in South Africa By REV. LEWIS GROUT THIRD EDITION '•"! i nr FOR SALE BY CLAPP & JONES AND W. R. GEDDIS, BRATTLEBORO, VT., AT TEN CENTS PER COPY. The Boer and the Briton in South Africa OR THE PRESENT WAR IN ITS HISTORICAL AND MORAL BEARINGS A Paper Read at a Meeting of the Brattleboro Professional Club, November 14, 1899 Bv the Rev, Lewis Grout For Fifteen Years a Missionary in Natal. Author of “Zulu- Land,” a “Zulu Grammar,” and Other African Works THIRD EDITION BRATTLEBORO, VT. : THE PHCENIX JOB PRINTING OFFICE 1900 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Columbia University Libraries https://archive.org/details/boerbritoninsoutOOgrou > Rev Lewis Grout. A PREFATORY REMARK IN THE SECOND EDITION. The large “Reformer" edition of this work was so soon exhausted, and so many have been the kindly words that have come to the writer from dis¬ tinguished men at home and abroad in respect to it, that the author is encouraged to heed an urgent call for a second edition, hoping the facts and thoughts it contains maf’ have a still wider circulation. West Brattleboro, Vt. , February, 1900. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. It speaks well for the favor with which this work is meeting that a third edition is called for in less than a month from the time the second was issued. The following are some of the good words that have come to the author in regard to it:— “Your address is a model in its language and mode of treatment.”— Rev. Charles R. Bliss, ex-Secretary N. W. Ed. Commission. “Your long experience in Natal gives you an unusual opportunity of speaking with authority on some of the questions of the day.”— Dr. Arthur T. Hadley , President of Yale University. “ Your remarkably able, clear and exhaustive article leaves nothing to be desired.”— Prof. C. M. Des Islets, Western University, Pa. “ One of the clearest, justest and most unanswerable presentations of the case which I have read.” —Edwin D. Mead, Editor New England Maga¬ zine. “In a supplementary chapter Mr. Grout answers effectively and from personal knowledge some of the false statements regarding the Boers which are most frequently circulated.” —Boston Journal. 6 “Rev. Mr. Grout, it is apparent, speaks with the authority of one who is familiar with the subject from observation on the ground itself. His paper was very able. That Dr. Grout sides with the Boers as against England is noteworthy, inasmuch as he lived in the missionary atmosphere when in South Africa. H is answer to the charge that the Boers maintain a system of virtual slavery of the blacks and want to make slavery the comer-stone of their republic was as convincing as could be desired.— Springfield Republican. “ I thank you warmly for sending me your valuable lecture on Transvaal history and the war. I am quite at one with you in reprobating the policy of provocation and exasperation pursued . . .* . to make war inevitable.” Rev. J. Hirst Ho/lowell, D. I )., England. “ I am so glad that you espouse so heroically the cause of the oppressed and hounded Boers.”— Dr. G. J. Kollen , President Hope College, Michi¬ gan. “I am profoundly grateful to you for sending me a copy of your pam¬ phlet.I wish it could be read by every newspaper editor in the coun¬ try.”— Rev. James L. Barton , D. D., Cor. Sec. A. B. C. F. M. “ The complete harmony between your address and my lectures is not only interesting, but it makes much for the truth and accuracy of each that neither author had any knowledge of the other, but wr.ote or spoke each from his own independent and different standpoint.”— Hon. George F. Hollis , late U. S. Consul at Cape Town and Minister Plenipotentiary for the Orange Free State. LEWIS GROUT. West Brattleboro, Vt., March, 1900. I'HE BOER AND THE BRITON. THE THREE GREAT TREKS OF THE BOERS SEEKING LIBERTY AND independence—England’s repeated covenants with them, AS OFTEN FOLLOWED BY HIGH-HANDED VIOLATION-THE ABSOLUTE BASELESSNESS OF THE CHARGES AND COM¬ PLAINTS MADE TO JUSTIFY THE WAR-THE SUB¬ LIME OATH OF RESISTANCE BY THE PEOPLE WHO THE MOST OF ANY ON EARTH RESEMBLE IN A MODERNIZED WAY OUR PILGRIM FATHERS. It was about the middle of the seventeenth century, April, 1652, that the Dutch East Indian Company, seeing what a good replenishing station the Cape of Good Hope would make for ships plying between Europe and the East, sent a colony of sol¬ diers and others there to build a fort and plant a garden on lands which, a year previous, one of their number, Van Rie- beck. a ship-wrecked merchant, had purchased of the natives for 50,000 guilders—a big sum, as compared with the sixty guilders originally paid for Manhattan Island. The little colony had many things to contend with, yet went on to prosper. At the end of six years it numbered 360 souls. Between the years 1685 and 1690 about 300 Huguenots, men, women, and chil¬ dren, of whom France was not worthy, found their way to the Cape. From these “ Pilgrim fathers, noblest blood of sunny France, Broad-browed men of free-born spirit, lighted with the eagle glance,” came some of the most valuable elements of the white race in South Africa. As the colony advanced in age and the government