The source of this uncorrected OCR text may be viewed in the DjVu format at: http://fax.libs.uga.edu/DT926xB862/ or http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/ugafax/DT926xB862/ PRESIDENT KRÜGER v i 3£ î BRITON AND BOER BOTH SIDES OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION BY RIGHT HON. JAMES BRYCE, M.P. SYDNEY BROOKS; A DIPLOMAT DR. F. V. ENGELENBURG; KARL BLIND; ANDREW CARNEGIE FRANCIS CHARMES; DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER; MAX NORDAU WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS Reprinted by permission from THK NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1900 CONTENTS THE HISTORICAL CAUSES OF THE PRESENT WAB IN SOUTH AFRICA. BY THE RIGHT HON. JAMES BRYCB, M.P. . . . ........ 1 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL. BY SYDNEY BROOKS 47 A VINDICATION OF THE BOEBS (A REJOINDER TO MR. SYDNEY BROOKS). BY A DIPLOMAT ... 77 A TBANSVAAL VIEW OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN QDES-. TION. BY DB. F. V. ENGELENBUBG, EDITOR OF THE PRETORIA VOLKSBTEH ......... 103 THE TRANSVAAL WAR AND EUROPEAN OPINION. BY KARL BLIND . ........... 133 THE SOUTH AFRICAN QUESTION. BY ANDREW CAB- NEGIE ................ 164 WILL THE POWERS INTERVENE IN THE WAR? BY FRANCIS CHABMES, FOREIGN EDITOR OF THE EEVUS DE DEUX MOfraea.......... 177 A POSSIBLE CONTINENTAL ALLIANCE AGAINST ENG LAND. BY DEMETRIUS C. BOULGER ..... 198 PHILOSOPHY AND MORALS OF WAB. BY MAX NORDAU 230 Copyright, 1899, by the NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Copyright, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS. ΛΙΙ rights nttrvea. '/î ILLUSTEATIONS PRESIDENT KBÜGER. . . . Frontispiece A BOER'S FIRST HOMESTEAD . . Facing p. 4 DINGAAN AND THE MURDER OF THE BOER EMISSARIES ... 12 A MÁTASELE NATIVE ......... " 30 OFFICE OF THE REFORM COMMITTEE DURING THE JAMESON RAID ...... " 34 MAJUBA HILL, THE SCENE OF THE RRITISH DEFEAT IN 1881 ...... . " 48 RT. HON. CECIL JOHN RHODES, P.C. . . > r " 60 RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. . i A TREKKING OUTFIT ... "72 TRADING FOR ZULU LABOR . . " 86*^ THE WAR-DANCE OF THE ZULUS " 106 JOHANNESBURG ..... .... " 120 BRINGING IN THE RAIDERS TO JOHANNESBURG " 142 PIETERMARITZBURG, THE CAPITAL OF NATAL . " 160 DR. L. 8. JAMESON ... . " 1QO GENERAL PIET JOUBERT . . j ζ " 21fi M. T. STEYN . ... S LADTSMITH ......... ... " 232 MAP OF THE BOER REPUBLIC BRITON AND BOER THE HISTORICAL CAUSES OF THE PEESENT WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA THE events which have led up to the present conflict in South Africa, which I am asked to sketch in outline for American readers, cannot well be understood without some little knowl edge of the physical configuration of the country and the character of its people. It is a great, wild, dry, bare country, with an exceedingly small population of white men, and a population of blacks which is not large in comparison with its area. This area, taking South Africa to be the region which lies south of the Zambesi, is some 1,400,000 square miles, and within its limits there are much less than one million of white men, Dutch, English, and Portuguese, with a handful of Germans—that is to say, less than BRITON AND BOER the population of Philadelphia. Nearly one-half of that area is desert—by which I mean a prac tically waterless tract, no better for ranching or agriculture that the sagebrush deserts of Nevada. Of the rest, by far the larger part is much too dry for agriculture, but fit for sheep and cattle, resembling, roughly speaking, the ranching dis tricts of western Nebraska or Wyoming. There are fertile valleys near the south and southeast coast, because the heat is there not so severe and the rainfall more abundant ; but the interior is an elevated plain, where the strong sun rapidly dries up the rains of the summer months, so that cultivation must, nearly everywhere, be carried on by means of irrigation. Now there are very few places in South Africa where it pays to irri gate the soil ; and, consequently, there is, except here and there towards the coast, a very small number of persons engaged in agriculture. Nei ther are there any forests worth mentioning, nor any manufactures, except small local indus tries in the few towns. Till very recently, the whole occupation of the country, and that where in its wealth lay, was the rearing of sheep and cattle. It is an occupation which gives employ ment to very few persons in proportion to the surface over which flocks and herds feed; and 2 CAUSES OF THE WAR this is why the population has grown so slowly during the last two centuries and a half. For South Africa is by no means a new Euro pean colony, like Australia. It was discovered at the end of the fifteenth century by Bartholo mew Diaz, six years before the discovery of Amer ica. The first European settlement was planted at Sofala, on the southeast coast, by the Portu guese in A.D. 1505, the next by the Dutch at Cape Town in 1652. The Portuguese, however, never succeeded in establishing any hold upon the interior, and the extreme unhealthiness of the region where their posts were placed blighted the growth of their settlements, which are to day quite insignificant, and will probably some day pass into the hands of stronger Powers. Be sides, their blood has become mixed with that of the natives to an extent which has caused the race to deteriorate. The Dutch settlement advanced very slowly for many years. It was governed by a company whose aim was rather to make money by trade than to develop the country, and maladministra tion produced a discontent which had begun to reveal the bold and restless character of the set tlers. When England captured the Cape during the great Avar against Napoleon (in 1806), there BEITON AND BOEE were only some twenty-seven thousand whites in the whole colony. After the war was over, and when England, which had in 1814 paid six mill ions sterling to the Dutch for the country, was firmly planted there, some English settlers began to come in, as others have done from time to time ever since. But the influx of these settlers has been less than the natural increase of the Dutch population, so that in Cape Colony the inhabitants of Dutch stock to-day outnumber those of English stock, and the Dutch language is (except in the towns) more generally spoken than is the English. These two stocks have so much in common that it might have been expected that they would readily amalgamate, and at any rate would, as the Dutch and English did long ago in New York, be on good terms with one an other. They are akin in blood and in speech. They are both Protestant. In character and in habits, and, indeed, in appearance also, one may note many resemblances between the peasant of Holland and the peasant of East Anglia. If the English Government had been wise in its meas ures, if it had understood the country better and been careful to send out only sensible and sym pathetic men as governors, the Dutch of South CAUSES OF THE WAE Africa, who had no attachment to Holland, might soon have become attached to England, and would at any rate have been, though they are naturally of an independent spirit, quiet and peaceable subjects. England, however, man aged things ill. She altered the system of courts and local government, reducing the rights which the people had enjoyed. She insisted on the use of the English language to the exclusion of Dutch. In undertaking to protect the natives and the slaves, whom the Dutch were accused by the English missionaries of treating very harshly, she did what was right, but the farmers complained that the missionaries sometimes ma ligned them and greatly resented the attention which was paid to the charges. Finally she abolished slavery, and allotted a very inadequate sum as compensation to the South African slave owners, much of which sum never reached their hands, because it was made payable in London. These grievances, coupled with displeasure at the unwillingness of the Government to prosecute the troublesome and costly Avars against the south- coast Kafirs, who frequently raided cattle and burned the houses of the farmers on the frontier, determined a large body of Dutch farmers and ranchmen to quit the colony altogether, and go BßlTON AND BOEK out into the wilderness which stretched far away to the northeast, much of it, especially that which lay to the north, a waterless desert, but the eastern part reported by the few hunters who had traversed it to contain plenty of good past ure. About ten thousand thus set off, and, when they had advanced beyond the borders of the colony, spread themselves over a tract of coun try some seven hundred miles long by three hun dred broad, between the Orange Biver on the west-southwest and the lower course of the Lim popo River on the north-northeast. .Parts of this country lay empty of all inhabitants. Parts were inhabited by savage Kafir tribes, the more warlike of whom attacked the emigrants, and were defeated, and in some cases expelled by the latter, whose valor, whose firearms, and whose horses enabled them to overcome enormously more numerous hosts of undisciplined natives. This emigration of 1836 is known as the Great Trek, and the Dutch who formed it are usually described by their own name of Boers, a word meaning farmers or peasants. It is convenient to call them by this name for the sake of dis tinguishing them from the more numerous and more sedentary Dutch who remained behind in Cape Colony as British, though, strictly speak- CAUSES OF THE WAK ing, every farmer or ranchman would be described in the Dutch language by the name of Boer. This Great Trek of 1836 has been the source of all subsequent troubles between the Dutch and English races in South Africa. The circum stances attending it developed in the minds of the emigrant Boers three passions which have characterized them ever since, and which must be understood, because they are the key to the subsequent history of the country. One of these is a deep dislike to the British Government, which they conceived to have forced them to quit their old homes by a course of injustice and oppression. Another is a love of independence for its own sake, a sentiment which is in their Dutch and Huguenot blood (for some of the leading families were sprung from French Hu guenots who had gone to Africa from Holland after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes), and which had shown itself, even before England took the Cape, in risings against the Govern ment of the Dutch East India Company. A third is an ardent attachment to their Calvin- istic faith and to their old habits and usages. Cut off from all the influences of Europe, and leading a rude and solitary life on their enormous ranch ing farms, they were, when they went out into 7 BRITON AND BOER the wilderness, nearly two centuries behind the people of Western Europe in the thoughts, as well as in the arts, of modern civilization. The conditions of their warlike life among hostile savages after the Trek kept them so backward that they might really be said to belong rather to the seventeenth century than to the nine teenth. Their virtues, as well as their faults, were of a seventeenth-century type, and have remained, in the more remote and thinly peopled regions, still of that type—a fact which came into sharp relief when, within the last few years, a new crowd of English gold-seekers poured in among them. The old type has partially survived even among the more civilized Dutch of Cape Colony, and this has helped to keep up the sense of brotherhood between the emigrant Boers and their kinsfolk at the Cape. Before I describe the relations of these emi grants to the British Government from 1836 to the present day, it may be well to say a few words about the natives, who constitute the vast majority of the inhabitants of the country. When the first European settlers came, they found three races in the country—the Bushmen, a low type of aborigines, who lived by the chase; CAUSES OF THE WAE the Hottentots, savitges of a somewhat higher order, who had sheep and cattle, but did not till the ground, and the Kafirs. The Bushmen were very few, and have now almost disap peared. They could not learn civilized ways or survive contact with a civilized people. The Hottentots, too, vanished, many tribes being swept off by small-pox, while the rest have either died out or become mixed with the negro slaves whom the Dutch brought from the coasts of Guinea. The Kafirs, however, have held their ground and even multiplied. The Dutch, and afterwards the English, have carried on many sanguinary wars with them, for they are fierce in fight, as well as strong, muscular men. The last of these wars was that which the Brit ish South African Company waged against the Matabelein 1893, renewed by a native revolt in 1896; and it may be hoped that it is the last that will have to be waged, at any rate to the south of the Zambesi Hiver, for the tribes have now begun to realize the hopelessness of resist ance to the discipline and the superior arms of the white men. These wars were, all of them, except that against the Matabele, fought out along, or not far from, the coasts of the Indian Ocean, because the northern parts of the country, 9 BRITON AND BOEIl or both sides of the lower and middle course of the Orange River, is a desert region, which has no inhabitants, save a few wandering Hottentots