THE SITUATION IN THE TRANSVAAL BEFORE THE RISING OF 1895
The agitation at Johannesburg, which Dr. Jameson's expedition turned into a rising, took place in December, 1895. I spent some time in Pretoria and Johannesburg in the preceding month, and had good opportunities of observing the symptoms of political excitement and gauging the tendencies at work which were so soon to break out and fix the eyes of the world upon the Witwatersrand. The situation was a singular one, without parallel in history; and though I did not know that the catastrophe was so near at hand, it was easy to see that a conflict must come and would prove momentous to South Africa. Of this situation as it presented itself to a spectator who had no personal interest involved, and had the advantage of hearing both sides, I propose to speak in the present chapter.
To comprehend the position of the Transvaal Boers one must know something of their history. From the brief sketch of it given in earlier chapters (Chapters [XI] and [XII]) the reader will have gathered how unlike they are to any European people or to the people of the United States. Severed from Europe and its influences two hundred years ago, they have, in some of the elements of modern civilisation, gone back rather than forward. They were in 1885, when the Rand goldfields were discovered, and many of them are to-day, a half-nomad race, pasturing their flocks and herds over the vast spaces of what is still a wilderness, and migrating in their waggons from the higher to the lower pastures according to the season of the year—
—Omnia secum
Armentarius Afer agit, tectumque laremque
Armaque, Amyclæumque canem, Cressamque pharetram.
Living in the open air, and mostly in the saddle, they are strangely ignorant and old fashioned in all their ideas. They have no literature and very few newspapers. Their religion is the Dutch and Huguenot Calvinism of the seventeenth century, rigid and stern, hostile to all new light, imbued with the spirit of the Old Testament rather than of the New. They dislike and despise the Kafirs, whom they have regarded as Israel may have regarded Amalek, and whom they have treated with equal severity. They hate the English also,[78] who are to them the hereditary enemies that conquered them at the Cape; that drove them out into the wilderness in 1836; that annexed their Republic in 1877, and thereafter broke the promises of self-government made at the time of the annexation; that stopped their expansion on the west by occupying Bechuanaland, and on the north by occupying Matabililand and Mashonaland; and that were still, as they believed, plotting to find some pretext for overthrowing their independence.[79] This hatred is mingled with a contempt for those whom they defeated at Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill, and with a fear born of the sense that the English are their superiors in knowledge, in activity, and in statecraft. It is always hard for a nation to see the good qualities of its rivals and the strong points of its opponents' case; but with the Boers the difficulty is all the greater because they know little or nothing of the modern world and of international politics. Two centuries of solitary pastoral life have not only given them an aversion for commerce, for industrial pursuits, and for finance, but an absolute incapacity for such occupations, so that when gold was discovered in their country, they did not even attempt to work it,[80] but were content to sell, usually for a price far below its value, the land where the gold-reefs lay, and move off with the proceeds to resume elsewhere their pastoral life. They have the virtues appropriate to a simple society. They are brave, good-natured, hospitable, faithful to one another, generally pure in their domestic life, seldom touched by avarice or ambition. But the corruption of their Legislature shows that it is rather to the absence of temptation than to any superior strength of moral principle that these merits have been due. For politics they have little taste or gift. Politics can flourish only where people are massed together, and the Boer is a solitary being who meets his fellows solely for the purposes of religion or some festive gathering. Yet ignorant and slow-witted as they are, inborn ability and resolution are not wanting. They have indeed a double measure of wariness and wiliness in their intercourse with strangers, because their habitual suspicion makes them seek in craft the defence for their ignorance of affairs; while their native doggedness is confirmed by their belief in the continued guidance and protection of that Providence whose hand led them through the wilderness and gave them the victory over all their enemies.
