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for Mr Sanderson; that the marauders took him prisoner when they stole the cattle; that only twelve men took the cattle in the first instance, but were subsequently joined on the hill by the larger body of about forty; that the thieves belong to Sekukuni-Masoets and two petty chiefs under Sekukuni's tribes; that they sent three of their number to Schalk Burger's farm as they passed to say they intended to camp near his house, but that he (Burgers) must not be afraid, as they only wanted cattle and would not interfere with his homestead; that they only wanted English cattle, and to shoot Englishmen, and not Boers. This all the men can swear to, and the boy adheres to. It is a noticeable fact, also, that Abel Erasmus, field-cornet, and other Boers, are ploughing and keeping their cattle close to the Kafir paths, and yet are never disturbed. The general opinion is the Kafirs and Boers are in league with one another at the present moment—at least in this district. When news arrived at Kruger's Post about the loss of Mr Sanderson's cattle, Mr Glynn sent to the Boers to try and get some of them to go with him to assist in recapturing the cattle; but they (the Boers) distinctly refused to either go themselves or lend their horses. The consequence was, Mr Glynn was compelled to send to Mr Roth, Landdrost of Lydenberg, for assistance, and this gentleman sent some of the despatch-riders to Mr Glynn. I am sorry to say, however, they arrived at the scene of the encounter between the Gold Fields men and the Kafirs an hour or more too late. Had the Boers gone with Mr Glynn in the first instance, the cattle would, it is believed, have been recaptured; yet people are heard to say, 'Conciliate the Boers.""

The newspaper says, "It is a noticeable fact that the Boers and their cattle are undisturbed by the Kafirs." It is a much more noticeable fact that every outrage committed by the Kafirs during this second war, with one exception, has been directed against Englishmen and their property. Yet if one is to believe Mr Trollope, the annexation was necessitated only by the enmity of the Kafirs to the Boers, and was productive of unmixed happiness to every one concerned.

I shall endeavour to prove, in another chapter, that the annexation is not justified as an economical measure. I have already shown that it was not necessitated by the existence of slavery; and it was certainly not asked for by a majority of the people; nor has it been sanctioned by the approval of their legitimate representatives, the Volksraad, As Mr Trollope says when he describes the act itself: "A "sturdy Englishman had walked into the Republic with "five-and-twenty policemen and a union-jack, and had taken "possession of it. Would the inhabitants of the Republic

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"like to ask me to take it?' So much inquiry he seems “to have made. No; the people by the voice of their Par"liament declined even to consider so monstrous a propo"sition. "Then I shall take it without being asked,' said "Sir Theophilus; and he took it."

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CHAPTER XIV.

PLUNDERING.

Froude and Southey-Diamond Fields revolt- Muzzle to muzzle-A prophecy -The "house on fire."

I HAVE hitherto spoken of the annexation merely incidentally, as the views against it common amongst the people entered naturally into my subject, or as questions of the cost of war or of Kafir policy led to it. There is a great difference between declining to justify the annexation on the grounds put forward by the Annexationists and their apologists, and entering into a wholesale condemnation of the men by whom it was executed. It has been shown that the cry for annexation raised by a party in the Transvaal was merely 66 an ignorant expression of the dissatisfaction of a mean and contemptible minority." It has also been shown that there was nothing in the relations subsisting between the Boers and the Kafirs to justify the outcry made about cruelty and slavery; and it has been shown, above all things, that what has been done has failed to satisfy nine-tenths of the inhabitants of the Transvaal itself.1 Yet although all the reasons pleaded in support of this high-handed action be worthless and inapplicable, and even if the end should be failure and disaster, it is not so easy to blame Lord Carnarvon or Sir Theophilus Shepstone for this. They may have had higher and greater motives than they are willing to assign for what they have done. They may have been convinced of its necessity; and it is hardly fair now, after the event, to blame them for having availed themselves of every weapon 1 See Appendix F.

THE SOUTHEY POLICY.

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put in their hands to hew down difficulties standing in the way of their policy.

It has for years been almost a faith amongst certain South African rulers that a mistake was committed when the Republics were abandoned, or rather, when they were permitted to enjoy that particular independence for which they had so long struggled. Newspapers were edited by men wedded to the idea of a vast British South African dominion; and it is undoubtedly the fact that much of the lasting popularity won by Sir George Grey is to be attributed to his adoption of most advanced views on this subject. Those views, as I have shown elsewhere, largely imbued the mind and governed the policy of many colonial worthies, chief amongst whom, by his talents, his energy, his experience, and his indomitable resolution, must be placed Sir Richard Southey, essentially a colonist, whose idea of progress was of the progress of British government and British institutions, and who, I have no doubt, sincerely believed that the only influences worth extending in the world were the British influences, which he has taken so great a part in guiding and consolidating.

That men possessed with notions of an almost boundless colonial dominion, under one flag, and subject to one system of government, should not have impressed their opinions upon the Colonial Office, with which they were in hourly communication, would have been indeed wonderful; that when opportunity seemed to favour the immediate execution of their patriotic plans for the furtherance of their interests and the extension of their own rule, they should not have availed themselves of it, would have been much more wonderful. These men saw in the Boer system little else save stagnation, waste of public land, which they looked on as the true treasury of colonial empire, and a retardation of the only progress they had faith in, which, to their minds, was of itself a crime.

After what Mr Froude has written ('Leaves from a South African Diary'),1 and after the confirmation given to his

1 "The English Government, in taking up Waterboer's cause, have distinctly broken a treaty which they had renewed but one year before in a very solemn manner; and the Colonial Office, it is painfully evident to me, has been duped by an ingenious conspiracy."-FROUDE.

prophetic words by the events of the past three years, it will not be denied that these colonial politicians of what may be called the dominion school had resolved long ago, in the excess of their patriotism and the fervour of their convictions, to destroy the Republics. It is not surprising that they should have availed themselves of Transvaal disunion and weakness to effect this object. My argument, the argument of this book, the argument of the Boers, is not that their patriotic policy was wrong in itself,-is not that the means by which they hurried their plans into effect were in themselves grievous and oppressive, nor even that their apparently high-handed acts were cruel, or calculated to arouse fierce opposition and burning indignation, but simply and solely that the reasons and arguments put forward in justification of those acts and that policy are false, untenable, and provoking. If the allegations about slavery and cruelty in the Transvaal had not been advanced; if the consent of non-existent majorities had not been pleaded in defence of an abstract wrong; if an inherent weakness that did not exist had not been urged as a plea in justification of an aggression that on its own. merits stood, perhaps, in need of no justification,—there would be less discontent in the Transvaal, and this book probably would never have been written.

For the present discontent on the part of the South African Dutch, the attempts at justification, far more than the annexation itself, or even the method of its accomplishment, are responsible.

The same cause produced very similar results at the Diamond Fields. Great Britain, shortly after the discovery of diamonds in what is now called Griqualand West, annexed that province for the sake of public convenience, but on false pretences. This fact is now everywhere admitted. The payment of £90,000 sterling by us to the President of the Free State as compensation for the wrong done to him, proves beyond a shadow of doubt that the annexation of the Diamond Fields was unjustifiable. As to whether it was necessary or not, all parties seem now to be pretty well agreed. What the people complained of at the time was, that annexation was not justified by the reasons assigned in

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