and Bushmen. The result of the wars was to make the English masters of the whole country (except, of course, the Portuguese and German territories) which lies along the coast from Cape Town as far as the neighborhood of Delagoa Bay. The natives never, took part in any of the conflicts between the English and the Dutch, to which I am going to refer, but their presence in several instances affected those conflicts, because the English more than once stopped the Boers when the latter were conquering some native tribe, and because the English Government sometimes declared that the relations between the Boers and the natives constituted a danger to the peace of the country generally, which made their own interference necessary. It must, there fore, be remembered that the rivalry between the Boers and the English, the course of which is now to be sketched, went on, not in vacuo, so to speak, but in the presence of a native population far outnumbering the English and the Boers taken together. When the Boers trekked out into the wilder ness in 1836, the British Government, though 10 CAUSES OF THE WAR sorry to see them go, did not follow them. It did not wish to possess the interior of South Africa, because it did not think the country worth having. It valued the Cape chiefly as a half-way house to India, for in those days the Suez Canal had not begun to be even talked of. Neither in those days had the passion for acquir ing territory outside the pale of civilization seized upon the European Powers. Least of all did they desire African territories, because all Africa (except the strip along the Mediterranean) was believed to be either hopelessly barren or hope lessly unhealthy, the parts which were unin habited, worthless; the parts which were in habited, full of savages whom it would be costly to subdue, and from whom, when they had been subdued, little profit could be drawn. Accord ingly, the British neither sent troops after the departing emigrants, nor deemed the emigrants to be acquiring the interior for Great Britain. Still, they did deem the emigrants to be still British subjects, for, as they had not become sub jects of any other State, it was held they must still owe allegiance to the British Crown. This notion has in a vague sense never quite vanished from the British mind ever since. Th e emigrants, however, held that when they went out they re- 11 BKITON AND BOEK nounced their British allegiance, and forthwith began to set up rude republican governments for themselves, governments which were man aged by a meeting of all the adult males (called a Volksraad or People's Council), and in time of war — nearly all times being times of war — also by a smaller elective committee called a Council (Krygsraad). As the emigrants were scattered over an area of some three hundred thousand square miles, and were, even in 1846, ten years after the first of them left the Colony, less than twenty thousand in number, all told, it was im possible for them to have one Volksraad or one Government for the whole body. The various parties or communities, when they began to crys tallize into communities, got on as they best could, each with its own Volksraad. After a time this became a small representative body, but when it was a primary assembly, the number of persons present was usually smaller than that of a town-meeting in rural New England. The British Government soon found itself, or thought itself, compelled to abandon its original policy of indifference to the doings of the emi grants, and so there began that struggle for the possession of the extra-colonial parts of South Africa, which has been the central stream of 12 \i r- *>£*·- '-•;*Ä ·*γ-' -^ L DTNGAAN AND THE MURDER OP THE BOER EMISSARIES CAUSES OF THE WAR South African history for more than half a cen tury. The first collision took place in what is now the Colony of Natal, a region then separated from Cape Colony by a mass of independent Kafir tribes, and itself ruled by the Zulu king Dingaan. Hearing of the fertility of this re gion, which is indeed one of the richest and best watered parts of Africa, a large body of Boer emigrants, who had been wandering over the great interior plateau, descended into it in 1838, and after a short but terrible struggle with Din gaan, who had treacherously massacred two par ties of them, built the village of Pietermaritzburg (now the capital of Natal), and set up a republic which they called Natalia. This disquieted the British authorities at the Cape, who did not wish to see any non-British State established on the sea-coast. The interior they did not much care about, because in the interior the Boers would be in contact with the natives only. But an inde pendent republic on the coast, flying its own flag, was another affair. They were, moreover, afraid that trouble between the emigrants and the coast Kafirs might breed further trouble between the coast Kafirs and themselves. Accordingly, they sent (in 1842) a small British force to Durban (then called Port Natal), the best harbor on the 13 N n BRITON AND BOER coast, though they had some years before with drawn a detachment which had been placed there, and had not complied with the request of the handful of English settlers who lived there to recognize them as a colony. The British troops were besieged by the USTatalian Boers, but in the nick of time received reinforcements, which so completely turned the scale that the Boers presently submitted. The Republic of Natalia vanished, and many of the Boer emi grants returned north across the mountains, prizing their independence more than the good pastures of Natal, and full of resentment at the Government which had stepped in to deprive them of the fruit of their victory over the Zulu king. Thus ended the first of the four armed collisions which have occurred between the Eng lish and the Boers, the first of their many striv ings for the possession of the unappropriated parts of Africa. Meanwhile, the interior was in a state of con fusion and disorder, the Boers being too few in number to reduce to submission their native en emies, and the half-breed hunting clans called Griquas, the offspring of Dutch fathers and Hot tentot mothers, who lived in the northeastern border of Cape Colony. The British Govern- 14 CAUSES OF THE WAR ment, after fruitless attempts to create petty semi-independent States out of these unpromis ing materials, yielded to the pressure of events, and moved forward the frontier of its influence by annexing the country between the Orange River and the Vaal River, thereby asserting au thority over such of the Boer emigrants as dwelt in this region. They named it the Orange River Sovereignty, and built a fort in it at a spot called Bloemfontein. This took place in 1846. Some of the Boers, unwilling to come again un der British dominion, took up arms, and with the help of other Boers beyond the Vaal, over powered the small British garrison. A British force was led against them by the Governor of the Cape, a tried soldier of the Peninsular War, who defeated them in an engagement and re established British authority. But the troubles showed no sign of ending. A large Kafir tribe, the Basntos, who occupied the mountainous country south of the Orange River Sovereignty, and were formidable both by their numbers and by the difficult nature of their country, attacked the British force in the Sovereignty on one side, while the Boers from beyond the Vaal threat ened it on another. It so happened that Cape Colony was at the same time involved in a war 15 BRITON AND BOER with the Kafirs of the south coast, so that troops could not be spared for these more remote dis tricts, while there was not time to fetch any from England, then far more distant than now. Besides, the Government at home were getting tired of the vexations which their presence in the far in terior caused them. They saw nothing to be gained by the possession of wide, pastoral wastes, where it was extremely difficult to keep order, difficult to control the rough white settlers, diffi cult to bridle the restless mass of Kafirs. Accord ingly, the British Cabinet made up its mind to take what would now be called an act of self- denying and perhaps pusillanimous renunciation, but was then regarded as an exercise of obvious common-sense. It resolved to withdraw alto gether from the interior, release the emigrant Boers from any claim it might still have to their allegiance, and leave them and the Kafirs to fight out their quarrels without further interference. In 1852, a treaty—known as the Sand Hiver Convention—was made with representatives of the Boers who dwelt beyond the Yaal Hiver, which guaranteed to them " the right to manage their own affairs and to govern themselves ac cording to their own laws, without any interfer ence on the part of the British Government." 16 CAUSES OF THE WAR It was also thereby declared that no slavery should be permitted or practised by the Boers beyond the Vaal. Two years later, after a troublesome war with the Basutos, in which the British general narrowly escaped a serious re verse, had confirmed the disposition of the Gov ernment to withdraw, another Convention was made at Bloemfontein, by which the Boers liv ing in the Sovereignty between the Vaal and Orange Rivers were " declared to be a free and independent people," and the future indepen dence of the country and its government was guaranteed. The British garrison was there upon withdrawn from the Sovereignty, which was left to set up a government on its own ac count, subject, however, to a provision forbid ding slavery and the slave-trade—a provision not superfluous in either Convention, for the Boers were suspected of practising a system of ap prenticing native servants which was with diffi culty distinguishable from slavery. Both the great English parties were concerned in this abandonment of the interior, for the Convention of 1852 was approved by the Cabinet of Lord Derby; that of 1854 by the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen. Neither Convention excited any re monstrance in England, so little did men then B 17 BEITON AND BOEE care for colonial expansion in general or African territory in particular. From these two recognitions of Boer inde pendence there sprang up two Boer republics. After sixteen years of practical but legally un acknowledged independence, the emigrants who lived beyond the Vaal, and now began to be called Transvaal people, were at length masters of their own destinies. They were, however, divided into several small communities, as well as into numerous contending factions, and did not finally unite into one State till 1864. The Orange River farmers were less quarrelsome and better educated, and, as they lived nearer the Colony, they were less rude, being, moreover, mixed with a certain number of English settlers. Their Republic took the name of the Orange Free State, and gave itself a very short and simple constitution, which has worked smooth ly. It was for a time plagued by wars with the Basutos, but since the British Government as sumed control over that tribe in 1869 these have ceased. The country is mostly too dry for agri culture, but it is covered with excellent pasture, which supported, until the great cattle plague of 1896, vast herds of cattle. Fortunately, no gold mines have been discovered, and only one dia- 18 CAUSES OF THE WAE mond mine, so the temptations of wealth have not corrupted the simplicity of these republicans, who lived happily together till the outbreak of the present war, Englishmen sharing with Boers the offices of the State. The Transvaal Republic was less fortunate. Its people were rather fewer in number, and were scattered over a wider territory. They were much rougher in habits, much more igno rant, much fonder of raiding the natives, and more prone to discord among themselves. What with their intestine divisions, their native wars, and their unwillingness to pay taxes, their Gov ernment was carried on with great difficulty, and had, in 1877, become not only bankrupt, but virt ually unable to enforce obedience. The British Government, which thought, rightly or wrongly, that the weakness and disorder of the Republic constituted a danger to the surrounding territo ries by inviting native attacks, sent a Commis sioner to the Transvaal, who, in April, 1877, used the discretion which the Colonial Office had intrusted to him to proclaim the annexa tion of the country to the British Crown. It was a high-handed act, for the Republic had enjoyed complete independence, and Britain had no more legal right to annex it than she had to te BRITON AND BOER seize the neighboring territories of Portugal. The only justification was to be found in the circumstances of the State, which had only three dollars in its treasury, with no prospect of obtaining any more, because the citizens, who distrusted the President, on account of his sup posed theological errors, seemed to care very lit tle whether they had a government at all, and were certainly unwilling to contribute to its support. It was believed that Cetewayo, the powerful and martial Zulu king, was likely to attack it, and the Commissioner doubtless believed that the public opinion of the Boer people, of whom there were now some forty thousand, would approve—or at any rate would not actively resent—his conduct in placing them under a power which would defend them against