As we shall notice in this article the collapse of one of the South African Republics and the slow but steady progress of another, it will be interesting to note what one of the most able, though undoubtedly also one of the most unfortunate, Governors of the Cape, the late Sir Battle Frere, wrote to the Times in 1884 describing the difference between the Dutch and English systems of Government. "The Dutch system is seen at its best not in the rough border life of the States of South Africa, but in Java and other Dutch Colonies. _I¢ is founded on views like those prevalent in England in Queen Anne's time, or in the Southern States of America before the Civil War. It regards the native races as helots or serfs, to be humanely treated, but not by nature capable of being placed on any sort of practical equality with the white races. It consequently does little to educate or raise the natives from their existing condition of barbarism. The English system recognised the essential legal equality of all races before the law, and their indefinite capacities for improvement, moral, social, and political, for which it is the duty of the State to find free scope." Of the two South African republics, the Orange Free State has always been the most quiet and peaceful with fairly uniform progress, and has always been solvent, and able to raise loans on the security of the State when wanted. Six years after the geining of their independence, viz., in 1858, they desired to be confederated with the Cape Colony. But the British European authorities had been so sickened with the continual land disputes and petty wars, and the impracticability of the Boer population, that they peremptorily refused permission to the Cape Governor, whose heart was very much set on a confederation scheme, to resume British authority over the Orange Free State in any shape." This was undoubtedly in the light of subsequent events mistake, as had this taken. place it would have undoubtedly paved the way for the future general confederation of the Cape, Natal, and the Transvaal.
The Boers of the Orange Free State have always shown a far more tolerant spirit than their brethren of the Transvaal, possibly owing to this rebuff, which anyway showed the minority against the confederation scheme that they had nothing to fear from British aggression in the future; and possibly owing to their great and enlightened perennial president Sir John henry Brandt, who though of Dutch extract tion, received in his youth a legal education in England, and who is an authority on Roman and Dutch as well as English law. In their capital of Bloemfontein an Eng-Tish mission has been encouraged and has flourished exceedingly. English education is not only allowed but encouraged, and a Scotchman was for many years at the head of the Educational Department. Scotch Presbyterian ministers have also very little trouble in obtaining access to the pulpits of the Dutch Reformed Church. The one great complaint of greed and rapacity against the British, since their acquired and enforced independence, was caused by the discovery of the Diamond Fields in 1890 in a barren bit of country in nominal ion of 8 half-caste chief named Waterboer, but which the Free State claimed as theirs as their magistrates had been exercising a sort of half-recognised jurisdiction over the tract of land question, for about fifteen years, This chief Waterboer, however, pliced himself under British protection, and after an extremely irritating dispute, a compromise was agreed to by the Free State, by which the British paid £90,000 in' full settlement of all claims, and a loan of war into the Vaal, where he destroyed over Free State has benefited largely by the £30,000 worth of cattle and property. presence of an enormous mining popula-What a serious loss this was can best be tion on their border, without in any way estimated when it is taken into considera-being responsible for the expenses of their tion that the whole of the State revenue government. In marked contest to the was only £69,000 per annum, and that peaceful progress of the Orange Free State, is the record of their brethren in the Trans-collected with the rentest difficulty. In return for this defeat and loss the vaal One main reason may be that the Boers made one desperate but futile attack native tribes bordering on the Vaal fron-on Secocceni's chief stronghold, and after tier are much more numerous and warlike their complete failure to dislodge him, re-than those on the River, and partly turned to their homes, and absolutely re-because the Transvaal has always been the fused to turn out on " commando" against happy hunting-ground and refuge of him again. swarms of restless spirits of all nationalities The financial condition of the country from who would brook no taxation and disliked the effects of this war, was now desperate, any form of Government, simply because and on the farmers refusing to pay a tax of it was a Government. There have also £10 assessed on each farm, the branches been continual factions and disputes amongst of the Cape Banks stopped discounting, the so-called governing class themselves. and no drafts were obtainable on any place. So much so that at one time they were To make matters worse for the unfortunate split up "into three separate republics.
