhelming influence ac- 
 quired by certain “nouveau 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 part of the - 
 
 world has witnessed a variety of “agitations.” It was the negro- 
 philist agitation which drove the Boers in bitterness of 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 was the politics of the 
 counting-house which suggested the annexation of the Diamond 
 Fields and the annexation of the Transvaal; and it is a stock ex- 
 change organization which is pulling the strings of the movement 
 of to-day. Of 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 negrophilistic ardor, they can forgive 
 
 Sir Harry Smith, Sir Philip Wodehouse, Sir Bartle Frere, and 
 
 i) 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 
 Sir Gwen Lanyon for their excess of administrative zeal, 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, une opening up of the alluvial deposits at 
 Pilgrim’s Rest, in the northeast of the Republic, was the cause 
 of considerable immigration. In the eighties, there was a rush 
 te the diggings at Dekaap, of which Barberton became the centre, 
 the Afrikander element being strongly represented. From the 
 very beginning, the law-makers of the Transvaal dealt very len- 
 iently withthe 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 the profits of the 
 gold fields. An instance of this liberal legislation, more striking 
 than a long array of figures, is furnished by the public lottery of 
 gold claims—-some of which are extremely valuable—which is 
 now taking place, and in which both burghers and Uitlanders can 
 participate without distinction. 
 
 The exceptionally generous legislation of the Boers with re- 
 gard to mining matters was effected 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 
 the agriculturist. The administration of the Boers in the days of 
 Pilgrim’s Rest and Barberton compares very favorably with that 
 of the Diamond Fields of Cape Colony. ‘The Transvaalers were 
 good-natured, but they had no inclination to be trifled with... In 
 those days there was no talk of Uitlanders’ grievances, nor even 
 during the early years of Johannesburg. The Witwatersrand is 
 not situated, like Pilgrim’s Rest and Barberton, in an unfre- 
 quented part of the country, but it lies to the immediate south 
 of Pretoria, between Potchefstroom and Heidelberg, in the very 
 heart of the Boer States. Johannesburg sprang up with aston- 
 
BRITAIN AND 1HE BOERS. 
 
 ishing rapidity, and offered special attractions to the large num- 
 ber of South African adventurers who, like Mr. Micawber, 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 shape of large exchange profits, although 
 many of their number knew practically nothing about mining or 
 financial administration. Then came the inevitable collapse in 
 1889, which only spared 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 bacilli 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 qualified experts satisfied themselves as to 
 
 the 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. They 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 
 of large tracts of land, the argument is often advanced that an 
 enormous portion of the South African Republic no longer be- 
 \ longs to the Boers. It may be remarked, en passant, that, whilst 
 
 the Boer has been severely condemned for his slothfulness in 
 matters agricultural, practically none of the land companies has 
 ever devoted more than a few acres to the growing of crops. 
 When the period of wild speculation suffered a collapse, the Uit- 
 lander no longer spread himself over the whole of the Republic. 
 Henceforward, the Witwatersrand was the exclusive scene of his 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 
 labors, and here he elected to pitch his tent. Outside the Rand, 
 ke confined himself to the ordinary occupations of the 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 par excellence. It deserves to be recorded that, 
 as the output of gold began to show a continual increase, the 
 “Uitlander question” acquired a proportionate magnitude. In 
 every country where foreigners are to be found in appreciable 
 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 many cases a 
 powerful “Uitlander’ element. During the last century, the 
 Germans in Russia have been “Uitlanders,’ and, according to 
 the Czechs and Hungarians, they are so in Austria to-day. But 
 the Uitlander question in the South African Republic differs 
 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 Exchange jobbery. It 
 has steadily kept pace with the gold output. In 1889, £1,500,000 
 was produced. In that year, Johannesburg was horrified by a 
 series of stealthy murders which were only explained as the handi- 
 work of “Jack the Ripper.” No one thought at that time, how- 
 ever, of saddling the Transvaal Government with responsibility 
 _ for them, or of sending plaintive petitions to England as to the 
 danger of life in the South African Republic! Everyone under- 
 stood, then as now, that gold-fields offer peculiar attractions to 
 questionable characters of all classes. In March, 1890, during 
 a visit of President Kriiger to the Golden City, the Transvaal 
 fiag was pulled down from the Government buildings. It sub- 
 sequently transpired that this was only the 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 the deep-level theory—in other words, 
 the ultimate conviction as to the indisputable durability and 
 wealth of the Witwatersrand gold-fields—has, in the meantime, 
 become the signal for an agitation against the Government and 
 