Cetewayo and spend money on their country. The event, however, proved that he had acted foolishly, because precipitately. If he had wait ed a few weeks or months longer, it is possible, indeed probable, that the Boers would have asked him to promise them a British protectorate. But they did not like to have it thus thrust upon them ; and, while the authorities of the Eepublic entered solemn protests, a memorial was drawn up and signed by a large majority of the citizens 20 CAUSES OF THE WAR addressed to the British Government, and pray ing that the annexation should be reversed. Britain, however, refused to give way, believing that the opposition of the Boers would soon dis appear, especially when they saw that English rule must conduce to the material prosperity of the country. Unfortunately, the Colonial High Commission er and the Colonial Office at home did not take the obviously proper steps to conciliate the peo ple. They sent an arrogant and politically in capable military officer to govern men in whom the sentiment of democratic equality was ex tremely strong. They levied taxes stringently. They delayed so long in giving the free local government they had promised that the people despaired of ever receiving it. The passive dis pleasure which had at first showed itself now turned to active discontent ; and when the lead ers of that discontent found that the new Eng lish Ministry which came into power in April, 1880, just three years after the annexation, re fused to reverse the act of their predecessors, they prepared to recover their independence by force of arms. In December, 1880, an insurrec tion broke out. The insurgents were few in number, but the British troops in the country 21 BRITON AND BOER were still fewer and wholly unprepared, so they were obliged to surrender or were shut up and besieged in a few fortified posts. A Boer force seized the chief pass leading from the Transvaal into ]STatal, because this was the route which an English army coming to reconquer the country would be sure to take. Here they repelled a small English force, for the English had as yet very few soldiers in Natal, and shortly afterwards (February 26, 1881) defeated and killed the Eng lish commander, General Colley, who, with a want of prudence that has never been accounted for, led a detachment to the top of a mountain (Maju- ba Hill) commanding the pass, without taking proper steps to guard the position or to secure support from the rest of his force. There were loud cries in England that vengeance should be taken for this defeat, which could easily have been avenged, for in a few weeks reinforcements arrived far too strong for the Boers to resist. But the British Government, much to its credit, gave no heed to these cries. It was to blame for having failed sooner to discover the real state of things in the Transvaal, and for not having done its best, by a prompt removal of grievances, to appease the discontent of the people. But, now that it knew the facts ; knew 22 CAUSES OF THE WAR that the hasty annexation had been a blunder ; knew how much the Boers valued their inde pendence ; knew how strong was the sympathy felt for them by the Dutch element all over South Africa—a sympathy which might have ended in a war with the Free State and a civil war in Cape Colony—they determined to undo the annexation of 1877. A convention was ac cordingly concluded in August, 1881, with the provisional government which the Transvaal people' had set up. By this instrument, Britain recognized the Transvaal State as autonomous, reserving to herself, however, the control of all foreign relations, and declaring the suzerainty of the Queen. The Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone was warmly attacked in England for its action in thus, as its opponents said, weakly surrendering to rebels, while others held that it had not only acted magnanimously, but also wisely, since the evil of a race conflict between English and Dutch in South Africa far outweighed the ob jections to sitting down under a defeat, especial ly when all the world knew that the defeat could have been easily avenged, were mere vengeance a proper object of Avar. Men still wrangle over the question in Eng land, and may long continue to do so, for it is to 23 BEITON AND BOEE some extent a moral as well as a political ques tion, and different minds view moral problems differently. Regarded as a pure matter of politics, it may be pronounced to bave been rigbt, upon the data which the British Govern ment then possessed, for there was nothing to be gained by reconquering a large country of slender value, and by undertaking to rule over a mass of disaffected subjects, while the danger of a race war in South Africa was to be at all hazards avoided. Nevertheless, as things have in fact turned out, much of the good which was then reasonably expected has failed to be secured. The Boers who deemed, and were indeed justified in deeming, the annexation of 1877 to have been an act of pure force, which gave the British Crown no de jure title to their allegiance, thought that when the insurrection had succeeded, their Republic ought to have been replaced in its old position under the Sand River Convention, a position of perfect indepen dence. They, therefore, showed little gratitude for the concession of practical autonomy, and did not resign the hope of ultimately regaining com plete independence. Besides, though they could not but see that the British Ministry bad refrain ed from using their superior power to take ven- 24 CAUSES OF THE WAE geance which might have been easily taken, they knew that the danger of alienating the Cape Dutch had been one of the motives which deter mined its conduct. However, the whole question might, and probably soon would, have lost its importance but for an event which happened four years after, the discovery in the Transvaal of a gold-field unique in the world. When the Transvaal Boers had recovered their rights of internal self-government, they immedi ately began to work for two things : the conces sion of complete independence, such as they bad enjoyed under the Sand River Convention, and the extension of their influence over the native territories that lay around tbem. Their War of Independence had stimulated in an amazing de gree their national feeling, and had revived in them that bold and venturesome spirit which marked the first years after the Great Trek. Ter ritorial expansion is, moreover, almost a necessity to them, because they live entirely by ranching, and need fresh pastures as the population in creases. They began to spread out to the south into Zululand, and succeeded in establishing a petty republic there, which was afterwards ab sorbed into the mother State. They attempted similar tactics on the west in Bechuanaland, but 25 BEITON AND BOEE here the British Government interposed. It had been appealed to by the English missionaries, who disliked the Boers because they dealt harshly with the natives ; and it was unwilling to see a region which might become important as opening a path from the Cape to Central Africa closed against it by the presence of another Power. Ac cordingly, an expedition was sent which chased the Boer adventurers out of Bechuanaland, and placed the Kafir tribes who dwelt there un der British protection. There now remained only the country to the east and to the north of the Transvaal to be contended for by the Dutch and English races. To the east the Boers suc ceeded, after a long diplomatic controversy with Britain, in getting hold of Swaziland, a small na tive territory inhabited by a branch of the Zulu race. They would have liked to go still farther and reach the coast of the Indian Ocean, but Britain anticipated them by stepping in to pro claim a protectorate over the Kafir chiefs, who held the unhealthy little strip of land that lies between Swaziland and the sea. This was in 1894. On the north the British Government, who had again begun to doubt the wisdom of annexing huge slices of Africa—though the tide of English sentiment was now setting strongly CAUSES OF THE WAR for expansion—refused to occupy the country which lay between the Limpopo Eiver and the Zambesi. But it did not refuse to allow one of its enterprising subjects to obtain a charter from the Crown founding a company intended to ac quire land and work mines in that country. Mr. Cecil Khodes, an Oxford graduate, and son of an English country clergyman, who had made a fort une at the Kimberley diamond mines, was the person who conceived this plan, and by whom the charter creating the British South Africa Company was procured. Under his auspices, a band of English settlers entered the unappropri ated and little-known regions of Manica Land and Mashonaland, and, in 1890, set up a govern ment there. They were just too quick for the Boers, who had meditated a trek into the same region, where there is plenty of good pasture. Three years afterwards the company established its power over the wide area of Matabeleland, west of Mashonaland, by a war with the martial tribe of Matabele, whose king, Lo Bengula, fled away and died. With these events the long ri valry for the possession of the interior between Dutch and English came to an end, and the Transvaal found itself surrounded on all sides by British territory, except on the northeast, 27 BRITON AND BOER where it abuts upon the dominion of Portugal. Those dominions, however, it could not acquire from Portugal, even if Portugal were willing to sell them, because Britain has by treaty a right of pre-emption of the district round Delagoa Bay, the harbor which both the Boers and the English would be so glad to obtain. On the whole, there fore, the English came off winners ; for, whereas the Boers get only Swaziland and part of Zulu- land, their rivals secured the vast areas of Bechu- analand on the west, of Mashonaland and Mata- beleland on the north. In its other aim, the recovery of independence, the Transvaal Government had a nearly complete success. In 1884 they persuaded the late Lord Derby, then Colonial Secretary in the British Cabinet, to agree to a new Convention, whose arti cles supersede those of the Convention of 1881. This later instrument sensibly enlarges the rights and raises the international status of the " South African Republic " (a title now conceded to what had been called in 1881 the " Transvaal State "). Under the Convention of 1884, the British Crown retains the power of vetoing any treaties which the Kepublic may make, except with the Orange Free State. But the Kepublic is entitled to accredit diplomatic representatives to foreign 28 CAUSES OF THE WAR courts ; the protection of the natives is no longer placed under the care of a British Eesident ; the internal administration of the State is left en tirely free from any sort of British control. The Kepublic is, in fact, with the important exception of the treaty-making power, to all intents and purposes independent. Most people in England now blame Lord Derby, who was certainly an unlucky Colonial Minister, for making this Con vention. But his error—and it was an error— would have signified comparatively little, but for the event which befell immediately after it was committed. The Convention was signed in 1884. In 1885 the auriferous conglomerate beds of the Witwatersrand were discovered in the southern part of the Transvaal. They form not only the richest gold-field in the world, but a gold- field unlike any other in giving a fairly uni form and certain yield of so much gold, rather greater in some beds, rather less in others, to the ton of ore. Until this discovery, the Transvaal had been, though a few gold-reefs were being worked in the mountains on its east ern border, really a vast pastoral wilderness, very poor, and with only about one and a half white inhabitants to the square mile, most of them semi- nomad ranchmen. It was a country somewhat ί BRITON AND BOER like New Mexico, though the population was smaller and the pasture thinner. Now a stream of immigrants from the rest of South Africa, from Europe, from Australia, from North Amer ica, began to rush in, so that within a few years the white population more than trebled. The first result of this great and sudden change was to enrich those few of the Boer farmers who had owned aud who now promptly sold the land where the gold-beds were worked, and also to benefit a somewhat larger number by creating a market for agricultural produce. The revenue of the State, which had been trifling, began to rise rapidly. This was so far good. But the Gov ernment soon bethought themselves that the new-comers (most of whom were British), when they had become citizens and began to cast their votes, would constitute a large section, and be fore long a majority, of the voters. They would then be able, by electing persons like themselves to the Assembly and to the executive offices of the State, to revolutionize it completely, swamp ing the old citizens, getting rid of the old-fash ioned Boer ways—in fact, making the country an English instead of a Dutch country. From this prospect they recoiled in horror. It was not in order to be overrun at last by a crowd of SO A MATABELE NATIVE CAUSES OF THE WAE English, Australian, and American miners, em ployed by capitalists, mostly of Jewish extrac tion, that they or their fathers had trekked out of Cape Colony, fought and vanquished the hosts of