This was the people into whose territory there came, after 1884, a sudden swarm of gold-seekers. The Uitlanders, as these strangers are called (the word is not really Dutch, one is told, but an adaptation from the German), who by 1890 had come to equal and soon thereafter exceeded the whole number of the Boers, belonged to many stocks. The natives of England, the Cape, and Natal were the most numerous, but there were also many English-speaking men from other regions, including Australians and Americans, as well as a smaller number of Germans and Scandinavians, some Russians (mostly Jews) and a few Italians and Frenchmen. Unlike as these newcomers were to one another, they were all still more unlike the rude hunting and pastoral people among whom they came. They were miners, traders, financiers, engineers, keen, nimble-minded men, all more or less skilled in their respective crafts, all bent on gain, and most of them with that sense of irresponsibility and fondness for temporary pleasure which a chanceful and uncertain life, far from home, and relieved from the fear of public opinion, tends to produce. Except some of the men from the two Colonies, they could not speak the Boer Taal, and had no means of communication, any more than they had social or moral affinities, with the folk of the land. There were therefore no beginnings of any assimilation between them and the latter. They did not affect the Boers, except with a sense of repulsion, and still less did the Boers affect them. Moreover, there were few occasions for social intercourse. The Uitlanders settled only along the Witwatersrand, and were aggregated chiefly in Johannesburg. The Boers who had lived on the Rand, except a few who came daily into the towns with their waggons to sell milk and vegetables, retired from it. It was only in Pretoria and in a few of the villages that there was any direct social contact between the two elements.
Although less than half of the immigrants came from England, probably five-sixths spoke English and felt themselves drawn together not only by language, but by community of ideas and habits. The Australians, the Americans, and the men from Cape Colony and Natal considered themselves for all practical—I do not say for all political—purposes to be English, and English became the general spoken tongue not only of Johannesburg, but of the mining districts generally. Hearing nothing but English spoken, seeing nothing all round them that was not far more English than Dutch, though English with a half-colonial, half-American tinge, it was natural that the bulk of the Uitlanders should deem themselves to be in a country which had become virtually English, and should see something unreasonable or even grotesque in the control of a small body of persons whom they deemed in every way their inferiors. However, before I describe their sentiments and their schemes, some account must be given of the government under which they lived.
As was explained in a previous chapter ([Chapter XII]) the South African Republic was formed by the union, between 1858 and 1862, of several small and theretofore practically independent republican communities. Its constitution was set forth in a document called the Grondwet,[81] or "Fundamental Law," enacted in 1858 and partly based on a prior draft of 1855. It is a very crude, and indeed rude, instrument, occasionally obscure, and containing much matter not fit for a constitution. It breathes, however, a thoroughly free spirit, save as regards Kafirs and Roman Catholics, recognizing the people as a source of power, laying down the old distinction between the three departments of government,—legislative, executive, and judicial,—and guaranteeing some of the primordial rights of the citizen. By it the government was vested in a President, head of the executive, and elected for five years, an Executive Council of five members (three elected and two ex officio), and a Legislature called the Volksraad, elected by the citizens on a very extended suffrage, and declared to be the supreme power in the State. The Volksraad consists of one chamber, in which there are at present twenty-four members. The President has the right of speaking, though not of voting, in it, but has no veto on its action. Though there are few constitutions anywhere which give such unlimited power to the Legislature, the course of events—oft-recurring troubles of all sorts, native wars, internal dissensions, financial pressure, questions with the British Government—have made the President practically more important than the Legislature, and, in fact, the main force in the Republic. The Executive Council has exerted little power and commanded little deference, while the Volksraad has usually been guided by the President and has never taken the direction of affairs out of his hands. Both legislation and administration have been carried on in a rough-and-ready fashion, sometimes in violation of the strict letter of the law. In particular the provision of the Grondwet, that no statute should be enacted without being submitted for a period of three months to the people, has been practically ignored by the enactment as laws of a large number of resolutions on matters not really urgent, although the Grondwet permits this to be done only in cases which do not admit of delay. This has, however, been rectified by a law passed subsequently to 1895, altering the provision of the Grondwet.