BRITAIN AND THE BOERS. 
 the people of the South African Republic. From this 
 
 period dates England’s claim to suzerainty over the South African 
 
 Republic and the paramount-powership in South Africa, of 
 which hitherto no mention had ever been made. In 1894, the 
 then High Commissioner, Sir Henry Loch, was present at some 
 diamond-drill experiments at the Rand, which proved beyond 
 dispute the continuous nature of the gold-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 Johannesburg Chamber of Mines*—to stir up 
 the Transvaal Government on condition that the “Uitlander” 
 agitation increased in intensity. “Ihe ‘Transvaal Green Book pro- 
 vides instructive reading even for to-day; it contains extracts from 
 private letters from Mr. Phillips to his London friends. On the 
 10th of June, 1894, he wrote to Mr. Beit: . 
 
 ‘“‘As to the franchise, I do not think many people care a fig about 
 it.) 
 
 On the 1st of July of the same year, he wrote to Mr. Wernher: 
 
 “Sir 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- 
 pesed in that time Johannesburg would be better prepared—as much 
 as to say, if things are safer then we shall actively intervene.” 
 
 This 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 row. Our trump card is a fund of £10,000 
 or £15,000 to improve the Volksraad. Unfortunately the Gold Com- 
 panies have no Secret Service Fund.” 
 
 All this happened in 1894, when the gold output had already 
 reached a total of nearly 72 millions sterling. In 1895, it had 
 risen 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 
 urtimely end at Doornkop. 
 
 ® Vide Transvaal Green Book, No. 2, of 1896. 
 
 a 
 
TRANSVAAL VIEW OF SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. 
 
 In 1897 the inquiry by the official Industrial Commission 
 tcok place, the result being a substantial lowering of railway 
 tariffs and import dues. But the “grievances” still remained, and 
 increased in 1897 in sympathy with the gold output, which had 
 now reached the large figure of 114 millions. Still more “un- 
 bearable” were these “grievances” in 1898, during which year 164 
 millions of gold was dug out of Transvaal soil. ‘This was the 
 year of the Edgar affair and of the Uitlander Petition, and in the 
 same year forty-five gold companies of the Rand (the share capital 
 issued being £20,294,675) paid out in dividends no less than £5,- 
 089,785—an average of 25 per cent.! The output for 1899 has 
 already been estimated at 224 millions, and the number of divi- 
 dend-paying companies increases every month. 
 
 In 1896, the rural population were visited by 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 Kriiger régime, the Boers were “taking up arms 
 against a sea of troubles” which 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. Whilst 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 libel on 
 behalf of the Uitlanders was vigorously prosecuted with the help 
 of money won from Transvaal soil by mining magnates, the 
 princely munificence displayed by whom in London and other. 
 places outside South Africa was occasionally referred to in the 
 local papers as a joyous chord between the “orievance” sympho- 
 nies that were struck in the minor key. 
 
 I have little inclination to expatiate on the true character of 
 the present movement against the Boers; but I do say that to sup- 
 port the latest type of agitation against the white population of 
 the interior of South Africa is unworthy of the traditions of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. The South African Republic is not without 
 political blemishes; as in every other country, we have our ad- 
 ministrative scandals, both great and small; we have our social 
 and economic plague-spots, which must be made to disappear. 
 Gold-fields never were fountains of pure morality nor are they 
 so in South Africa. Has one ever pictured the future of the 
 
BRITAIN AND 1HE BOERS. 
 