in strength, they pushed the natives back, and reduced some of them to the 8 condition of serfs, or “apprentices,” as they called them, and, step by step, extended their jurisdiction in various directions, till, at the end of the first century, they had possession of an area of more than 100,000 square miles of territory. Near the close of the eighteenth century, 1795, the English captured the Cape, but in 1802 restored it again to the Dutch. In 1806 the English took it again, though not without a desperate resist¬ ance, and from that time to the present it has remained in their possession. The “Boers,” as these Dutch and Huguenot people came to be called, that is, farmers, or tillers of the soil, as the word means in Dutch, could never forgive the English for taking from them what they claimed as their own country; and, as the years went on, many were the times, and ways, and causes of collision and strife between them and their captors. Under their own rule, when cattle were stolen from them by the natives, they went out in a commando, or armed force, and recovered an equivalent; under English rule this was not allowed; upon which the Dutchman said, it was a hard case to pay heavy taxes for protection, and then get neither protection from the gov¬ ernment, nor permission to protect themselves. But the crown¬ ing act of offence was when, in 1833-1837, the British govern¬ ment took from them their so-called “apprentices,” or slaves, and allowed them only about thirty-five pounds per head as com¬ pensation for their loss; very little or nothing of which ever reached many, even of those who were willing to receive it, from the fact that their claims were to be paid in London. The pastoral portion of the Boers had never acquiesced in English rule, and their disgust at these and other grievances now determined many of them to throw up their claim and quit the colony. And now it was that 6,000 stout, indignant Dutch¬ men, heads of large households, gave up their farms, gathered up their more valuable effects of a portable character, took their families, cattle, sheep, horses, their Bibles, and their old rifles, inspanned the usual twelve or fourteen oxen into each of their 6,000 big tented wagons, called the ugliest ox in the team “England,” set their faces to the northward, and started for a 9 land of freedom. Coiping to the Orange River, they crossed over and took up their abode where some of their kith and kin had already settled, and were living in peace by virtue of agree¬ ments they had made with the few natives they found there. Those few natives, each individual of whom was “laying claim to a tract of land of enormous extent,” were quite willing to turn their claims to account by selling or leasing the ground at a very low rate, and moving to other places; and so it was that all parties were satisfied. Here, beyond the limits of British rule, a portion of the Boers remained, and eventually (1846) formed a kind of patriarchal commonwealth, under the name of Orange Free State. But after some ten years of prosperous autonomy they were doomed to a bittter experience, when, in 1848, the Cape colonial govern¬ ment came in and took upon itself to change the name of the “Orange Free State” to the “Orange River Sovereignty,” and by a stroke of the pen declared and proclaimed it annexed to the Cape Colony, under the pretext of protecting the savage Griquas from encroachments on their territory by these new neighbors. The Boers took up arms and made an obstinate resistance, but after much hard fighting they were defeated. Upon this the majority of them again migrated under their old leader, Pretorius, to the north of the Vaal river, the recognized border of the Orange Free State, where, with others, they eventually organized the Transvaal republic; while others, to the number of 12,000, without abating aught of their hostility toward their conquerors, still continued their abode in the Orange river country, evidently believing that the end was not yet. After four years of bitter experience, strife, waste of life and treasure, among and between the English, the Dutch and native tribes, especially when heavy bills for inglorious conquests began to come in to the home treasury of the former, Great Britain began to think she was engaged in a bad cause and had better be trying to get out of it. Accordingly, at a special gathering, generally called “The Sand River Convention,” held in the Sovereignty, January 17, 1852, through authorized IO representatives of the British government in consultation with “the emigrant farmers beyond the Vaal river,” Her Majesty, the Queen, promised “in the fullest manner to guarantee to the Boers of the Transvaal their future independence and the right to manage their own affairs, and to govern themselves by their own laws, without any interference on the part of the British government,” distinctly pledging her word also, that “no encroachment shall be made by her government on the territory beyond, to the north of the Vaal river,” all of which was duly ratified and sanctioned by the proper authorities of her government. A similar course was adopted