In 1881, when the Republic recovered its independence, there were neither roads, railways, nor telegraphs in the country. Its towns were rough hamlets planted round a little church. Its people had only the bare necessaries of life. The taxes produced scarcely any revenue. The treasury was empty, and the Government continued to be hard-pressed for money and unable to construct public works or otherwise improve the country till 1885, when the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand began to turn a stream of gold into its coffers. Riches brought new difficulties and new temptations. Immigrants rushed in,—capitalists, miners, and traders. As the produce of the gold-field increased, it became plain that they would come in ever increasing numbers. The old Boers took alarm. The rush could hardly have been stopped, and to stop it would have involved a check in the expansion of the revenue. It was accordingly determined to maintain the political status quo by excluding these newcomers from political rights. The Grondwet declares (Article VI.) that "the territory is open for every foreigner who obeys the laws of the Republic," and as late as 1881 an immigrant could acquire the electoral franchise after a residence of two years. In 1882, however, this period was raised to five years, and in 1887 to fifteen. In 1890, by which time the unenfranchised strangers had begun to agitate for the right to be represented, a nominal concession was made by the creation of a new chamber, called the Second Volksraad, for membership in which a newcomer might be eligible after taking an oath of allegiance followed by four years' residence, the right to vote at elections to this chamber being attainable after the oath and two years' residence. This Second Raad, however, is limited to the consideration of certain specified subjects, not including taxation, and its acts can be overruled by the First Volksraad, while its assent is not required to the acts of that body. It has therefore turned out little better than a sham, having, in fact, been created only as a tub to throw to the Uitlander whale. The effect of the legislation of 1890 and subsequent years down to 1894 (legislation too intricate and confused to be set forth in detail here) has been to debar any immigrant from acquiring the right to vote for the First Volksraad until he has passed the age of forty and resided for at least twelve years in the country after taking the oath and being placed on the local government lists, lists on which the local authorities are said to be nowise careful to place him. Nor does birth in the Republic confer citizenship, unless the father has taken the oath of allegiance. President Kruger, who has held office since 1881, was chiefly instrumental in passing these laws, for his force of character, long experience of affairs, and services in the crisis of 1877-81 gave him immense power over the Raad, in which he constantly spoke, threatening the members with the loss of national independence unless they took steps to stem the rising tide of foreign influence. As a patriot, he feared the English; as a Boer Puritan of the old stubborn stock, he hated all foreigners and foreign ways, seeing in them the ruin of the ancient customs of his people. He carried this antagonism so far that, being unable to find among his citizens men sufficiently educated to deal with the growing mass of administrative work which the increase of wealth, industry, and commerce brought, he refused to appoint Dutch-speaking men from the Cape or Natal, because they were natives of British Colonies, and recruited his civil service from Holland. The Hollanders he imported were far more strange to the country than Cape Dutchmen would have been, and the Boers did not, and do not now, take kindly to them. But they were, by the necessity of their position, anti-English, and that was enough.
Meanwhile the old Boer virtues were giving way under new temptations. The Volksraad (as is believed all over South Africa) became corrupt, though of course there have always been pure and upright men among its members. The civil service was not above suspicion. Rich men and powerful corporations surrounded those who had concessions to give or the means of influencing legislation, whether directly or indirectly. The very inexperience of the Boer ranchman who came up as a member of the Volksraad made him an easy prey. All sorts of abuses sprang up, while the primary duties of a government were very imperfectly performed. Hardly any administration was needed while the Transvaal had a population of wandering stock-farmers. But when one hundred thousand white immigrants were congregated along the Witwatersrand, and were employing some fifty thousand native workpeople, an efficient police, an abundant water-supply, good sanitary regulations, and laws to keep liquor from the natives became urgently needed; and none of these things was provided, although taxation continued to rise and the treasury was overflowing. Accordingly, the discontent of the Uitlanders increased. It was no longer a mere question of obtaining political rights for their own sake, it was also a question of winning political power in order to reform the administration, and so secure those practical benefits which the President and the Volksraad and the Hollander officials were either unable or unwilling to give. In 1892 an association, called the National Union, was formed by a number of Uitlanders, "to obtain, by all constitutional means, equal rights for all citizens of the Republic, and the redress of all grievances." Although nearly all those who formed it were natives either of England