 most civilized country of the Old World if a second Johannesburg 
 were to spring up in mushroom fashion? Ido not wish to speak 
 evil of the wire-pullers of the present agitation against the Afri- 
 kanders; but, surely, those persons whose princely palaces have 
 been built with Transvaal gold, and who cry out so loudly against 
 cur government, should be the last to throw stones against the 
 Republic. ‘The “oligarchy” at Pretoria—to use Mr. Chamber- 
 lain’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 
 tc the well-disposed and undoubtedly disinterested attempts of 
 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 some rare pa 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 Monomo- 
 tapa was to the Phenicians 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 
 hitter strife, unless the gold-bedecked princes come forward with 
 the treasure which they have wrung from the land. As long as 
 the Boers allow the modern Pheenicians to dig the precious met- 
 als 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. 
 
 ness policy will be to leave the Boers in undisturbed possession 
 of their country, free to rule it by their own healthy instinct and 
 according to the good’ old traditions of their forefathers, with 
 their 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 Kriger 
 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 first five months of the present year, Trans- 
 vaal gold and other companies were registered here with a com- 
 bined capital of over £15,391,389. 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 
 Pritish 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 Re- 
 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 by their unexampled opportunities 
 they feel confident of reaping their criminal harvest. Up 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 able 
 to fight against immensely superior odds. They feel that the 
 final victory will be theirs; for they know they have right on 
 their side. 
 
 Well would it be for the British nation if they could but 
 realize the significance of those words of Russell Lowell: 
 
 “Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, 
 Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.” 
 F. V. ENGELENBURG. 
 Pretoria, August, 1899. 
 
- =< 
 
 OOO OOM Doon Doom 
 
 THE 
 
 RICAN 
 
 1899... 
 
 MAY CONTENTS. 
 The War with Spain—l. 
 
 Major-General NELSON A. MILES. 
 
 China and the Powers. 
 
 Lord CHARLES BERESFORD, R.N., C. B., M. P. 
 
 The Religious Situation in Engiand. 
 
 TAN MACLAREN. 
 
 The Nicaragua Camal........... THomas B. REED. 
 
 What Spain Can Teach America. 
 
 NicoLas ESTEVANEZ. 
 
 England in Egypt and the Soudan. 
 
 Colonel CHARLES CHAILLE LONG. 
 
 The New Poetry...... .Witu1aM DEAN HowELLs. 
 
 Conditions and Needs in Cuba. 
 Major-General LEONARD WOOD. 
 
 Courts Martial in England and America. 
 
 The Rt. Hon. Sir F. H. JEUNE. 
 
 The Curse in Education. 
 
 REBECCA HARDING DAVIS. 
 
 Work of the Joint High Commission. 
 
 A CANADIAN LIBERAL. 
 
 WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY : 
 
 Its Origin and Development.....G. Mancont. 
 
 Its Scientific History and Future Uses. 
 J. A. FLemMing, F. R. S. 
 
 wAnnnnneenrsn wen een eee eee 
 
 JULY CON TENTS. 
 A Channel Passage, 1855. 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 
 Ex Oriente Lux! A Plea for a Russo- 
 American Understanding. 
 Prince E. OOKHTOMSKY; VLADIMIR HOLMSTREM. 
 «s Americanism,’ True and False. 
 The Rev. WILLIAM Barry, D. D. 
 Universal Peace...Baroness BERTHA VON SUTTNER. 
 
 England and the Transvaal.....sypyzy Brooxs. 
 Qur Public Schools. A Reply. | 
 Mrs. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER. 
 The Gcvernment of Greater New York. 
 i Brrp S. CoOLErR. 
 Pig Iron and Prosperity....... GrorcE H. HULL. 
 The Logic of Our Position in Cuba. 
 
 AN OFFICER OF THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION. 
 The Tercentenary of Velasquez. 
 
 CHARLES WHIBLEY. 
 
 The War with Spain—lll. 
 
 Major-General NELSON A. MILEs. 
 Golf from a St. Andrews Point of View. 
 
 ANDREW LANG. 
 
 JUNE CONTENTS. 
 
 Conditions and Prospects of the Treasury. 
 
 LYMAN J. GAGE. 
 Isrzel Among the Nations......... Max Norpav. 
 
 Jeffersonian Principles....... Witu1aM J. BRYAN. 
 
 The Imbroglio in Samoa.......... Henry C. IDE. 
 
 Commercial Education. 
 
 The Rt. Hon. JAMES BRYCE, M. P. 
 The Industrial Commission...,..S. N. D. NorrH. 
 