heathen Kafirs, founded their own Eepublic, thrown off by their valor the yoke which Eng land had for four years laid upon them. To keep out the immigrants and forbid the work ing of the mines might be difficult, and this course would, moreover, sacrifice the growing revenue which was raised from the mines. They, therefore, resolved to keep the immi grants, but to exclude them, at least for a good while to come, from exerting political power. This was done by lengthening the period of residence and other formalities prescribed for the acquisition of burgher rights and therewith of the electoral franchise. The method has been much denounced, and it has turned out badly, as the sequel has showed. But it was an obvious form of self-preservation. Those who have made a country, and are ruling a country ; those who like the country as it is and object to new fangled ways, cannot be «xpected to open their arms to new-comers and invest them with the fulness of their own political privileges. The immigrants complained bitterly that every- 81 BEITON AND BOEE where else in South Africa a settler from Eu rope could get a vote after two or three years' residence ; why, then, not in the Transvaal also ? The answer was that the Transvaal was the only part of South Africa where the new settlers were becoming more numerous than the old citizens; where, therefore, admission after three years' residence might mean a complete transfer of po litical control to a wholly new set of people, dif fering in thoughts, habits, tastes, and language from the folk that had theretofore possessed the land. What are the "natural rights" of these two sets of persons, and by what kind of com promise the justice of this very exceptional case ought to be met, is a question which I leave to the reader. But unluckily for both the old Boers and the immigrant settlers (or Uitlanders, as they are commonly called), the matter was complicated by another fact. The Boers were an ignorant and rüde people. They were skilful hunters, strenuous fighters, pious Calvinists, and endowed with many excellent qualities. But they were quite without the sort of knowledge and skill that are needed to administer a modern State, and especially one which, having become the field of a great industry, was swiftly growing in 33 CAUSES OF THE WAR wealth and population. Accordingly, the ad ministration which they provided for the new settlers was very inefficient and very costly. Moreover, the virtues which had adorned their rustic simplicity yielded, in too many in stances, to the temptations presented by the con- trol of a large revenue and by the power of granting valuable concessions. Thus the Ad ministration became not only inefficient, but to some extent corrupt. As measles, which in civ ilized countries is only a passing childish ail ment, has sometimes proved, when introduced among savage peoples, a deadly plague, so the bacillus of pecuniary corruption, which the great States of Western Europe have pretty well ex tirpated from their civil services and legislatures, sometimes appears as a virulent malady in com munities where there had previously been too lit tle wealth for the formation of a nidus fit for its growth. Thus it came to pass that, while the ma terial prosperity of the Transvaal increased, its Government, so far from improving, became worse than before. It did not supply what a progressive industrial community needs; and it was certainly not altogether pure, though how far the impurity went is a matter of so much controversy that I will not venture to express a positive opinion, c 33 BRITON AND BOER Tinder such conditions, it was not strange that the new settlers should have soon become dis contented. They complained that they were given neither good administration, nor any con stitutional means of securing it. Being far rich er than the old burghers, they paid nearly all the taxation, but had no voice in the disposal of the revenue. If the Administration had been reformed, their exclusion from the franchise would have sunk to a mere theoretic grievance. If the franchise had been granted to them, it would have been their own fault had the Admin istration remained unreformed. But, as things were, they felt aggrieved, and found no means of removing their grievances. Constitutional ag itation was tried, but as they had few sympa thizers in the Legislature, which consisted chiefly of old-fashioned Boers from the country, nothing came of it. Then a few of the leaders formed, in the end of 1894 or beginning of 1895, a secret plan for rising in arms against the Government. The objection to this plan was that while the Boers were all expert riflemen, few of the TJit- landers had arms, and still fewer were trained to use them. However, they persevered. Some of the capitaliste came into the plan, for though capitalists do not as a rule favor revolutions, this 34 § i o a a í Λ g l-l 55 •tä t S 53 > 3 * I i*V \ l - -v CAUSES OF THE WAR particular revolution would have benefited the mine-owners, by enabling them to work the gold- reefs more cheaply and develop them more rapidly. Accordingly, they helped with money, and large stores of arms were secretly conveyed into Johannesburg, the city which had suddenly sprung into greatness in the centre of the mining district. Then, too, Mr. Cecil Rhodes, at that time Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and man aging director of the British South Africa Com pany, came into the plan, and brought into it Dr. Jameson, administrator of the territories of that company, and able to direct the movements of the body of mounted police which the company maintained. In a book called Impressions of South Africa, which was published two years ago, I have, be sides sketching the history of the Boers, de scribed pretty fully the circumstances which led to the formation of this plan, the motives which induced different sections of the inhabitants to favor it, and the causes which led to its failure. The story cannot be told here, for it is very much involved, and hardly admits of being told briefly ; nor is the whole of it yet known to the public, although two Parliamentary Committees, one of the Cape Assembly, one of the British 35 BEITON AND BOER House of Commons, have investigated the mat ter at great length. The point best worth not ing is this, that the conspiracy might possibly have succeeded if it had been allowed to remain a pure Uitlander conspiracy at Johannesburg. But there was superadded to it an arrangement that Dr. Jameson, with a force of the company's armed and mounted police, should come in to help the insurrection which was to break out at Johannesburg. The conspirators, finding some difficulties crop up, postponed the day of the ris ing. But Dr. Jameson, becoming impatient of delay, started on the day originally fixed (in the end of December, 1895), before they were ready to meet or receive him. He was stopped by a rapidly summoned Boer force, and obliged, with all his men, to capitulate. The Johannesburg leaders, who had raised their followers so far as they could at short notice, on hearing of Dr. Jameson's departure, were then also obliged to lay down their arms, and the whole movement collapsed. Its consequences, however, remained, and most pernicious have they been. All the subsequent troubles of South Africa, including the outbreak of the present war, are due to this Johannes burg rising, or rather to the still more unhappy 86 CAUSES OF THE WAE expedition of the company's police, which is now commonly called the Jameson Kaid. The dis like which the bulk of the Transvaal Boers felt for the British Government, already sufficient ly pronounced, was intensified. The reforming party among the Boers, not very large, but in cluding men of talent and influence, was dis couraged, and has been able to effect little or nothing ever since. The power of the Presi dent, Mr. Paul Krüger, whose strength of char acter, long official experience, and intimate knowledge of the character of his countrymen, have given him an unequalled influence over them, has been further increased ; and it has un fortunately been used to arrest all changes. Lit tle or nothing had been done down to June last, either to improve the Administration or to con ciliate the Uitlander population by making it easier for them to acquire citizenship, and there with a permanent interest in the country and a share of political power. The policy of repres sion had been pursued, not only by restricting the right of public meeting and of writing in the press, but also by the construction of a fort to dominate Johannesburg and by the continued importation of large quantities of munitions of war. These latter precautions were perfectly 37 BRITON AND BOER natural. Any Government which had escaped destruction so narrowly as did that of President Krüger in December, 1895, would have done the like. The mistake was, that measures of reform were not made to go hand in hand with meas ures of defence. If the TJitlanders were not to be admitted to citizenship, they ought at least to have been given a better administration. By this time they vastly outnumbered the Boers. Nobody knows the exact figures, but it is con jectured that the total number of Transvaal burghers and their families does not exceed eighty thousand, while that of the recent immi grants may reach one hundred and sixty thou sand. Most of the former are scattered thinly over the country; nearly all of the latter are gathered in the mining district round Johannes burg, which is practically an English, or rather Anglo-Jewish, city, with a sprinkling of Aus tralians, Americans, Germans, and Frenchmen. (Among the Americans there have been some eminent mining engineers, who have brought their Californian experience and skill to bear upon the working of the auriferous strata.) The effect of the Jameson expedition was no less mischievous in other parts of South Africa than in the Transvaal. It roused Dutch feeling, CAUSES OF THE WAR which as a political force was almost dying out in the British Colonies, into more than its old vehemence. The Orange Free State, which had up till December, 1895, condemned the exclusive policy pursued by President Kriiger's Govern ment, now rallied to its sister Republic, not only from a sense of kinship, but because it believed its own highly -prized independence to be in danger. It concluded a treaty with the Trans vaal by which each of the two Republics bound itself to defend the other if unjustly attacked. In Cape Colony the two political parties, which had latterly been divided by lines of economic interest rather than by racial feeling — for the one was the party of the agriculturists and stock- farmers, the other of the commercial townsfolk —became identified with the two races, and pas sion ran high between them. The Dutch accused the English of desiring to acquire the gold-fields and blot out the two Republics. The English accused the Dutch of desiring to make all South Africa Dutch, and shake off the British connec tion ; nor were they appeased by the fact that a Dutch majority in the Legislative Assembly, led by a Prime Minister who, though not himself of Dutch stock, had the support of the Dutch party, had in 1898 unanimously voted an annual sum of 39 BRITON AND BOER £30,000 sterling ($150,000), as the voluntary con tribution of the Colony to the naval defence of the British Empire. To an Englishman who examines the facts with calmness, six thousand miles away from the heated atmosphere of South Africa, both accusa tions appear equally groundless. There were, no doubt, some among the English who did desire to seize the richest gold-field in the world, and were working hard to bring on war with that aim. There were other Englishmen, far more numerous, who longed to humble what they thought the arrogance of the Dutch, and, as they expressed it, " to wipe out Majuba Hill," for the English in South Africa, strange as it may seem, have never forgotten or forgiven that petty re verse. But the great mass of Colonial English were wholly unaffected by the former, and only slightly affected by the latter motive. What they did wish was to bring down the pride of the Dutch, to vindicate the supremacy of England in South Africa, which they thought endangered, as well as to make the Uitlanders predominant in the Transvaal. With the Free State they had no quarrel. The Dutch, on the other hand, were proud of the existence of their two Eepublics, hoped to see them independent and prosperous, 40 CAUSES OF THE WAR and desired to maintain among themselves what they call their Afrikander sentiment. But it was only a few of the more violent and fanciful spirits who dreamt of ousting England and turn ing all South Africa into one Dutch common wealth. There is not, so far as one can ascertain from any evidence yet produced, the slightest foundation for the allegation, so assiduously propagated in England, that there was any gen eral conspiracy of the Colonial Dutch, or that there existed the smallest risk of any unprovoked attack by them, or by the Free State, or by the Transvaal itself, upon the power of England. This was the state of facts in South Africa, these the feelings of the various sections of its population, when the controversy which has led to the present war became acute. I must not at tempt to describe the negotiations which went on during the summer and autumn of this year, or to