whole continent in diamonds and gold would not have been forgotten.

It is, therefore, understating the case to say that all this expenditure of treasure, of lives, of labour, for a hundred years, and with no prospect of cessation in the present or in the future, show how intolerable is the assumption that the Dutch-speaking Republics, as States, have any superior right in the territory of South Africa over that of the Imperial Government.

Let us next consider the right of the British colonist as an individual, apart from his necessary participation in the right of the Imperial Government. The suggestion constantly appears in the writings of our continental critics that the British colonist is, somehow, an intruder in South Africa; that he has no right to be there except on sufferance by the Dutch. He has no right to hear his language spoken or have it taught to his children; he is, in fact, in every sense of the word, an alien. There is one sufficient answer. What has been said as to the action of the Imperial Power proves the right of British citizens the world over to emigrate to South Africa, and to live there on terms of equality with prior European immigrants. But the right of the British colonist in South Africa, derived from his participation in the right of the Empire of which he is a part, has been greatly increased by his own action during the century of British occupation. The blood of British colonists has been lavishly shed during the long series of Kaffir wars. The fighting has by no means been left to the professional soldier; the colonial-born British have always been as used to arms as their Dutch fellow-colonists, and their courage has been as undoubted. But no Dutch expenditure of capital or of labour can be mentioned as even distantly approximating to the lavish expenditure of money, of skill in industry, in agriculture, all over the South African territory, in the Colonies as well as the Republics. It is to attempt to prove the indisputable to argue as to what the capital and labour of British colonists have done, not alone in the Cape and Natal, and in Rhodesia, but in the territory of the Republics.

Where would be the wealth of Johannesburg, and where indeed the armaments of Pretoria, but for the capital and labour of British colonists ? *

A leading journalist of Cape Town tells me that when a British colonial of South Africa reads what he describes as my icy analysis, his fingers tingle to grip his rifle as his charter of right. There is much in this feeling of irrepressible indignation at the assumption of a superior Boer title, with which every citizen of the Empire must sympathise; but I have intentionally refrained from importing heat into the consideration of this particular aspect of the situation in South Africa, as my aim is not to denounce, but to convince.

CHAPTER V.

THE BOER CHARACTER.

IN November 1896 I wrote from Johannesburg, as quoted in a preceding chapter:

"Of all facts, the most stubborn and creative are the ingrained beliefs and prejudices of a people-which are usually attributable to quite other causes than a regard for their material interests. A generalisation which is correct enough, when applied to operators on the Stock Exchange, fails to explain the action of a generation of Huguenots who lost all in fleeing from France."

One of the results of my four years' investigation has been to confirm my belief in the proposition of the truth of which I was convinced at the beginning.

The foundation cause of the whole antagonism between British and Dutch in South Africa, either in social or in political life; the foundation cause of the opposition of the Republics to the Imperial Government; the foundation cause of the present war, is to be found in the mind of the Boer people; and that mind is, and has been for generations, maintained in an attitude of profoundest distrust of the British Government and of the British colonist.

The immediate cause of the present war is a different matter, which I shall consider later. In the explosion of a mine the immediate cause may be described as the finger which presses the button completing the electric connection; but the wire must have been laid and the explosives placed before any explosion would have been possible. In South Africa the wires have been laid and the explosives placed in position by the inherited Boer distrust of the British

Government, of the British colonist, of all that was or is in their own phrase, "Engelsch gezind"-" English minded."

The Boer people's distrust of the British Government and of the British people in South Africa is the result, partly of their character, whether original or acquired; partly of their degree of information as to past and present facts of British power and British purpose; and partly of the history of Boer dealings with the British. This distrust exists, and, as a British Imperial representative told me in Pretoria, is to be felt, palpable as a stone wall. It is accompanied by apprehension, rising on occasion to hatred; and, however disagreeable the contemplation of the fact may be to loyal citizens of the Empire, is accompanied also with contempt.

The Boer character is that of the ordinary Hollander Dutch of the 16th century, stubborn and brave; and of the French Huguenot of the same time, religious in the 16th-century sense of that term, with a not inconsiderable High German strain superadded. There are additional

characteristics; the result of two centuries and a-half of their environment in South Africa. Boer ignorance of facts as to the power and purpose of the Empire, which ignorance need not surprise us so much when we reflect that it is shared by so many of our good cousins on the Continent of Europe, plays a great part. Not the least force to contribute to the deepening and strengthening of the rooted distrust in the Boer mind of British Government and British colonist have been past Imperial mistakes of omission and commission.

I have found a Boer leader, holding high office in the Orange Free State, who was not aware that the trek-ox and the ox-waggon were not an original invention of South Africa, but were a tolerably accurate reproduction of a similar feature in Hollander rural life. Similarly, I found educated Dutch South Africans who have not realised that the basic elements of the Boer character in war or in peace are a tolerably faithful reproduction of ordinary Lowlander characteristics of the 16th century in Europe, which have survived by isolation. That character above all is conservative, resisting change. Stare super antiquas vias, that is the

most striking feature of the Boer mind. They are stubborn and brave, which is equivalent to saying that they descend from the Dutch who broke their dykes to let in the sea; and who still remember on the 1st April their Ducal-Spanish persecutor, and who still recall how

"Op den eersten April

Verloor Alva zyn Briel."

And, too, that they are descended from the French Huguenots, who at Moncontour met the shock of the veteran soldiers of the League, and at Ivry followed to victory the white plume of Navarre. Yet, again, that they descend from the sturdy landsknecht who followed the fortunes of Ulrich von Hutten, and from the rustic leveller in the Peasant Wars, who beat back with his pike the proudest of the German chivalry. Their character is intensely clannish; there is no room for the stranger except as a transitory guest. Here, again, the 16th century of Europe is reproduced. The equality fantasy of that century as regards the nonEuropean races, the experience of 250 years in South Africa has induced them to discard; but, unfortunately, part of their 16th-century heritage is to be found in their repudiation of the right to equality of the European stranger. "He belongs to the other Commune-what is he doing here?"

Super-added to this 16th-century foundation are acquired characteristics, the result of the life of Hollander and French Huguenot and German for the hundred years which lasted before the establishment of the Imperial rule. The Boer's demeanour towards the Kaffir is precisely the reverse of that favoured by the amiable theorists who for so long a period directed the policy of Exeter Hall. The Boer's dislike of Government and of taxation appears, primarily, to be traceable to past misgovernment of the Dutch East India Company. "In all things political, purely despotic; in all things commercial, purely monopolistic." Old Testament texts are also at hand to show that only the alien should be taxed. Isolation in the veldt, and the illusion of being free from all protection or direction-not realising that the sea was kept