President Burgers, ships now began arriv-'The Transvaal Boers on their well-known ing at Delagoa Bay with the railway plan of trekking further north or east, plant, purchased with the £90,000 already whenever they came in touch with British referred to, and there was absolutely no authority, had designs at one time to seize coin, not even paper money, available to Delagoa Bay, but this was frustrated by its being claimed by Britain, who, however, Yond of this unfortunate man's troubles and the freight. The last straw to the had to renounce her claims in favour of one that must have brought practical President of the French Republic, Marshal Portugal under the arbitration of the illustration of what Shakespeare meant when he wrote "uneasy lies the head that MacMahon. It is interesting to note wears a crown" was, when the present. Mr, at this present moment that a special Paul Kriiger declared in public that "the clause in this arbitration agreement was, President had confessed to him that he that Portugal" undertook to let Great had gone to war without the blessing Britain have the refusal of the Bay of Heaven, hence the failure, but that should she ever decide to part with it, since then he had sought the Lord." Con-After the Portuguese claims had been residering that the President wasan ordained cognised by the MacMahon arbitration, Minister and that "'Oom Paul" was not, the Boers endeavoured to open up com: and was comparatively a very young munications with the authorities there, man, this must have been a nasty jar. so as to develop a new trade route, The most deadly effect of the unsuccess-by constructing a railway to that port, ful war with Secocceni to the Transvaal They failed, however, partly on account of was, however, that it raised in the the credit of the Vaal republic not bein; mind of the far more powerful chief-considered worth the £300,000 required, tain Cetewayo, with whom a similar either in South Africa itself or amongst dispute about land was going on, very their "Hollander" brethren in Europe dangerous designs and ambitions, Not (only £90,000 was raised), and partly on only would he do nothing at all about the account of the attitude of the Portguese disputed land, but it was known that he officials, who were of the same breed as was gathering stores of mealies for, his those on the Congo, so pithily described and summed up by the explorer Stanley, for a wholesale descent on the Vaal. This warriors and making general preparations "asa race of men who for four hundred greatly alarmed the British authorities for years have sat at the receipt of customs, the safety of the English colonies, especi-levied taxes upon the industries of other ally Natal, as it was well known to nations, and imported red wine for the them that Getewayo had a standing army consumption of their Governors." The of 40,000 most rigidly disciplined young troubles of the Transvaal Republic began to men, besides reserves of older men of come to an acute head atour 1872, nearly double that number. So strict was clergyman of the Dutch Reformed Church the military rule of this Zulu King that no (Burgers) had been induced to accept the man was allowed to marry under 30 years residency, simply because there was abso-jutely no one else fit to take the helm. of age, unless he had first dipped his spear in blood. An urgent despatch was sent to It was this President Burgers who attempted the Boer President which stated that to raise the above mentioned loan; but on "Her Majesty's Government had no desire its failure, he turned his attention to less to interfere with their absolute indepen-ambitious' but equally: important internal dence and freedom of action within their matters, He certainly had an exceedingly boundaries, but they cannot consent to difficult position to fill. ~The treasury was view with indifference the engagement of empty and the taxes extremely dificult to the Republic in foreign military operations, collect, even ina greatly depreciated paper the object or necessity of which has not currency. There was alsulutely no education in the State at all. No superintendence of which, should they fail, the Transvaal been made apparent, and for the danger of roads, and the land boundaries generally Government must necessarily be held re-out of place, an instance of dangerous sponsible. The freedom and independence carelessness in a black man's country, conceded by Her Majesty must necessarily where land disputes lead to war. He en-be limited by considerations affecting the deavoured to remedy all these defects, but welfare and possibly even the existence the only real success he can claim' was of these British communities." The only designing a new national flag, for a people on the brink of losing their nationality. pression of the President's personal opinion reply to this was @ somewhat Alppant ex: All these reforms had, however, to be as to how native successes in the Transvaal abandoned on the outbreak of a big could possibly affect the colonial govern-native war, led up to by the old cause ments. The Boers and their President of Boers claiming native land and the natives resisting its scissure. This particular corner and it would have Sean in-were, however, in an exceedingly tight claim was to a tract of country which the finitely better for all concerned if the Boers said had been granted to them by a British had left them alone until there former Zulu King, "for the payment of was no doubt at all in the minds 100 cows." As, however, the occupier had of both majority and minority as to a war-loving son with a large following at which they would prefer—an enormous son, not only successfully re-his back, he disputed this claim, and the native war, begun on an empty treasury, with the prospect of annihilation in case of sisted the Boers' seizure, but carried the defeat, or to approach the British in a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.