or of the British Colonies, it did not seek to bring the country under British control, but included among its aims "the maintenance of the independence of the Republic." Nevertheless, it incurred the hostility of the President and his friends, and its petitions were unceremoniously repulsed. This tended to accentuate the anti-Boer feeling of the Uitlanders, so that when Sir H. Loch, the High Commissioner, came up from the Cape in 1894 to negotiate regarding Swaziland and other pending questions, he was made the object of a vehement demonstration at Pretoria. The English took the horses out of his carriage and drew it through the streets, waving the British flag even over the head of President Kruger himself, and shouting "Reform! reform!" This incident redoubled Mr. Kruger's apprehensions, but did not shake his purpose. It suggested new plans to the Uitlanders, who had (shortly before) been further incensed by the demand of the Government that they should, although debarred from the suffrage, serve in a military commando sent against the Kafir chief Malaboch. Despairing of constitutional agitation, they began to provide themselves with arms and to talk of a general rising. Another cause, which I have not yet mentioned, had recently sharpened their eagerness for reforms. About 1892 the theory was propounded that the gold-bearing reefs might be worked not only near the surface, but also at much greater depths, and that, owing to the diminution of the angle of the dip as the beds descend into the earth, a much greater mass of gold-bearing rock might be reached than had been formerly deemed possible. This view, soon confirmed by experimental borings, promised a far longer life to the mines than had been previously expected. Those who had come to the Rand thinking they might probably leave it after a few years now conceived the idea of permanent residence, while the directors of the great mining companies, perceiving how much their industry might be developed, smarted more than ever under the maladministration and exactions from which the industry suffered.
These were the events and these the causes that had brought about the state of things which a visitor saw at Pretoria and Johannesburg in November, 1895. Revolution was already in the air, but few could guess what form it would take. The situation was a complicated one, because each of the two main sections of the population, Boers and Uitlanders, was itself subdivided into minor groups. The Uitlanders were of many nationalities; but those who spoke English were so much the most numerous that I shall speak of them only, dismissing the remainder with the remark that while many of them sympathized with the Reform movement, few of them gave it active support, while most of the Germans, moved by anti-British feeling, favoured President Kruger's Government.
The English section, including Cape and Natal men, Australians and Americans, consisted of three sets of persons: the middle classes, the capitalist mine-owners, and the working men. The middle class people, traders, professional men, engineers, and the like, either belonged to or were in sympathy with the National Union. It was they who had formed it. They had recently presented to the Volksraad a petition, signed by thirty-eight thousand non-enfranchised residents, asking for reforms, and this petition had been scornfully rejected, one member saying, with no disapproval from his colleagues, that if the strangers wanted to get what they called their rights they would have to fight for them. Their agitation had been conducted publicly and on constitutional lines, without threats of force. It was becoming plain, however, in 1895, that some at least of the leaders were now prepared to use force and would take arms whenever a prospect of success appeared. But under what flag would they fight? Would they adhere to their original idea, and maintain an independent South African Republic when they had ejected the dominant oligarchy and secured political power for all residents? Or would they hoist the Union Jack and carry the country back under the British Crown? No one could speak positively, but most thought that the former course would be taken. The Americans would be for it. Most of the Cape people who came of Dutch stock would be for it. Even among the pure English, some talked bitterly of Majuba Hill, and declared they would not fight to give the country back to Britain which had abandoned it in 1881.
The motives of these Reformers were simple and patent. Those of them who had been born and lived long in Africa thought it an intolerable wrong that, whereas everywhere else in South Africa they could acquire the suffrage and the means of influencing the government after two or three years' residence, they were in the Transvaal condemned to a long disability, and denied all voice in applying the taxes which they paid. Thinking of South Africa as practically one country, they complained that here, and here only, were they treated as aliens and inferiors. Both they and all the other Uitlanders had substantial grievances to redress. Food was inordinately dear, because a high tariff had been imposed on imports. Water-supply, police, sanitation, were all neglected. Not only was Dutch the official language, but in the public schools Dutch was then the only medium of instruction; and English children were compelled to learn arithmetic, geography, and history out of Dutch text-books. It was these abuses, rather than any wish to bring the Transvaal under the British flag, or even to establish a South African Confederation, that disposed them to revolt against a Government which they despised.
