the suggestion of their individual interests. It is a trust for the whole human race.

I have referred to the brief period of time within which the British Empire has been built up; but the process has been only a part, although a mighty part, of a much greater movement. It is difficult to realise how few of the European race have clearly conceived the brevity of the term within which the whole of the earth has fallen under the control of European ideas, of law, of limits of social conduct, to some degree of religion and everywhere of European military power. At the present moment the supreme law in all that vast section of Africa which stretches from the Zambesi to the Lion's Head takes as its highest authority-highest though not most immediate-the decrees of a Pretorian Prefect of the Roman Empire in York; and yet here, least of all in the community of Christendom, is the solidarity of the European race the world over recognised. That the dispersion of the race over the whole globe and its being placed in a position of guidance over subject populations is an accident few can believe. But, apart from this, of the deepening of the perception of duty towards these races, of the spirit which, in regard to one section of Europeans, is called Imperialism, and the acceptance of the white man's burden, there can be no doubt. Here, in South Africa, one is the more struck by the rude recrudescence of 16th century nationalist particularism, an unfortunate result of the disruption almost completed in that age of the organised community of Europe-a disruption which has given rise to so many things besides the individualist form of the present Law of Nations. Now, to many minds, it is clear that this revolt of Dutch sentiment in South Africa against the dominant spirit of the European world furnishes the proof of its destiny of failure. But it is none the less essential that that strange perversion of thought among some Englishmen, which leads them to look on devotion to the integrity of the Empire as an exhibition of national selfishness, should be banished from the minds of those on whom the high function of directing Imperial action has fallen.

CHAPTER III.

HISTORY OF THE BRITISH AND DUTCH IN SOUTH AFRICA.

*

THE necessity of revictualling the Dutch ships engaged in the East India trade, and the adoption by Louis XIV. of a policy of religious conformity in France, were the causes of the complexion borne by the original white population in South Africa. Soldiers, sailors and farmers in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and French Huguenots, have combined, with a large German contingent, to form the Dutchspeaking people. Strange to say, the territory of the Cape was, long before the Dutch occupation of 1652, declared a British possession by certain English captains. But the annexation of 1620 was not confirmed by the Government of James I., no more than the annexation of Spitzbergen by other bold mariners; and when the Huguenots came to the Cape after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the Dutch Company held undisputed possession of the tiny colony at the Castle on the Peninsula. As was to be expected in such a small community, the Huguenot mind has played a greater part at the Cape than in England, or Ireland, or Holland, whither the bulk of the refugees fled. The intensity of the Huguenots' convictions, reaching to fanaticism, seems the true origin of the present religious fervour of the average Boer. Notwithstanding a careful and

* I am reminded by Chief Justice Kotz' of the Transvaal that, for some unexplained reason, writers on South Africa ignore the very large German strain in the Dutch-speaking people; although names so well known as that of President Kruger are obviously German. In 1806, the time of the second British occupation, about one-third of the names were German.

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systematic exclusion of undesirable members from permanent residence, the other colonists of the Dutch Company, however determined and valiant, cannot have been characterised by an extraordinary depth of religious conviction. In fact, the servants of the Company were largely recruited from desperate and broken men of every European nationality. But dominating, overshadowing, affecting all that has happened till this year of 1900, was an event of 1658, before the Huguenots had come. A number of slaves, captured from Portuguese slave ships, were handed over to the New Colony, being sold on credit to the farmers. All the same, let us not forget that philanthropy which abolished, also established, negro slavery. The captive West African was bought by Christian missionaries to prevent his being eaten, or boats being floated in his blood.