at a similar convention two years later, February 23, 1854, by the abandon¬ ment and renunciation of British dominion over the Orange Free State, or sovereignty, “freeing the inhabitants of the territory between the Orange and Vaal rivers from all allegiance to the British crown, and declaring them a free and independ¬ ent people, and the government thenceforth a free and inde¬ pendent government.” In each case, the Boers on their part undertook that no slavery should be permitted or practised in their country. But in 1865 a war between the Orange Free State and the Basutos was made the occasion of another intervention by the British in direct violation, as Froude declared, of the treaties just mentioned. Bad blood was stirred up by it; but the former treaty was renewed in 1869, with fresh assurances that it should henceforth be observed. But then came the discovery of rich diamond fields, north of the Orange river, in territory claimed as belonging to the Orange Free State, and which the British themselves had so regarded during their occupation of that coun¬ try. A great rush of population to the new diggings followed, and then Great Britain discovered that the territory belonged not to the Orange Free State, but to a Griqua chief, who had formerly been an ally of the English; and so, in October, 1871, she took possession, handed over to the Griqua chief the poorest tenth part of the country, and made a new British colony, Kimberley, of the remainder—an area of some 17,000 square miles. Turning- back now to the time when the Boers left the Cape Colony and crossed the Orange river, we find that in 1837 and 1838, a portion of them, some 900 strong, having halted for a time at what eventually became the Orange Free State, inspanned their big wagons again, took their families, cattle, and other effects, followed up the Orange river to the eastward, crossed the Kwathlamba mountain, the ‘ 'Drakenberg” of the Dutch, and came down into Natal, hoping to make that beauti¬ ful country a new Netherlands, and there find rest and peace. But in 1841 the English governor of the Cape, whence they had fled, warned them not to touch his “allies,” the Amampondo. The reply of the Boers was that they had nothing to do with the English, and would protect their own property as they chose. Two hundred and fifty British soldiers landed in Natal. The Boers told them to quit. They attacked the Boers and were defeated and blockaded in their camp. At length more English soldiers were landed, and Natal, after much fighting, was declared a British colony. Some of the Boers submitted to what they regarded as a great wrong; but the larger part of them withdrew, some of them direct to their friends on the Orange river, and some northward to a district north of the Klip river, as yet the boundary of Natal in that direction. But, in 1845, after three years of much effort and suffering to make for themselves a new and free home, the colonial government of Natal set up a new claim in that direction, pushed the limits of the colony still further north, and proclaimed the Buffalo river the northern boundary of Natal; thus once more attempting to subject the Boers to British rule. Yet, now again, more than ever, exasperated by what they regarded as continued persecu¬ tion, most of the Boers, after resisting for a time, migrated in 1845 and later to the Vaal country, where, eventually, with others from the Free State, they organized the Transvaal republic. Some few years later, Sir George Grey, governor of Cape Colony, began to urge the idea of a general union of all South African states, colonial, free, and native, under the British crown. His proposition took well with many at the Cape, and seemed to be regarded with favor at Downing street. But the 12 governor’s policy was disallowed by Lord Derby, and Sir George was ordered to resign and return home. Some years later this idea was revived by the British government as represented by its colonial secretary, Lord Carnarvon, who, in 1875, took upon himself to ask the governor of the Cape to have the colonists make arrangements for the establishment of such a universal South African confederacy. But the Cape legislature, and especially the older colonists, rejected Lord Carnarvon’s pro¬ posal, as did the two Dutch republics, being, as they were, not at all inclined to come again under British rule. Lord Carnar¬ von then sent out the historian Froude, to make speeches from town to town on the confederation scheme. The colonists dis¬ liked this interference of the British with their affairs, and a second attempt at a conference, in 1876, was a failure. Only Natal would consent to have part and lot with all the other provinces. The Transvaal Free State, least of all, would con¬ sent to merge its political life in the proposed imperial project. The Orange Free State was equally opposed to it. Meantime, the correspondence of Sir Henry Berkly, governor of Cape Colony, with his secretary of state in London, betrayed a vehement prejudice, a restless, fault-finding, and tale-bearing spirit, against the Transvaal government. Everything they did, and things they never