apportion the blame for their failure be tween the British Government and that of the Transvaal. To do so would lead me into a criti cism of the conduct of the Colonial Office and the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury ; and I do not think it desirable that one who is actively engaged in political life in his own country should address to the public of another country strictures on his 41 BEITON AND BOEE political opponents, even when he believes that party feeling has nothing to do with those strict ures. I will therefore wind up this sketch by a few words on the legal position of the two parties to the war, a matter which is in the main outside the sphere of party controversy. Under the Convention of 1884, which fixed the relations of Britain and the South African Re public, the latter had the most complete control of its internal affairs, and Britain possessed no more general right of interfering with those affairs than with the affairs of Belgium or Portugal. The suzerainty which has been claimed for her, if it existed (for its existence under the Convention of 1884 is disputed), re lated solely to the power of making treaties, and did not touch any domestic matter. When, therefore, the British Government was appealed to by the Uitlander British subjects who lived in the Transvaal to secure a redress of their ,gïjev- ances, her title to address the Boer Government and demand redress depended primarily upon the terms of the Convention of 1884, any viola tion of which she was entitled to complain of ; and, secondly, upon the general right which every State possesses to interpose on behalf of its subjects when they are being ill-treated in 42 CAUSES OF THE WAE any foreign country. Under these circumstances it might have been expected that the questions which would have arisen before Britain went to Avar for the sake of her subjects living in the Transvaal, would be these two : First : Were the grievances of her subjects so serious, was the behavior of the Transvaal Gov ernment when asked for redress so defiant or so evasive as to contribute a proper casus telli ? Secondly : Assuming that the grievances (which were real, but in my opinion not so serious as has been frequently alleged) and the behavior of the Transvaal did amount to a casus lelli, was it wise for Britain, considering the state of feeling in South Africa, and the mischief to be expected from causing permanent disaffec tion among the Dutch population ; and consider ing also the high probability that the existing system of government in the Transvaal would soon, through the action of natural causes, break down and disappear—was it wise for her to declare and prosecute war at this particular mo ment? Strange to say, neither of these two questions ever in fact arose. That which caused the war was the discussion of another matter altogether, which was admittedly not a grievance for the 43 BEITON AND BOEIi redress of which Britain had any right to inter fere, and which, therefore, could not possibly amount to a casus 'belli. This matter was the length of time which should elapse before the new immigrants into the Transvaal could be ad mitted to citizenship, a matter which was en tirely within the discretion of the Transvaal Legislature. The Boers made concessions, but the British Government held these concessions insufficient. In the course of this discussion the British Ministry used language which led the Transvaal people to believe that they were deter mined to force the Boer Government to comply with their demands, and they followed up their de spatches by sending troops from England to South Africa. They justified this action by pointing out (and the event has shown this to have been the fact) that the British garrison in South Africa was insufficient to defend the Colonies. But the Boers very naturally felt that if they re mained quiet till the British forces had been raised to a strength they could not hope to resist, they would lose the only military advantage they possessed. Accordingly, when they knew that the Reserves were being called out in England, and that an army corps was to be sent to South Africa, they declared war, having been for some 44 CAUSES OF THE WAR time previously convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the British Government had resolved to coerce them. They were in a sore strait, and they took the course which must have been ex pected from them, and indeed the only course which brave men, who were not going to make any further concessions, could have taken. And thus the question whether the grievances amount ed to a casus belli never came up at all. The only casus belli has been the conduct of the two contending parties during a negotiation, the pro fessed subject of which was in no sense a casus belli. Some have explained this by saying that a conflict was in fact inevitable, and that the conduct of the two parties is really, therefore, a minor affair. Others hold that a conflict might have been and ought to have been avoided, and that a more skilful and tactful diplomacy would either have averted it, or have at any rate so man aged things that, when it came, it came after showing that a just cause for war, according to the usage of civilized States, did in fact exist. No one, however, denies that the war in which Eng land will, of course, prevail, is a terrible calamity for South Africa, and will permanently embitter the relations of Dutch and English there. To some of us it appears a calamity for England 45 fi BEITON AND BOEE also, since it is likely to alienate, perhaps for generations to come, the bulk of the white popu lation in one of her most important self-govern ing colonies. It may, indeed, possibly mean for her the ultimate loss of South Africa. JAMES BKYCE. ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL THE failure of the Bloemfontein Conference is a disappointment that may prove a tragedy. President Krüger and Sir Alfred Milner, the Governor of Cape Colony, met to discuss the Transvaal question with every external circum stance pointing to a happy issue. The time, the men, and the place were all well 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 commissioners had behind them the free trust of their respective governments. The President, with the help of his more liberal followers, 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 47 BEITON AND BOEE Milner, as Lord Cromer's right-hand man during the most arduous years of the reconstruction of Egypt, proved himself second only to his chief in farsightedness, tact, determination, and strenu ous common-sense ; and nothing he has done or said in South Africa has caused the Boers to mistrust him. The portents of international politics were even more propitious. One may doubt whether there has been since Majuba Hill, whether there is ever likely to be again, any such favorable chance for a peaceful settlement of the great issue of South Africa. To Mr. Chamberlain, the success of the conference meant the restoration of personal credit in a matter that has brought him little but discomfiture. Unquestionably, before risking another rebuff, he must have convinced himself that in a friendly debate lay some hope of getting this troublesome mole-hill finally cleared away, and himself left free to make his mark on English history as the first Colonial Secretary with a policy of his own. The people of Great Britain, still somewhat humiliated by memories of the raid, were never less inclined to be over bearing, or more anxious to reach a just and pacific solution. There was nothing in the political situation in Cape Colony but what 48 CH α r r 3 B H w a] β m :l S' ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL would quiet President Krüger's suspiciousness and urge him to moderation. His own kins men, the Dutch colonists, are there in control of the Government, 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 masterful empire-builder through whose " keen, unscrupu lous course" Great Britain has lost much, even if she has gained more. At the time the con ference met, Mr. Khodes was not even in South Africa. From Germany came no encouragement to obduracy. The Kaiser, indeed, has long since done penance for his telegram, and given the Boers to understand that he can no longer af ford to be their friend ; and, unless everything short of official confirmation is to be disbelieved, the Anglo-German agreement of last summer malees provision for the transfer of Delagoa Bay from Portuguese to British hands, and so cuts off from the Transvaal its last hope of reaching the sea. Even the French, who have capital invested in the Rand, have of late put aside their Anglophobia, and have been calling upon President Krüger to set his house in order. D 49 BEITON AND BOER 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 harmonious compromise, is a fact that must cause the gravest apprehensions. The conference broke up over the eternal franchise difficulty, which, while it is certainly the crux 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 back ward a little way into history to get its proper bearings. When Mr. Gladstone made peace with the Boers, a few weeks after the defeat of Majuba Hill, he restored to them their former indepen dence, subject to the suzerainty of the British Government. This suzerainty was very clearly defined by the second article of the Pretoria Convention of 1881. It consisted of a right to appoint a British Resident, to whom was given a vetoing power over the policy of the Republic 50 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL towards the Kafirs—a very necessary provision, for the Boers make Deuteronomy their text-book on all native questions ; a right to move troops through the State in times of war ; and a right to control and conduct all diplomatic intercourse with foreign Powers. Some such restrictions were necessary to make the surrender palatable to the British public, but neither Lord Derby, then Colonial Secretary, nor his successors, cared much about enforcing them. The Transvaal was held to be a damnosa hereditas before the dis covery of gold, and the suzerainty clauses were thrown in to save England's face. They did not work well. The Boers chafed under an arrangement that kept them from dealing with the natives in their own way, and dis putes became so frequent that Mr. Glad stone proposed a revision of the Convention in 1883. The conference that led to the signing of the London Convention of the following year at tracted very little notice. The British public was tired of the whole business. The spirit of Imperialism had not yet descended on the Co lonial Office. The Boers badgered and badgered and got almost everything they wanted. All but complete independence was granted them in 51 BRITON AND BOER domestic affairs. The title of Eesident was dropped to gratify their susceptibilities, 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 regulated the west ern boundaries of the Republic and pledged the Boers not to seek an extension of them. It laid an interdict 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 engage ment with any State or Nation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Republic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen." This clause again was intended chiefly for home consumption. It was often disregarded by the Boers, and it was not thought important enough to be pressed home by the Colonial Office. The Transvaal in 1884 was a large but barren tract of ground, barely sufficient for the support of one hundred thousand stock-raisers. It had but a small connection with British interests. The one clear thing about it to the mind of Downing Street was that it had given England 52 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL 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 official dom to change its attitude with speed. Thou sands 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 bewildered burghers woke up to find themselves the centre of European intrigue, and the London Convention was dis covered to be a document of capital importance. It is, I think, clear by tue terms of the clauses I 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 im mutably. In that direction it is forbidden to expand. It cannot, under the clauses of the Con vention, introduce slavery, either openly or in any of the veiled forms under which the institu tion is still countenanced. Especially—and this is the hinge of the whole Convention—is its lib erty of negotiation and diplomacy placed under restrictions. Now, no State can be properly called independent which is prohibited from 53 BEITON AND BOEK managing its foreign affairs in its own way. The Transvaal is free to arrange 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. " Suze rainty " 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 convenient one to define the pecul iar relations of England and the Transvaal. To employ it adds nothing to the real efflcacy of the Convention of 1884; to drop it does not diminish British authority in any way. Call that author ity by what name one will—suzerainty, 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. 