The Last Boer War

THE LAST BOER WAR
I am told that these men (the Boers) are told to keep on agitating in this way, for a change of Government in England may give them again the old order of things. Nothing can show greater ignorance of English politics than such an idea. I tell you there is no Government—Whig or Tory, Liberal, Conservative, or Radical—who would dare, under any circumstances, to give back this country (the Transvaal). They would not dare, because the English people would not allow them. —( Extract from Speech of Sir Garnet Wolseley, delivered at a Public Banquet in Pretoria, on the 17th December 1879. )
There was a still stronger reason than that for not receding (from the Transvaal); it was impossible to say what calamities such a step as receding might not cause…. For such a risk he could not make himself responsible…. Difficulties with the Zulu and the frontier tribes would again arise, and looking as they must to South Africa as a whole, the Government, after a careful consideration of the question, came to the conclusion that we could not relinquish the Transvaal. —( Extract from Speech of Lord Kimberley in the House of Lords, 24th May 1880. H.P.D., vol. cclii., p. 208. )
Our judgment is that the Queen cannot be advised to relinquish the Transvaal. —( Extract from Reply of Mr. Gladstone to Boer Memorial, 8th June 1880. )
H. RIDER HAGGARD
THIRTY-FIFTH THOUSAND
LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. L TD. PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1900
WORKS BY H. RIDER HAGGARD.
The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.
It has been suggested that at this juncture some students of South African history might be glad to read an account of the Boer Rebellion of 1881, its causes and results. Accordingly, in the following pages are reprinted portions of a book which I wrote so long ago as 1882. It may be objected that such matter must be stale, but I venture to urge, on the contrary, that to this very fact it owes whatever value it may possess. This history was written at the time by one who took an active part in the sad and stirring events which it records, immediately after the issue of those events had driven him home to England. Of the original handful of individuals who were concerned in the annexation of the Transvaal by Sir Theophilus Shepstone in 1877, of whom I was one, not many now survive. When they have gone, any further accurate report made from an intimate personal knowledge of the incidents attendant on that act will be an impossibility; indeed it is already impossible, since after the lapse of twenty years men can scarcely trust to their memories for the details of intricate political occurrences, even should they be prompted to attempt their record. It is for this reason, when the melancholy results which its pages foretell have overtaken us, that I venture to lay them again before the public, so that any who are interested in the matter may read and find in the tale of 1881 the true causes of the war of 1899.