did, were made grounds of censure and construed in the worst possible light. Things done by the British government, and by all other governments, in respect to captives in war, things done by the United States, and other states, in respect to convicts and tramps, being done by the Boers, were represented to the home government in England by Governor Berkly of the Cape Colony, as amounting to “a system of quasi slavery, and in a direct conflict with the con¬ vention of 1852,” by reason of which the Transvaal republic had forfeited its right to political existence. Moreover, for a long time the English had been jealous of the Boers’ influence over the Zulu king, Ketchwayo (Cetewayo), and his realm—a realm which the former were evidently now eager to acquire. A state of temporary, internal confusion having now befallen the counsels of the Transvaal government, an English coterie 13 of the gold field adventurers thought this a good time to raise the cry of impending public ruin, such as could be averted only by a revolution. Grossly distorted facts, and utterly false reports were sent to Cape Town, 1,500 miles away, there to feed the policy of supplanting the Transvaal government, and from the Cape to England, for the same purpose; the Cape gov¬ ernor writing to Lord Carnarvon that, in his opinion, “the Transvaal republic should be united with the British colonies,” and that it would no longer be expedient to cooperate with the government “as a separate state.” Accordingly, Sir Theophi- lus Shepstone of Natal, being now in England, was appointed special commissioner to the Transvaal, “with large discretion¬ ary powers to act in such manner as he may deem in accord¬ ance with the British interests, and with the general policy of Her Majesty’s government.” A writ of annexation, to be served by him on an independent free state, some six months later, was that day put in his pocket in Downing street. Of this Downing street decree, the 40,000 Dutch farmers, whom it specially concerned, were for the present, and for long, kept in perfect ignorance. Sir Theophilus and a staff of Eng¬ lish officials, escorted by a score of Natal mounted police, arrived at Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal republic, Janu¬ ary 22 , 1877. There Sir Theophilus quietly sat until the twelfth of April, when he produced Queen Victoria’s royal commission, dated Balmoral, October 9, 1876, and thereupon issued his proclamation, “That the territory heretofore known as the South African republic shall be, and shall be taken to be, Brit¬ ish territory.” The president of the republic protested; the Volksraad protested; the executive council protested. Presi¬ dent Kruger had visited England and could not think it possi¬ ble that the British government would sanction the shedding of blood for such a purpose as destroying a free state of Euro¬ peans by descent, race, language, and religion, whose integrity the Queen had, twenty-five years before, solemnly promised to protect. Sir T. Shepstone, special commissioner and annexer, now became administrator or actual governor of the Transvaal. But among the Boers the opposition to the high-handed act he had perpetrated became more and more bitter the wider and longer it was known. Two special delegates were sent to remonstrate with Her Majesty’s government in London, but in vain. According to the instruction she gave her special com¬ missioner, Shepstone, the annexation was to be provisional, temporary. Now these delegates are told it is absolute, final. The annexation was to be conditioned, in a measure, upon the pleasure of the people. The 40,000 Dutchmen, over whom Sir Theophilus was ruling in 1877, were resolutely opposed to him and his policy. Out of 8,000 electors, or enfranchised burghers, 6,591 signed a memorial against being annexed to the British empire, and praying the Queen that their country’s independ¬ ence might be restored; yet all in vain. The spirit of these 40,000 Boers at the time of which we speak, as their spirit to-day, when their number is greatly increased and similar dangers threaten them, may be seen in the oath of mutual allegiance, which a goodly number of their representative men took at the time, at the Wonderfontein meeting in the Transvaal, as follows:— “In the presence of Almighty God, the searcher of hearts, and praying for His gracious assistance and mercy, we, burghers of the South African republic, have solemnly agreed, for us, and for our children, to unite in a holy covenant, which we confirm with a solemn oath. It is now forty years since our fathers left the Cape Colony to become a free and independent people. These forty years have been forty years of sorrow and suffering. We have founded Natal, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic, and three times has the English government trampled on our liberty; and our flag, baptized with the blood and tears of our fathers, has been pulled down. As by a thief in the night has our free republic been stolen from us. We cannot suffer this, and we may not. It is the will of God that the unity of our fathers and our love to our children should oblige us to deliver