The mine-owning capitalists were a very small class, but powerful by their wealth, their intelligence, and their influence over those whom they employed. They had held aloof from the agitation which began in 1892, because they did not themselves care for the franchise, not meaning to spend their lives in the Transvaal, and because they knew that political disturbances would interfere with the mining industry. The leading man, and certainly one of the ablest men among them,[82] foresaw trouble as far back as June, 1894, when he wrote that the unrest of the country came "from the open hostility of the Government to the Uitlanders, and its hostility to all principles of sound Government; the end will be revolution;" and a few weeks later wrote again: "The mining companies ought to have arms. The courage of the Boers is exaggerated. If they knew there were in Johannesburg three thousand well-armed men, they would not talk so loud of destroying the town." Nevertheless, these capitalists, like capitalists all over the world, disliked force, and long refused to throw themselves into the movement. They raised a fund for the purpose of trying "to get a better Volksraad"—whether by influencing members or by supplying funds for election expenses has never been made clear. However, these efforts failed, and they became at last convinced that the loss of their industry from misgovernment was, and would continue, greater than any loss which temporary disturbances might involve. The vista of deep-level mining, which had now opened itself before them, made their grievances seem heavier. Before they entered on a new series of enterprises, which would at first be costly, they wished to relieve mining from the intolerable burdens of a dynamite monopoly, foolishly or corruptly granted to a firm which charged an extortionate price for this necessity; of a high tariff both on food-stuffs, involving large expenses in feeding the workpeople, and on mine machinery; of extravagantly heavy railway rates for coal; and of a system which, by making it easy for the Kafir workers to get drunk, reduced the available amount of native labour by one-third, and increased the number of accidents in the mines. These burdens made the difference of one or two or three per cent, on the dividend in the best mines, threatened the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and made it useless to persevere with the working of a third class, where the ore was of a still lower grade. Such were the considerations which at last determined several of the leading mine-owners to throw in their lot with the Reform party; and the fusion of the two streams gave a new force to the movement. This fusion took place in the middle of 1895, and had become known to many, though not to all, of the Johannesburgers in November of that year. It inspired them with fresh hopes, and made them think that the day of action was near. The object of these capitalists was to obtain better government, not the extinction of the Republic, or its addition to the territories of Britain. This, however, was not the main object of Mr. Rhodes (then prime minister of Cape Colony and managing director of the British South Africa Company), with whom they were (though the fact was known only to a very few of the leaders) by this time in communication. Although he was largely interested in some of the mines, his aim was, as even his opponents have now admitted, not a pecuniary one. It was (as is generally believed) to prevent the Transvaal from passing under anti-British influences, and to secure that it should ultimately become incorporated in a confederation of the several States and Colonies of South Africa under the British Crown. There were probably others among the leaders who shared this purpose; but some did not, and here was a question which would seem to have divided the chiefs as it divided the rank and file. A rising there was to be. But under what flag? This vital point was left unsettled, and at the last moment it caused a fatal delay.
The third class of Uitlanders consisted of the white workmen. It was the most numerous class, and its action would evidently be decisive. When the visitor who heard the situation discussed—for there was no secrecy observed—asked about the attitude of the working men, he received no very definite answer. The general belief was that they would respond to a call to arms; some from patriotism, because most of them were Englishmen and Australians; some because they meant to make the Transvaal their home, and had an interest in good government; some from sympathy with their employers; some from the love of a fight, because they were men of mettle. One or two of the Reform leaders were able speakers, and meant to rouse them by eloquence when the proper moment arrived. The result showed that a majority—that is, of the English-speaking workmen—were willing to fight. But when the day of battle seemed to be at hand, many, including most of the Cornish miners, proved to be indifferent, and departed by train amid the jeers of their comrades.
These three sections of Uitlanders constituted a numerical majority not merely of the dwellers on the Rand, but of the whole white population of the country.[83] There are about 65,000 Boers, all told, and about 24,000 male citizens over the age of sixteen. The English-speaking Uitlanders numbered nearly 100,000, of whom fully one-half were adult males. Seven-eighths of these were gathered on the Rand. Had they been armed and drilled and unanimous, they would have been irresistible. But they were not unanimous, and were, moreover, not only unarmed but also unorganized, being a crowd of persons suddenly gathered from the four winds of heaven.