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 54 ENGLAND AND THE TEANSVAAL is ; and that nobody can tell us. The really im portant thing to know is that so long as Presi dent Krüger accepts and acts up to the terms of the London Convention, he is bound to the clause which carries with it the veto of the Brit ish Government on all the diplomatic negotia tions 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 committed to the maintenance of the Lon don Convention by the supposed necessities of her position as the paramount Power in South Africa ; and, after the coquetting between Pres ident Krüger and the German Emperor that fol lowed the Jameson raid, the fear of foreign in trigue 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 Conven tion appear a sacred duty and any revision of it a sacrifice of imperial rights. There is room for 55 BRITON AND BOER a good deal of regret that this should be so. The London Convention has attained a quite un deserved and factitious sanctity in the eyes of English people. From seeing their Government constantly at work defending it against real or alleged breaches, they have come to think it something very well worth defending. It is spoken and written of as a sort of Magna Charta of British dominion in South Africa, without which Cape Colony, Natal, and the whole of Rhodesia would fall a ready prey to some de signing Power in alliance with the Transvaal. The question of its real value and of the possibil ity of revising its hasty clauses has never been squarely considered. Tet there is not much, either in its inception or after-history, to com mand such perfervid adoration. It was hurried ly and carelessly drafted to bring to its quickest end an issue of which every one was wearied; it was so little thought of that the Boers might claim it has lapsed through frequent unrebuked violations; above all, it dealt with a state of affairs that has altered in every particular since its promulgation. Wherein does its pecul iar virtue consist ? Most Englishmen would answer, truly enough, in the clause that regu lates the external affairs of the Transvaal. But 56 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL what, after all, is that clause worth? It has irritated and humiliated the Boers without bene fiting 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 de signed as an effective check on foreign diplo macy, 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 se cret 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 overthrow of British ascendency in South Africa is not a fifteen-year-old piece of parch ment, 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 Con vention cancelled to-morrow. Either there is the possibility of foreign interference in South Africa, or there is not. If there is, the London 57 «tí Hl BEITON AND BOEE Convention is no safeguard against it. If there is not, the London Convention, or at any rate its most prominent 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 Brit ain from South Africa. The true danger to the British position comes from quite another source, from the continued want of harmony and con fidence between the English and the Dutch, due to the present turbulent condition of the Trans vaal. A civil, not a foreign, war is the menace to be dreaded. It is in the power of the Boers to end the uncertainty that paralyzes commerce and provokes racial antagonism and unrest from Cape Town to the Zambesi by reforming their internal administration; and, as an inducement to set about the task, a guarantee of independence would be far more pursuasive than the pointed summonses of the Colonial Secretary. It would seem to be at once an act of magnanimity and good policy if the British Government were to renounce its claims to a suzerainty and, if need be, abolish or revise the Convention, in return for the grant of those concessions to the Uitlanders which can alone make the Transvaal a contented and friend- 58 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL ly State. The Boers are keenly anxious to have their status as a nation placed beyond question. It galls them, as it would gall any high-spirited people, to find 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 London 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 guar dianship over British subjects in the Transvaal that the ordinary law of nations does not already secure to the British Government ; and the with drawal of the suzerainty claims, which are an in cessant source of bickerings between the two peoples, and bring no real profit to Great Britain, would do more than anything 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. Chamberlain 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-ex istent, the protests would have flowed in just the same, and possibly with greater force and bold- 69 BRITON AND BOER 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 min isters in their endeavor to transform President Kriiger's fascinating medievalism into something approaching a modern system of government. No sooner are the Uitlanders shackled with fresh fetters than a brilliant and quite interminable debate springs up between the law officers of the Crown and the legal luminaries employed by Mr. Krüger, as to whether the new imposition is or is not a breach of the Convention ; the fetters, mean while, remaining where they were placed. The net workings of the Convention have all along favored the Fabian tactics which the President knows so well how to pursue; and, but for one point, he would probably be quite well satisfied to let it remain as it is. That point is the limi tations contained in the Convention on the full sovereignty of the Transvaal ; and to sweep those restrictions away and place the Eepublic on an equality with Great Britain, there are probably few concessions which he would not be glad to make. There seems at all events to be here an opportunity for an honorable and satisfactory bargain. An independent Transvaal, with the 60 a g o m η e-i § K g g H n¡ K ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL TJitlanders admitted to the franchise, would be no more a menace to the British position in South Africa than is the Orange Free State. Sir Alfred Milner, of course, went to Bloem- fontein with no such heroic proposals in his portfolio. In the present state of England's at tachment to the Convention, one has to admit that no such proposals are possible. National dignity, pride of possession, 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 defence of the Convention to make its surrender seem anything but a gross betrayal. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the conference foundered in part on this very rock. The President proposed that certain of the matters in dispute should be submitted to arbitration. Sir Alfred Milner was obliged to answer, in effect, that on any matter of real im portance there could be no arbitration between a suzerain State and its dependency. Such pis tolling diplomacy does not make for a peaceful issue. The concessions that will have to be granted to end the veiled warfare that threat ens to disrupt the Transvaal and bathe the whole of South Africa in blood cannot be ex- 61 BRITON AND BOER pected 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 ex trication as easy as possible. The renunciation of suzerainty is the only adequate reward in sight that will atone for the comprehensive sur renders required for the reorganization of the Republic's internal economy. It would remove, in great part, the tearfulness 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 Trans vaal. In the Transvaal itself the situation is almost too fantastic for serious presentation. The Uitlanders, seven-eighths of whom belong to the English-speaking race, outnumber the Boers by more than two to one. They own half the land and contribute nineteen-twentieths of the public revenue. It is through their brains and energy that the Transvaal has been raised from banlc- 62 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL ruptcy into its present prosperity. They are citizens of the most progressive countries in the world, accustomed to self-government and intol erant 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 igno rance of the seventeenth. " In some of the ele ments of modern civilization," says Mr. Bryce, a witness of inspired impartiality, " they have gone back rather than forward." A half-nomad peo ple, of sullen and unsocial temperament, severed from Europe and its influences for over two hun dred 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 Ms neighbor—disdaining trade, disdaining agri culture, ignorant to an almost inconceivable de gree of ignorance, without music, literature, or art, superstitious, grimly religious, they are in all things, except courage and stubbornness of char acter, 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. 63 / iff BEITON AND BOEE Nevertheless, they are kept in complete subjec tion 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 Jo hannesburg 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 dia lect, 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 standards—the President, with a directness that would have come home to the late Mr. Dingley, seeking to popularize his na tive 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 tions on franchise and education fall hardest, not on the capitalists and large mine-owners, who are mostly absentees, but on the lawyers, doctors, 64 ENGLAND AND THE TEANSVAAL 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 TJitlanders to the Queen was entirely the work of professional men and laborers. Neither Mr. Rhodes, nor the Chartered Com pany, nor the capitalists had anything to do with it. It was a genuine and thoughtful pro test from the average working immigrant against the intolerable oppression to which he is sub jected. Even raids and poets-laureate cannot weaken the solidity of these grievances. " Dig gers," ventured an Australian Premier, " have no country." That may hold good for Cool- gardie and the Klondike, but not for the Trans vaal ; for gold-mining in the Rand is less hazard ous and uncertain than elsewhere. A payable reef once found, there is little anxiety of its suddenly petering 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 pos sible to speculate approximately on the duration of the mines. The opinion of the most competent specialists seems to be that the district, as a whole, will not be exhausted for fifty, and possibly not E 65 BRITON AND BOER 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 of a great industry. They are not of the order of speculative transients, whose interest in their new resting-place ceases with the dis covery 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 wel comed the money that flowed into the exchequer when the value of the Rand district became known; but they took instant alarm at the stream of capitalists, engineers, traders, and min ers—all speaking the tongue of their hereditary foes—that threatened to overwhelm their inde pendence. To preserve the political status quo. 66 ENGLAND AND THE they raised the probationary term of qualification 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 Volks- raad for the members of which aliens might vote after taking the oath and residing for two years in the country. ' 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 re quiring the assent of the inferior chamber—the concession is not worth much. At present no immigrant can vote for the First Volksraad un less 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 government lists, lists on which, according to Mr. Bryce, the local authorities are nowise careful to place him. Even the niggardly reforms proposed by the President at the end of last May were negatived by his burghers. Practically, the Uitlanders are dis franchised. 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 representa tion, but taxation without police, without sanita tion, without schools, without justice, without 67 BEITON AND BOER freedom of the press, without liberty of associa tion. Johannesburg is ill-paved, ill-lighted, and abominably deficient in drainage and water-sup ply, because it is English. The courts of law have been prostituted to the whims of the Legis lature, in defiance of the written Constitution of the Republic, that thereby the English might be deprived of their one legal remedy against injus tice. Education, except in the Boer taal, is for bidden 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 saviors from internal dissolution. There can be little doubt that, had President Krüger 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 opponents than by the Presi dent's own shrewdness. If the existence of the Republic seems to be imperilled to-day, Presi dent Krüger has chiefly himself to thank for it. 68 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL His resistance to a. just' demand has driven the Uitlanders, by a process common to most politi cal, agitations, to put forward other and les^rea- sonable claims. A section of the excluded set tlers 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 British citizenship. If the con tention were sound, President Krüger 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. Cham berlain and all the best legal authorities in Eng land have condemned and disowned it. A Brit ish 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. As a body, the Uitlanders demand, firstly, such an altera tion of the present franchise law as will give them at least an effective minority representa tion ; secondly, permission to educate their chil dren in their own tongue ; and thirdly, a rear rangement of the tariff. The present tariff BRITON AND BOER 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 capital ists 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 dis trict, 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 show7 to what lengths the distrust felt by the Boers towards 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 bet ter legislation and administration would decrease the cost of production by about thirty per cent. Heavy duties are levied on machinery and chem icals ; the tariff more than doubles the price of maize, which is the chief food of the native work men ; and the liquor laws, by making it easy for 70 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL Kafirs to get drunk, reduce the supply of regular labor, and greatly increase the number of acci dents. 