The British Empire's acquisition of a real footing in India in the second half of the 18th century, and the anti-republican zeal of the last Stadtholder of the house of OrangeNassau, determined the presence of the British section of the population. Since the original temporary cession after the French Revolution-"les provisoires sont les plus permanents "-made by the exiled Stadtholder, writing from Kew, and more especially since the definite cession of the Cape and Ceylon and Guiana from the Kingdom of Holland to the Imperial Crown in 1814, a cession based on payment of several millions of British money, the stream of British immigration has been steady. Except in one instance, it has not been of very great volume, or setting towards the country rather than the town. This exception was the State-aided immigration of 1820, when the eastern province of Cape Colony was colonised from England. As a result, the Eastern Province is the only district where the farming population speaks English. In the rest of the Colony, and generally through South Africa, English is spoken in the towns and Dutch in the country.

The characteristics of the present Boer population of the two Republics are mainly due to their life in the Colony before the Great Trek of 1836. Their religion, their govern

ment, their language, their military organisation, all formed part of their life in the Colony. Even the nomadic life of trekking had its origin there, though their subsequent flight from British rule, continued for over a generation, deepened the habit and gave it a political purpose.

The language is a simplified modification of the Hollander tongue of the 17th century. French was forcibly suppressed early in the 18th century; otherwise it is probable that, as the Huguenots were the great religious and intellectual force in the little community, the language would now be French as well as so many of the family names. Their religion is Calvinist, of the Dutch variety; here, as elsewhere, disciplining the mind by the stress of fatalism, which moulded English Roundhead and Scottish Covenanter as well as the Lowland Burgher who fought with Alva. Their strength in fight is made tenfold by the conviction that the sword of the Lord smites for His saints. President Kruger's speech in Pretoria in December 1896, ascribing his burghers' victories to the direct interposition of Heaven, and warning his marksmen not to boast of their skill with the rifle, and his address in Kroonstad in March 1900, ascribing the reverse of the anniversary of Majuba Day, and the capture of General Cronje, to their boastful celebrations of Majuba, give an epitome of the orthodox Boer's view of success in war. At the same time, a struggle for existence prolonged over generations, against beasts and men, lions and leopards, Bushman's poisoned arrow and Zulu's assegai, have developed courage, resource and self-reliance. More than this, military discipline, not to be acquired in isolated border combats, has been impressed on the farmer's mind by a system, reaching back for centuries, of universal compulsory military service. Every male from eighteen to sixty is under the military command of the Field-Cornet of his district. In times of extreme danger the age limit begins at sixteen, and has no fixed time for ending. The steel-bow tenancy of the northern farmers on the Scottish borders is the nearest British parallel.

But, notwithstanding his democratic church and demo

cratic military duties, and, until very recently, a general condition of equality in respect to economical position, what has been evolved is not a peasant égalitaire, but a peasant aristocrat. The subjection of the negro, whether by force or other inducement, and the relegation to an inferior and alien race of nearly all manual labour, have produced in the Boer a distaste for such labour-a distaste, no doubt, intensified by climatic influence-and has contributed to form as well an extreme independence of demeanour, quite dissociated from any reliance on an abstract liberty of the citizen. His people are the chosen race of the Bible, which is his guide; and it is part of the design of Providence that the black man should toil.

Lastly, the Government of the Colony, both Dutch and British, was conducted in many points in such an ill-judged manner, having regard to the bent of the popular mind, as to produce an ingrained hostility to Government interference. In all things political, autocrat; in all things commercial, monopolistic, such was the government of the Dutch East India Company. Strong Government and military obedience the Boer was ready to support, and to enforce when urgent necessity plainly showed such to be unavoidable. But for ordinary purposes and every-day life as little of Government as possible. And to prevent military usurpation they came to prefer to elect by popular vote even their military commanders, from Field-Cornet to Commandant-General. this impatience of anything they consider as unnecessary official meddling, their heritage of revolt in their blood and their memory largely contributed. Their ancestors-fugitive adventurers of every European nationality, Hollanders who carved a Republic from the territory of Philip II., French who fled from their fair land sooner than obey their King; the descendants, hereditary revolters, impatient of restraint, religiously fanatic and religiously war-like, peasant aristocrats by Divine decree, Roundheads turned Virginia planters, Frenchmen and Germans who speak Dutch.

Such was their character in the old Colony.

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Next comes the event-the result of that character and of