the men who have fought for our freedom, and have wrested this country from Moselekatse and his cruel Matabele hordes The strangers have fought no one; they came merely to reap where we have sown.'

"It will be my task to set forth the claims of the Uitlanders, and the reply of the Boers over all the main points at issue. Meanwhile, one striking feature of the situation must be noted. The Boer himself stands not where he was; here, as everywhere, the old order changeth. The power of gold, called forth by the Boer Government, has done more than assemble the Uitlanders of Johannesburg; it has created the Boer of Pretoria-the townsman Boer, a contradiction in terms.

"The main characteristics of the mind of the Boer, while still on his wide-spreading farm, away in the dreamy hills, with his Bible and his rifle, remain unchanged. But in the towns it is different, and the town Boer governs while the country Boer reigns.

"The old order changeth. The Boers have been divided into social classes; and the mind of some of those classes has sadly altered its outlook on the world. Gold was the great engine of both changes; education, altered purpose, and altered social functions following. The stoppage of the trek ranks next; land, in vast farms, is no longer to be had for the asking by any burgher. Settled peace, and its attendant ills, play a great part in the change. And, lastly, the shrinking of the world-the closing of the ranks of the Family of Nations through steam and the telegraph-has left sure if slow traces.

"Where formerly the Boers were a single class, with like duties, equality of fortune, and a sentiment of equality, there are now politicians and administrators, lawyers, engineers, speculators in the mines, shares, and land values, as well as farmers. Even among the farmers a class has arisen ominous as any-the landless rustic-the bijwoner, the bye-dweller."

CHAPTER IV.

BRITISH RIGHTS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

UNDERLYING much Continental criticism of British methods in South Africa, and more especially of the Imperial negotiations with reference to the claims of the Citlanders and to the interpretation of the Conventions with the Republics, is an assumption, taken directly from that section of the South African press which upholds the Republican propaganda, that there is some superior right, inherent or acquired, in the Dutch Republics over the Imperial Government to existence or authority in South Africa; and similarly some superior right in the Dutch and French Huguenot and German descended individual colonist over the British descended or British-born colonist. Is there any foundation for this assumption?

In the preceding historical sketch I have stated, as fairly as I could, the impression an unbiassed reading of South African history is likely to make on one in no way hostile to the Dutch sentiment or people. It discloses a long list of mistakes of Imperial policy. To these I shall refer again. But does it uphold the Boer propagandist assumption that there is some superior right to South African territory, and to the government of all or any portion of its inhabitants, in the Republics rather than in the Imperial Government ? Or does it establish the more striking assumption that colonists bearing Dutch, German, and Huguenot names have any higher claim to live their lives in South Africa under ordinary civilised conditions, including the condition of political liberty, than those of British descent?

Let us first consider the right of the Imperial Govern

ment. The origin of its present title to the Cape Peninsula, and to a further stretch towards the interior (about one-third of the present Cape Colony) is based on a formal Treaty of Cession of 1814, between the Kingdom of Holland and the British Government, ceding the Cape Colony and other Dutch possessions to the Imperial Crown for the sum of £6,000,000. On cession, therefore, not conquest, the title rests. It is further to be noted that the original occupation of the Cape was undertaken in 1796 at the request and in the name of the last Stadtholder of the House of Orange, a fugitive in England. The annexation of 1806 was a warlike operation against the Batavian Republic, an ally of France, which, together with France, had engaged in war against the British. Nevertheless, in the negotiations at the general settlement of Europe following the overthrow of the First Napoleon in 1814, the British right to retain the possession of the Cape and to the portion of Cape Colony already referred to, was not based on a military occupation already effected. A purchase was negotiated, embodied in the Convention of 1814 with the Kingdom of Holland, then newly established, the Stadtholder having been transformed into a King. The original title to the Peninsula, therefore, which should clearly be borne in mind, is not conquest, but peaceful cession, on terms of mutual advantage to both the contracting Powers. The parallel which some Continental writers have found in the conquest and partition of Poland does not therefore seem very evident. The Peninsula, be it remembered, not the rest of the Cape Colony, which, with the exception of a small portion, bounded on the east by the Fish River, has never been under Dutch, but always under British Government.