unto our children, unblemished, the heritage of our fathers. It is for this reason that we here unite, and give each other the hand as men and brethren, solemnly promising to be faithful to our country and people, and, looking unto God, to work together unto death for the restora¬ tion of the liberty of our republic. So truly help us, God Almighty.” This oath struck most people as the oath of men deserving to be respected. The best, and, indeed, the general opinion in America was, that “the British hadn’t a shadow of reason for 15 making war upon the Transvaal.” The sympathy of Europe was with the Boers. Many were the petitions presented to the British government—one from Utrecht signed by some 5,000 Hollanders, including all the leading men of the country. “ urg¬ ing that the right of the Boers be respected in accordance with their own demand”; yet all to no purpose. British troops were poured into the Transvaal; they were promptly met by men who knew how to fight, and knew that they had a just cause. In battle after battle they were beaten. The last place where the English locked horns with the Dutch was at Majuba Hill, where less than 150 Dutchmen stormed a mountain peak held by 400 British troops, some say 700, and dislodged them, inflict¬ ing upon them a most crushing and humiliating defeat. Hos¬ tilities were now suspended, and the army, or what there was left of it, was withdrawn. Just then it was that the Gladstone government of Great Britain came in, which virtually admitted that the Boers had been right throughout, and agreed to a treaty of peace, the result of two conventions, one in 1881, and another in 1884, when virtual independence was restored to the Trans¬ vaal, and the Boers obtained about all they asked. Not long after this, i. e., in 1886, the vast gold discoveries in the Transvaal began to draw to that country a swarm of adven¬ turers, especially from England. The Boers, from the first, very naturally had a dread of the political consequence of this influx. Nor was it long before the miners began to complain of the government of the land into which their greed for gold had brought them, and to demand equal rights with the native Boer population, though they had taken no oath of allegiance to the government under which they were living. The Boers were always inclined to be jealous of strangers, especially of the English, and who will deny that they long had good reason for being so? And, especially now, considering the fact that the miners were, for the most part, notoriously and openly favorable to British rule in preference to Boer, and that the number of the miners soon began to exceed that of the male adult Boer population, who can wonder that the latter were in no haste to concede a power which might soon lead to their own i6 overthrow? Even at Johannesburg, where the outrageous Jameson raid eventually came to a most abrupt and inglorious end, President Kruger, in March, 1890, was clamored down by a crowd of miners whom he tried to address in regard to their alleged grievances, and who proceeded to tear down the flag of the republic and to hoist the English flag instead. What wonder then that the Boers declined to grant equal suffrage to unnatur¬ alized foreigners, or that they were in no hurry to naturalize those they deemed hostile to their hard-earned independence? But the outcry against oppression and the demand for reform, which the outlanders kept up and urged on, encouraged as they evidently were by ambitious and designing men outside of Transvaal limits, such as Jameson and Cecil Rhodes, at length brought on the raid, which would, doubtless, have culminated in a revolution had it not been so quickly and effectually dis¬ covered and squelched by Kruger and his loyal supporters. But of all this we have here and now neither time nor need to speak. The general facts and the general opinion of the wide world in respect to that iniquitous plot, are too fresh in the mind of the thoughtful and observing to require any extended rehearsal here. But though the suppression of the deep laid plot was speedy and complete, yet the complaints and demands of the outlanders and their abettors were only smothered for a time, soon to break out, as now, in a most deplorable flame of overt hostility and violence. I will not stop here to waste time or words about who began the war—only to observe, in passing, that the question, as another has said, is not so much who struck the first blow, as who caused the first, or any other to be struck at all ? To me the British have seemed all along both unreasonable in their demands and revolutionary alike in spirit and action. That they can establish any present just claim to suzerainty over the Transvaal is hard to make out. For myself, I do not believe they can. An able, well-posted writer, with the “Green Book ” of the republic in his possession, and with the treaty of 1881 and that of 1884 before him, has said: “The fact is that England has no right, in any way, shape, or manner, to demand 17 or even to suggest a modification of the oath of allegiance of a foreigner who desires to become a citizen of the republic or