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 Ger man firm some years ago, and securely hedged around by a prohibitive duty on the imported article. The usual consequences have followed. The dynamite is poor in quality and nearly fifty per cent, higher in price than it ought to be. The Netherlands Company, which owns all the railroads in the Transvaal, joins in the merry war of extortion with a series of outrageous freight charges. Taken altogether, these impo sitions make a difference of three or four per cent. on the dividends of the best mines, threaten the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and make it useless to persevere with those of a still lower grade; the State treasury, of course, suffer ing in proportion.* One most unwholesome result * I am indebted for these and other facts to Mr. Bryce's Impressions of South Africa, a book the value and thor- 71 BRITON AND BOER of this policy is that the rich mines, which can bear tbe exactions, buy up the poorer ones that cannot, and so tend to bring almost the entire Hand into the hands of two or three capitalists. It must not be supposed that President Krüger has carried with him the unanimous support even of his own countrymen in making repression the key-note of his policy. There has always been among the Boers a small and liberal minor ity that favors reforms, and sees in the per sistent 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 Yolksraad. 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 sympathies might bring them to the support of the Boers ; but they are hardly less desirous than the Uitlanders of see- H a S o a í -3 i*.' oughness of which are hardly to be inferred from the modesty of its title. 72 ίίί ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL ing 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 every one 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 in fluence 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 Eepnblic 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 73 BRITON AND BOER 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 Repub lic would not become an English 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 per suaded the President, and through him the 74 ENGLAND AND THE TRANSVAAL Boers, that their fears, if not baseless, are very unlikely to be realized. So long as the reason able grievances of the Uitlanders are met with an obstinate non posswnus, the Transvaal runs the risk of perishing suddenly and in violence. The danger can only be avoided by altering the franchise laws to give Johannesburg a voice, not necessarily a preponderating voice, in the gov ernment of the country; and by removing the barriers upon the education of English children in English. A revision of the dynamite and rail road monopolies, and a rearrangement of the tariff 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 suspicious policy of denial and opposition has only endangered the security it was foolishly meant to safeguard. The best hope for the independence of the State must lie in the happiness and contentment of its citizens ; and that contentment can only be reached by abolishing racial discriminations and putting British and Boer on an equality before the law. Under a regime 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 75 BKITON AND BOEK of the American colonies, as they still do in Cape Colony. The newly enfranchised citizens, no more the victims of a mediaeval 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 am bition to annex their country. They have, on the contrary, an uncomfortable feeling that, in their clashes with the Transvaal, the British rep utation for fair-dealing, which so long as it is de served is 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 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 lifetime 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 BEOOKS. A VINDICATION OF THE BOEES A EEJOINDEE TO ME. SYDNEY BEOOKS ONE of the principal arguments used against the Boers is that they are not only a stationary, but a positively retrograde, people. Among the proofs adduced to substantiate this charge, no one has thought, " et pour cause" of mentioning the fact that they are totally ignorant of the art of using the press as a means of influencing pub lic opinion. The English, with whom, through centuries of initiation, the press has become such a mighty instrument of combat or propaganda, have flood ed the world with a mass of publications de signed to ruin the Boer cause in both hemispheres. The success of this campaign has been facilitated by the fact that foreign interests in the Trans vaal, other than English, could only hope to benefit by it simultaneously with the English interests. Thus, the United States and even France have indorsed the British view of the 77 Util BRITON AND BOER question. On the other hand, the Boers have done nothing to meet their adversaries on this most important field of international 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 Em peror from sympathy to indifference, and the open opposition of France to their claims, have alreadjr told us ; and, in the latter line, England's determination makes it only too easy to predict— they have totally neglected to enlist public sym pathy in foreign countries on their side ; and yet their case offers aspects which, properly pre sented, could not fail to cause the impartial mind to pause and deny the righteousness of the Eng lish demands. Whether this feeling would take the form of any practical advantage to the Boers, is more than questionable ; but it is always de sirable 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 Government and citizens have re frained from doing, a foreigner, totally uncon nected with them, might think of achieving, prompted thereto simply by his sympathy with 78 A VINDICATION OF THE BOEKS 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 international law, natural equity and his tory, 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 suppression of Poland. Before going deeper into the matter, I should like to express the sentiment that, in constitut ing myself the champion of the Boers, or rather of international faith and honesty, in a United States Review, I address myself more particu larly to that section of the American people whose inborn love of truth and justice will not allow their judgment to be obscured by sym pathy of race, or by a certain analogy of situa tions and methods of solution between what was the Cuban Question for the Americans, and what is the Transvaal Question for the English. The July number of the North American Re view contains a very interesting article by Mr. Sydney Brooks, dealing with the subject we have in hand from the English point of view. 79 -. Λ tat BRITON AND BOER 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, es teeming 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 nego tiations between President Krüger and Sir Al fred Milner, in which sentiment everybody must join, Mr. Brooks prefaces his account of the pres ent condition of affairs in the Transvaal with a short review of what is known as the Suzerainty question. From this description we gather that, as a result of a struggle reaching far back into the beginning of the century, and marked by the pas sionate attachment of the Boers to their inde pendence, and by a lesser tenacity of feeling on the part of the English, two conventions 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 subjection to English control in one or two things. Mr. Brooks goes on to say, and he proves it vigorously, that this right of partial 80 A VINDICATION OF TIIE BOERS control—call it "suzerainty" or anything else, the term has no importance—to which England clings with great fervor, especially since the dis covery 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 suggestion should be particularly noticed, because it embodies his idea of a solution of the Transvaal question—that the total surrender 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 dis pute, because "there are probably few conces sions President Krüger 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 Brit ain." Now, here I part from Mr. Brooks. If it is an illusory advantage for England to claim su zerainty 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 satisfaction from the proclamation of their complete independence; but, before making a bargain in that direction, F 81 BRITON AND BOER President Krüger, of whose shrewdness Mr. Brooks is rightly assured, must see to it that he does not give very valuable wares in exchange for false coin. Why, if the proposition of Mr. Brooks means anything at all, it signifies that the privilege of freeing itself from an insignif icant state of dependency is to be acquired by the Transvaal for the enfranchisement of the Uit- landers—that is to say, for a weapon with which the English will obtain a complete mastery over it. There is mockery in Mr. Brooks's 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 so ; but who can help smiling at such a declaration? However, this aspect of the case should not concern us just yet. Let us first look into the matter of enfranchisement, consid ered as a grievance of the TJitlanders, and speak of it together with their other complaints. The whole Transvaal issue hinges on one ques tion : Have the Boers the right to govern them selves as they choose ; or, rather, have the English the right to interfere with the form of govern ment, administration, and life that the Boers have chosen for themselves ? The answer to this query A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS involves considerations of public and international law which are of great importance. It is the practice of those Powers who have embarked on colonization to occupy territories belonging to savage or semi-savage populations, without much reference to the lawfulness of the operation. In this way, England, France, Ger many, ill-advised Italy, and, recently, the United States have spread their dominion over immense tracts of country. Challenged to prove the jus- tifiableness of their conduct, they will begin by solemnly invoking the clauses of conventions con cluded with local potentates ; and, when the flimsiness and utter hypocrisy of this line of de fence are denounced—for we all know the part that intimidation and gin play in these transac tions—they fall back on the plea that they are acting in the name of the higher interests of hu manity; nay, some say, and they have said it in verse (vide Kipling's poem on "The White Man's Burden "), that they are sacrificing themselves in behalf of a high notion of duty. Thus, quite a new doctrine has sprung up. Undoubtedly the substitution of enlightened European or Ameri can rule for the primitive and too often fero cious modes of savage administration benefits mankind and the natives themselves, for whom 83 BRITON AND BOEE 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 bar barous 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 result so much from the long-standing conviction, confirmed by the accu sations imprudently hurled by the Powers against one another in their spiteful moods, that national, and sometimes only personal, greed is at the bot tom of colonization, as from a deeper, though vaguer, source of misgiving. If we exert our minds to give body and shape to this feeling, we recognize in it the instinctive revolt of our nature against anything that threatens the foundations of society ; and this the colonial doctrine does, because it is the indirect negation of the principle of property, whether individual or national. That this is so, and that it contains the germ of shock ing disturbances to the peace of the world—a germ whose growth helps to render even more farcical the meeting of the conference which re cently sat at The Hague—is strikingly proved by what is going on in China, and, what is of more 84 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS special interest to us, by the events hurriedly pre paring in the Transvaal. From being applied only to the savage popu lations of Africa and Asia, the principle of the rights of superior races and civilizations has come, by a steep incline, to mean also that it has reference to countries like the Celestial Em pire and the Boer Republic. Between the Zulus and the Boers, what is the difference? Only one of degree. Fine reasoning clears the way for the perpetration of any outrage on the liberty and sovereignty of minor or weak States. I do not mean to contradict my former state ment, 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 trans fer 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—enfranchise ment means nothing else—followed by threats of war if they are not satisfied. 