But there are other titles of the Imperial Government in South Africa. Immense sums have been spent in Kaffir wars -a long series from the first date of British occupation until a few years ago. The wars of the Kei River created the Cape Colony as it is now known. The crushing of the Zulu, at a cost of £6,000,000, freed the Transvaal and the Orange Free

D

State in 1879 from ever present danger. Similarly, the occupation of Bechuanaland, at a cost of £2,000,000 in 1884, the pacification and firm government of the Basuto—the Gun War alone of 1883 cost £3,000,000—the reduction of the Matabele and the Mashona, have left the population in the Dutch-speaking States free from the Kaffir menace which threatened them for generations. Indeed, it is only too evident that the subduing of the Kaffir with a view to the maintenance of peace between the two sections of Europeans must be described as premature. If it had not been effected, the military energies of the Boer must necessarily have been occupied in defending his life against native risings, instead of in the war on the British Colonies. The blood of British soldiers has been for a hundred years shed like rain in repressing these attacks. Gaika and Galeka, Pondo and Griqua, Basuto and Zulu, Swazi and Matabele, and Mashona, have all taken their toll of blood from the forces of the Imperial Power.

Then, again, the peaceful subjugation and the restraining from attack of the Kaffir tribes is to be considered. In the present war 60,000 armed Basutos, thirsting for revenge for the loss of their land annexed to the Orange Free State, under the unequivocal designation of the "Conquered Territory," have been restrained from interfering by an Imperial Administrator. The Imperial Governor of Natal keeps in check a horde of 100,000 armed Zulus, who have petitioned for his permission, as their Supreme Chief, to take part in the present war. At a signal from the Imperial representative in Bechuanaland tens of thousands of Bechuanas would swarm over the western border of the Transvaal. One word from the High Commissioner would precipitate the Swazi on the eastern border.

These services in outlay of gold, in expenditure of blood, in labour of administration now affect, and always have affected, the safety and the prosperity of every Europeau community, Dutch or British, in the Colonies, the Territories, or the Republics in all South Africa. The Imperial

Government has, indeed, thought the maintenance of peace and the upholding of civilisation to be worth the bones of many a Pomeranian Grenadier. Every sovereign expended, every soldier's life lost, has represented a direct gain to every European inhabitant, inside as well as outside, the Republics of the Vaal and the Orange River.

Again, the enormous British immigration into South Africa during the hundred years of British rule is to be remembered. The eastern province of Cape Colony is the English province par excellence. It is the result of an organised immigration of British farmers, brought about under the direct auspices of, and at an enormous cost to, the Imperial Government. In what respect is the title of these immigrants and their descendants to live in South Africa and hear their language spoken, less than the right of descendants of subjects of the Dutch Crown, now living in territory transferred by treaty to the Empire? There was no Dutch-speaking or other European population in that region when the British went there. Similar considerations obviously apply to the British immigration to Natal, colonised by British subjects in 1820, long before the Boers trekked to the Hinterland in 1836. And with as much force do they apply to the British colonisation of the vast territory northward to Rhodesia. What prior Boer title exists in these regions? Where, then, is the justification for the ideal of a Dutch-speaking Republic ruling South Africa from Bulawayo to Simonstown?

Greatest of the services to all South Africa are those rendered by the naval forces of the Imperial Power. It is indisputable that the peace of South Africa and the independence of its States are guarded by the Imperial navy. Without that protection no one believes that the territory of South Africa would be left free for a single year from annexation by a Great Power. The German annexation in 1884 of the comparatively barren tract of south-west Africa is a sufficient proof-if proof were wanted-that, in the European scramble for Africa, the richest portion of the