of any state. The claim is made falsely that the treaty between Great Britain and the republic, made in 1881 and superseded by the convention of London in 1884, gave to Great Britain the right to thus suggest and interfere with the autonomy of the republic. All that the convention of 1881 gave to Great Britain in this respect was the suzerainty over the foreign or outside relations of the republic. And even this treaty of 1881 was not ratified by the congress of the republic. They refused to admit suzerainty, and sent a commission of three, including Kruger and Joubert, to London and it was stricken from the treaty. A new treaty, called ‘ The Treaty of the Convention of 1884,’ was agreed upon by the great British empire, omitting all claim to suzerainty, but retaining simply the right to pass upon, approve, or disapprove all treaties with foreign powers that had been made by the republic.” But in any case the claim is far from sufficient to justify a war in its support. The question might have been easily settled by arbitration had there been any desire on the part of the English to do so. Indeed, all the points in dispute might have been thus easily settled had there been a desire for it. Nor should it be forgotten that this mode of settlement was the first thing named in Kruger’s ultimatum. But, whatever might be said or done about suzerainty, nothing can be plainer than that according to the treaty of 1884 the English had no shadow of a right to intermeddle in the Boers’ own internal home affairs, whether of constitution, law, or government, nor, yet again, can anything be plainer than that she has violated her treaty with the Transvaal by a repeated, persistent, most officious and offensive interference of this kind. On the pretext that the times have changed, the British have thrown that treaty to the winds and practically come in with a claim of right to meddle or interfere with the institutions, laws, government of the republic in almost any and every way they please. Would they dare attempt such an interference with the United States, France, Germany, Russia? Or should they i8 attempt it who believes it would be for a moment quietly tolerated? One of the false, sophistical claims set up by those interested in revolutionizing or destroying the South African republic is, that the Boers have broken their agreement to give the outlanders “equal political and other rights.’’ But they never agreed to give them political rights; “that word was interpolated by the British and by those who argue in their behalf.” One of the most absurd, unrighteous things which the British demanded of Kruger was that British subjects residing in the Transvaal should be allowed to vote there and have a voice in all the rights and privileges of the elective franchise in that republic, and still retain their allegiance to the crown, or con¬ tinue to be regular loyal subjects of the British government. Did any other government ever make or ever grant such a demand? One would suppose that Mr. Chamberlain himself should have read his Bible enough to know that “No man can serve two masters. ” The outlanders complain that they “ have no power in the municipal government of their town, Johannesburg.” And so, too, no unnaturalized British subject residing in our country has rightfully any power in the government of any American city in which he may be staying and paying taxes. The outlanders complain again that “ they have no control of the education of the country.” And why should they have? When they shall have been naturalized, taken the oath of allegiance to the government of the country they occupy, and shall have in all good faith renounced their allegiance to the Queen of England, it will be time enough for them to talk of having a voice in the education of their newly appointed country. To the credit of the citizens of the republic it should be said they have free schools, though they are not under the control of foreigners. Germany has a multitude of unnaturalized people in America, but even though they pay their taxes they are too wise and fair to think of forcing the German language into the curriculum of our schools, as the outlanders would force the English into the Transvaal schools. And again we ask why 19 should the outlanders or the English back of them have control of education in the Transvaal? If the speaker is not much mistaken even the older of the English people themselves know practically little or nothing of free schools in their own land, their own mother country having had none deserving the name in their childhood, if, indeed, it has any now. A distinguished president of a New England college says: “Government grants for free common schools in England date from 1870”—only thirty years ago. Another equally good authority in another New England college says: “ In Great Britain the elementary schools are even now hardly ‘free’ in the American sense of the term, being supported in part by school fees in addition to the local rates and government grants.” And then, too, further¬ more, let it be noted in passing that in the opinion of the speaker a change of this kind, as well