 The Reverses of Britomart...... EDMUND GossE. 
 
 Taxation of Public Franchises. 
 
 State Senator JOHN FoRD. 
 
 The Outlook for Carlism. 
 The Hon. JAMES RocHE, M. P. 
 
 The War with Spain—ll. 
 
 Major-General NELSON A. MILES. 
 
 Present Aspects of the Dreyfus Case, 
 JOSEPH REINACH. 
 
 The Peace Conference: 
 Results iieice nie viaiare A DIPLOMATIST AT THE HAGUE. 
 
 AUGUST CONTENTS. 
 
 Woman’s International Parliament. 
 
 THE COUNTESS OF ABERDEEN; 
 
 KASSANDRA VIVARIA, 
 The Paramount Power of the Pacific. 
 JOHN BARRETT. 
 Constitutional Conflict in Finland. 
 
 A MEMBER OF THE FINNISH DIET. 
 
 The Case Against Christian Science. 
 
 W. A. PURRINGTON. 
 
 Anti-Trust Legislation........ JosEPH D. SAYERS. 
 Japan’s Entry into the Family of Nations. 
 
 T. R. JERNIGAN. 
 
 The Zionist Movement. 
 
 Prof. RICHARD GOTTHEIL. 
 
 Athletics for Politicians. 
 
 Sir CHARLES W. DILxKE#, Bt., M. P. 
 
 The Censorship of the Stage in England. 
 G. BERNARD SHAW. 
 A Century of Salons. 
 ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL. 
 Girls’ Novels in France. 
 YETTA BLAZE DE Bury. 
 
 The Pleasures of Poverty ........ Max O’RFLL. 
 
 Its Possible Practical | 
 
 Qo 
 
 : 
 
 SESS OS SS ee 
 
INEVIEW 
 
 EDITED BY GEORGE B. M. HARVEY 
 50 Cents a Copy. $5.00 a Year 
 
 SEPTEMBER CONTENTS. 
 The Agnostic’s Side (Republished). 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 
 
 Ingersoli’s Influence. 
 
 The Rev. HENRY M. FIELD, D.D. 
 
 Ex Oriente Lux: A Rejoinder. 
 
 ARCHIBALD LITTLE. 
 
 The Foreign Service of the United States. 
 
 FRANCIS B. Loomis, 
 
 U. S. Minister to Venezuela. 
 
 A Vindication of the Boers. 
 A DIPLOMAT. 
 
 Legal Aspect of Trusts, 
 
 JOSEPH S. AUERBACH. 
 
 Progress of Automobilism in France, 
 
 MARQUIS DE CHASSELOUP-LAUBAT., 
 
 American Universities. 
 EDOUARD Rop. 
 
 The « America’? Cup Race. 
 
 The Hon. CHARLES RUSSELL. 
 
 Aguinaido’s Case Against the United States. 
 
 A FILIPINO. 
 
 OCTOBER CONTENTS. 
 
 The Peace Conference and the Moral Aspect 
 
 of War. _ Captain A. T. Manan, U.S. N. 
 U.S. Delegate to the Hay ue Conference. 
 
 In the Clutch of the Harpy Powers. 
 
 R. M. JOHNSTON. 
 
 The Picture Gallery of the Hermitage—I. 
 CLAUDE PHILLIPS. 
 A Transvaal View of the South African Question. 
 
 Dr. F. V. ENGELENBURG. 
 Editor of the Pretoria “Volksstem.” 
 
 The Present Literary Situation in France. 
 HENRY JAMES, 
 The Alaskan Boundary. prog J. B. Moorn. 
 Formerly Assistant Secretary of State. 
 Some Social Tendencies in America. 
 The Right Rev. H. C. Porrsr, 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 BLOWITZ. 
 Paris Correspondent of the London ‘“‘ Times.” 
 
 THE ANGLO-SAXON RIVALS: 
 Five Years of American Progress. 
 M. G. MULHALL, F.S.S. 
 The Decilae of British Commerce. 
 A. MAURICE 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 MACLAREN. 
 
 Y an examination of the foregoing Contents pages of The North American Review 
 for the past six months the reader cannot fail to notice with what timeliness 
 
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