85 BRITON AND BOEE The demonstration of the inferiority of the Boers is eagerly undertaken by Mr. Brooks, who calls the situation in the Transvaal " al most 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 picture of the Boers, which represents them as being in a semi-barbarous condition. Mr. Brooks says : "A half-nomad people, of sullen and unsocial tempera ment, 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 he from his neighbor—disdaining trade, disdaining agriculture, ignorant to an almost incon ceivable 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, horrïbïle dictu, these strangers are kept " in complete subjection to their bucolic task-masters." Thus, out of the superiority of the Uitlanders arises a demand for a share in the legislation of the Transvaal ; and, because this is opposed, it becomes an additional grievance— the principal one. Now, what are the specific grievances origi nally formulated by the Uitlanders ? Mr. Brooks 86 L '"·- %> V-V*;' l ";' -- TRADING FOB ZULU LABOR A VINDICATION OF THE BOEKS speaks of bad administration, as illustrated by the absence of sufficient police and sanitary ar rangements, by the prostitution of the law-courts to the whims of the Legislature, and by the adoption of prohibitive measures against com merce and industry, and the spread of the Eng lish language. Even if this is a correct repre sentation of the state of things in the Transvaal —and it may be, except in its reference to jus tice, which is susceptible of reservations—the English cannot make it a plea for the suppres sion of Boer government, because that gov ernment, although primitive and slowly progres sive, as I can afford to admit it is, does not come within the class of institutions which are an outrage to the moral feelings of mankind and provide the only excuse a State can invoke for the suppression of another State. No English man, 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 commendation of the English themselves in their political and social literature, as well as in their current talk, with the help of expressions such as "healthy 87 BRITON AND BOEK simplicity of life," "freedom from the enervating and corrupting influences of civilization," and so forth. Besides, the unfriendliness of the soil, as well as the geographical situation of the Trans vaal, 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 discovery 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 belated form of exist ence in a nation on other grounds than that of its right to shape its destinies as it pleases, pro vided it does not tend to become a source of im morality—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 detected 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 de velopment of industry and commerce and to the use of the English language, are inspired as much by this thought as by their constitutional aver sion to what the English are free to call " the A VINDICATION OF THE BOEßS 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 interna tional 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 unscrupulousness and cruelty, which is far from being the case in the Trans vaal ; 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 Eussia and Germany in this connection ? 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 Em- 89 Ίιί·Λΐ BRITON AND BOER pire of the Romanoffs, and in that of the Hohen- zollerns? Are the United States free from the pangs of conscience in the matter of the Indians ; and, in excluding a whole race, the Chinese, from establishing themselves in American territory, have they not used incomparably more rigor, in order to defend the economical situation of the country, than the Boers in putting difficulties in the way of English immigration, in order to de fend the very existence of the State? Or is Great Britain less open to criticism in this rela tion—she, who is the essence of liberalism when her own people are concerned, but who does not scruple to practise the most despotic principles, when it suits her purpose, in dealing with con quered and alien races ; she, who, to quote a curious instance of inconsistency on her part, thunders against the intolerable abuse of the quarantine system in other countries, and yet applies the same system herself in Malta ? If the Transvaal State is against the develop ment of commerce 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 90 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS more careful to avoid the reputation of being overbearing 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 justice in the Transvaal, but to the political situation, which, as we have ex plained, 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 explanation : it is because the Boers, in order to defend their threatened independence, are obliged to spend nearly all their money on fortifications and the secret service. Because they cannot obtain redress, through the Boers, for their imaginary grievances, the English claim a share in the government 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 founded ? Certainly not on the doctrine or practice of other States. I defy anybody to prove that any State or, for that mat ter, any theory of international law, considers it 91 BEITON AND BOER an "obligation" for governments 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 su periority over the natives. Representation, where it exists, is a consequence of citizenship. " Well, then, we have a right to Transvaal citizenship, say the English. Again, why ? Some States show a tendency to favor the naturalization of foreign ers, especially the American Republics, others, like Russia, are opposed to it ; and some, like France, from being very liberal in this matter are now undergoing the effects of reaction. In Eng land, a clause of the law on naturalization pro vides the Home Secretary with the power to ulti mately use his own discretion. But, even in those countries which are most distinctly favor able to naturalization, the practice of adopting aliens is in no way viewed as resulting from an obligation, moral or other, but from the considera tion of their own convenience and interest, and it is subject to their own conditions. Nay, in the matter of naturalization, the opinion of the State is so absolutely considered to be all, and the opinion of the individual nothing, that the alien is often naturalized against his will, as is the case in the South American Republics. In fact, the 92 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS question is one that is connected to such an ex tent 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 Eng lish demands. But, says Mr. Brooks, the English are two to one in the Transvaal. If anything, that is an additional reason for refusing to nat- uralize them, and we know why. That a major ity should be governed by a minority is an anom aly; but it is an admitted situation in public and international law. In India, a handful of Englishmen govern 300,000,000 of natives. In the Transvaal, the case of the governing minority is strengthened by the fact that their authority 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 majority in the defence of a settled order of things, which has received the sanction of international law. I leave it to the appreciation of my readers to decide whether the foregoing pages do not con tain sufficient proofs of the unrighteousness of the quarrel England has picked up with the Transvaal, and of the justifiableness, nay more, the positive meritoriousness of the attitude of the 93 ifflff / BRITON AND BOER Boers, whom no generous nation can do other wise than admire for the pluck and stubbornness with which they are defending their sovereign ty. Might I explain here'that I have purposely adopted the darkest colors of Mr. Brooks's palette to reproduce the picture of the Transvaal, in order to strengthen my argument, by showing that, even if things are quite as the English rep resent them to be, the Uitlanders cannot make out a case for themselves. As a matter of fact, the 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 cer tainly not in a hurry to made a complete surren der to the tide of innovation and reform ; but to depict them as radically refractory to the notions of progress is an injustice. The political situa tion is more to blame for their backwardness than their old-fashioned conservatism; and, as to the bitter complaints concerning the want of proper administration in the Transvaal, these might be proved on closer inspection to be con siderably exaggerated, and to be more the re sult of the animosity of the English against the Boers, than of a real sense of annoyance and dis comfort on the part of men who belong to a class accustomed to rough it, and who, moreover, 94 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS knew exactly what they had to expect in crossing the borders of the Eepublic. I think it is also necessary to recall to mind that, notwithstanding the depth of his convictions in his differences with the English, and however great his stubbornness at heart in thwarting their purposes, Mr. Krüger has not pressed his case with all the force it derives from absolute legiti macy and from the importance of the points at issue ; and that he has not only avoided provoca tive forms, but has actually made concessions, the value of which may be a matter of discus sion, but whose existence is nevertheless proof of his desire to spare the pride of a great nation. I will now revert to the important question of the franchise—the one that dominates the whole situation in the Transvaal and has absorbed in itself all the other grievances of the Uitlanders. Following Mr. Brooks, I have once or twice taken up a stand on his own ground, that of the harmfulness or innocuousness of enfranchisement granted to the English. Although I have been hitherto more concerned with the legal aspects of this question, a practical view of it forced itself upon my attention at an early stage of this discussion, and I contended against Mr. Brooks, apart from all considerations of legitimacy or 05 BRITON AND BOER non-legitimacy, that, as a matter of opportune ness, 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 demand representa tion in the Boer Parliament, they do so with the intention, not of satisfying a whim, but of modi fying the legislation 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 — not withstanding any assurances to the contrary or even the taking of the oath of allegiance. Can anybody contest this view ? Is it at all conceiv able that a large body of Englishmen, invested with the power to rule in the Transvaal, will continue to submit to the direction of a Presi dent and Government representing a helpless minority, and belonging to what they consider an inferior race? In many things the enfran- 96 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS chised Uitlanders may quarrel with one another, but they will act like one man to Anglicize the State. Is the contrary technically possible in a State founded on the play of liberal institutions ? Besides, do not circumstances point to the ex istence of a deep-laid scheme, on the part of Eng land, to annex the Transvaal ? Has it not been made evident that, in pursuance of a gigantic conception, 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 Eepublic is an ob stacle—geographical, 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, is 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 provide it with friends in the hour of need, even among the Philistines them selves. There is, what for want of a better and less flattering term I will call a sense of the ar tistic and aesthetic in the spirit of expansion, a sense which revels in conceptions of beautifully rounded and delicately finished frontiers, and un- G 97 BEITON AND BOER interruptedly 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 ab surdity 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 imper tinently asserting itself within a huge mass of British pink. I shall make myself better under stood 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 ap peals to the spirit and prejudices of the Old Boer party. These stalwart conservatives 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 Capo, 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 98 A VINDICATION OF THE BOERS pledges, delayed so long, that the Boers took up arms to en. force them and won back their independence. The British stopped the expansion of the Transvaal on the north by oc cupying Matabeleland and Mashonaland and on the west by pouncing upon Bechuanalatid. It was with British gold and under the command of British officers that the raid of 1805 was planned and carried out. Small wonder that the Boers saw, and still see, in the demand for the francbise only another British plot to rob them of their independence. The Uitlanders had come into the country uninvited and un- desired, 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 experi ences of his people witli the English, could guarantee tftat tJieir capture of ffie franchis