as many others which England seems bound to have made in the Transvaal, could be made, if made at all, a good deal better and cheaper by sending out teachers and preachers than by sending soldiers, bullets, and bayonets. As to the complaint of the outlanders about having to pay a high price for dynamite, and their demand that the tariff on it be reduced or taken off, it is enough to say that “more is charged for it by the South African chartered company at the Kimberley mines than is charged in Johannesburg, many miles further inland, with more expensive transportation and including the Transvaal tax.” In respect to the demand which the English made upon President Kruger that he modify his laws of naturalization and the oath of allegiance, the president very rightly replied that to do this to the extent recpiired “would be to destroy my country.” Nor can any honest, well-informed, right-minded man wonder that he has not been in a hurry to make the changes in respect to naturalization, the franchise and kindred things, which the outlanders demand, when we remember that many of these miners would make anything but desirable citizens. While it is true that many of them are good, honest, worthy men, it is also equally true that great numbers of them were from among 20 the worst of classes in the lands from which they came, and have made no change for the better at the mines. That the president of the republic and the Boers generally “do not desire to add to their number the denizens of a mining camp like Johannesburg, proprietors of liquor saloons and brothels, for instance, is to the credit of the citizens of the republic.” And when we of America remember that for several generations our own Pilgrim and Puritan fathers limited the privileges of the elective franchise to a certain ecclesiastical standing, allowing only church members of a certain kind to vote, even in civil or state affairs, though they had nothing of a hoodlum class to contend with, it would seem becoming in us not to be in a hurry to cast the first stone at the Boers, or say much about their being bigoted. Nor should the English themselves be in any hurry of this kind. “If a new constitution should ever be adopted in the Transvaal, providing for a separation of church and state, it would be superior to the present constitution of the great British empire.” Again, finally, the claim is made that the Transvaal “taxes are unequally levied. ” But I have good reason and the best of authority for saying that the claim is “ absolutely false; all the people are taxed alike.” During the last year the foreigners have taken out of that country no less than $100,000,000 of gold, upon which the corporations which manage the mines have paid dividends to their stockholders varying from sixty to one hundred per cent per annum; while the taxes which the repub¬ lic puts on the profits of the mines amount to only two and a half per cent, though the tax which the English colony, Canada, imposes upon the profits of her mines amounts to no less than ten per cent. As to a personal tax: According to an English authority, Statham, in his book on “ South African States,” the personal tax on any one in the Transvaal, rich or poor, does not, prob¬ ably, amount to more than twenty-five dollars per year—all of which shows how utterly absurd is the outlanders’ outcry about taxes. Such as these are the complaints and demands which the out- landers and their English backers bring against the Boers in the Transvaal; and such are some of the thoughts and facts which go to show how some of their complaints and demands are made directly in face of that most solemn treaty which the British government negotiated with the Transvaal republic in 1884; while other of their complaints and demands are simply false, groundless, absurd. The conclusion, then, to which the speaker is forced to come, in view of this whole subject, is, that the war now raging between the Boer and the Briton in South Africa is not only most deplorable, cruel, bitter, but also alike most devastating and needless, and might have been happily averted by arbitration, had there been any real desire on the part of the English to have the controversy adjusted and settled in that way. SUPPLEMENTARY. MR. GROUT ANSWERS SOME OF THE POINTS RAISED BY THE DISCUSSION IN THE CLUB. Statement: “ Boers have a system of virtual slavery and want to make slavery the corner stone of their republic.” Answer: There is no “ virtual slavery ” in the Transvaal, and in all my residence in South Africa, or my reading since, I have never heard or seen the charge made, even by the worst ene¬ mies of the Boers, in a way that meant anything definite. Slavery is forbidden by the fundamental law of the land and has been ever since the Sand River convention. “ Black men ” are excluded from the franchise, as they are also in Natal and other British colonies. The only servitude that exists is in punish¬ ment for crime as in this and other countries, and it is worse in many of our southern states, under their convict lease system, than anywhere in the Dutch republic. The natives are taxed, as they are in Natal and other English colonies; and if they have no money they must work out their taxes. But it is a wage system. As to slavery, the ownership in man, the right to buy and sell human flesh—it absolutely doesn’t exist. One of the articles of the convention of 1884 reads: “All inhabitants (i. e., blacks and whites alike) of the Transvaal shall have free access to the courts of justice for the protection and defense of their rights. ” Slavery can’t exist under such a law, which is just the same, regarding aliens also, as in the United States. Statement: “ The Boer republic is an oligarchy.” Answer: How can it be called an “oligarchy” when every one of the citizens, from boys of sixteen and upward, is entitled to vote and does vote ? Statement: “ The Boers are narrow and bigoted.” Answer: It is true that they have an established church, the 23 Dutch Reformed, just as England has in the Episcopal church. But there is the widest tolerance for all other faiths. To illus¬ trate: Rev. Dr. Lindley, a missionary under the American Board and himself a Presbyterian, was employed as pastor, teacher and preacher among the Boers of the Transvaal for five or six years and traveled through the country, holding services, conducting funerals, performing marriage ceremonies, etc. After his return to his mission in Natal he again crossed the mountains and made a tour through the country, giving sermons in all the churches. On one occasion he baptized five hundred children, and President Kruger was one of them. Many other teachers and preachers of other Christian denominations have done good service and been accepted into full fellowship as fel¬ low laborers in Christianity. Previous to this present war the Methodists had a large and flourishing mission among the natives in the Transvaal. Ten years ago the Berlin Mis¬ sionary Society had in the Transvaal twenty-three stations, with five thousand church members, and at that time there were about twenty-five thousand native Christians in the Transvaal. The Swiss had a flourishing mission in the state. The Ameri¬ can Board had an American (Congregational) missionary and several native assistants at work among the natives in Johannes¬ burg. The wife of one of the pastors in Pretoria is the daughter of the late Dr. Josiah Tyler and a granddaughter of the late Dr. Bennett Tyler of Connecticut. The famous Salva¬ tion Army has had workers formerly, if not now, in the Trans¬ vaal. The “Boer Farm Mission Enterprise,” in regions n'ot far distant from where the war is now raging, which had for its object the introduction of Christian life into the kraals of the natives, proves and illustrates the real practical interest some of the Boers have, of late years, been taking in the religious well-being of the natives around them. Their Farm missions, of which there are several in the upper part of Natal, or were a few years ago, usually comprise each from five to ten thousand acres of land and prove a great blessing to both races, the black and white, and help also to afford a forcible comment on the 24 charge, “ The Boers are narrow and bigoted and want to make slavery the corner stone of their republic.”* Statement: “The judiciary is not independent. Thesupreme court is subject to instant removal by the president or upper house of the Raad. Answer: My information is not sufficient to say exactly what the fact about this is. But my idea is that the procedure is very similar to our impeachment, except that it may be per¬ formed there by the executive. But the upper house, like our senate, is the deciding tribunal. But, however this may be, it is the government of law, and whatever is done, is done, not by arbitrary power, but under the constitution and the laws of the land, as clearly and precisely defined as anywhere in the world. And in a general way their laws and institutions are modeled after those of the United States, and in my experience with them I found that the one people of the earth they admired, and whose example they desired to follow, was the American people. * One of the desires of the Dutch when they came to build a fort and plant a garden at the Cape was, that in this way the religious well-being of the aborigines might be promoted—“that many souls of the natives might be brought to a knowledge of religion and saved to God.” Some few years ago that “ desire” came very distinctly to the front among the Boers in the northern parts of Natal, where a revival of interest in the spiritual welfare of the natives was very marked and happy. Some of the farmers not only warmly approved of mission work in their behalf, but encouraged their own young people to engage in it. Native evangelists coming from other quarters to labor there, sometimes—by invitation—held their meetings in the houses of the Boers. The pastor of the Dutch church in Greytown gave the work every possible encouragement. The Dutch farmers themselves took a warm, active, personal part in it. On one occasion a missionaiy of the Scotch Free church, Rev. James Scott, was called in to assist at the baptiz¬ ing of about a hundred natives who with God’s blessing had been converted by the Boers.