Over against the Uitlanders stood the native Boer population, among whom we must distinguish two classes. The majority, consisting of the old "true blues," who hated the British Government and clung to their national ways, supported the Boer Government in its stubborn refusal to grant reforms. The President in particular had repeatedly declared himself against any concession, insisting that no concessions would satisfy the disaffected. He looked upon the whole movement as a scheme to destroy the independence of the country and hand it over to England. Exercising by his constant harangues in the Volksraad, what has been called a "dictatorship of persuasion", he warned the people that their customs, their freedom, their religion, were at stake, and could be saved only by keeping the newcomers out of power. He was confirmed in this policy of resistance by the advice of his Hollander officials, and especially of the State Secretary, an able and resolute man.
But the President, though powerful, was not omnipotent. There existed a considerable party opposed to him, which had nearly overthrown him at the last preceding presidential election. There was in the Volksraad a liberal minority, which advocated reforms. There were among the country Boers a number of moderate men who disliked the Hollander influence and the maladministration of the Government, and one was told (though with what truth I could not ascertain) that the trekking which went on out of the Transvaal into Mashonaland and to the far north-west was partly due to this discontent. There was also much opposition among the legal profession, Dutch as well as English, for attacks had been made upon the independence of the judiciary, and the reckless conduct of legislation gave displeasure. So far back as 1894 the Chief Justice, a man greatly respected for his abilities and his services to the State, had delivered a public address warning the people against the dangers which threatened them from neglect of the provisions of the constitution. Whether this party of opposition among the enfranchised citizens would have aided the Reform movement was doubtful. They would certainly not have done so had the British flag been raised. But if the movement had sought only the destruction of Hollander influence and the redress of grievances, they would at any rate have refused to join in resisting it.
"Why," it may be asked—"why, under these circumstances, with so many open enemies, and so many wavering supporters, did not President Kruger bow to the storm and avert revolt by reasonable concessions?" He had not a friend in the world except Germany, which had gone out of her way to offer him sympathy. But Germany was distant, and he had no seaport. The people of the Orange Free State had been ready to help the Transvaal in 1881, and from among the Boers of Cape Colony there might in the crisis of that year have come substantial succour. But both the Free State and the Cape Boers had been alienated by the unfriendly attitude of the President in commercial matters and by his refusal to employ Cape Dutchmen in the Transvaal service. The annoyance of these kindred communities had been very recently accentuated by a dispute about the drifts (i.e., fords where waggons cross) on the Orange River. It was therefore improbable that any help could be obtained from outside against a purely internal movement, which aimed solely at reform, and did not threaten the life of the Republic.
The answer to the question just put is to be found not so much in the material interests as in the sentiments of the old Boer party. They extended their hatred of the English, or rather perhaps of the British Government, to the English-speaking Uitlanders generally, and saw in the whole movement nothing but an English plot. If the President had cared to distinguish, he might have perceived that the capitalists cared, not for the franchise, but for the success of their mines; and he might, by abolishing the wasteful concessions,—which did not even enrich the State, but only the objects of its ill-directed bounty,—by reducing the tariff, and by keeping drink from the blacks, have disarmed the hostility of the mine owners, and have had only the National Union to deal with. Even the National Union would have lost most of its support if he had reformed the administration and allowed English to be used in the schools. He might have taken a hint from the Romans, who, when they admitted a large body of new citizens, managed to restrict their voting power, and might, in granting the suffrage to those who had resided for a certain period on the Rand, have kept the representation of the Rand district so small that it could not turn the balance against the old Boer party in the Volksraad. Had he gone further, and extended the franchise to all immigrants after, say, five years' residence, he might not only have disarmed opposition, but have made the South African Republic a powerful State, no considerable section of whose inhabitants would thereafter have thought of putting themselves under the British Crown. To have gone this length would no doubt have been to take the risk that a Republic of Boers might become before long a Republic of Englishmen, with an English President; and from this he naturally recoiled, not merely out of personal ambition, but out of honest national feeling. But short of this, he might, by dividing his enemies, have averted a grave peril, from which he was in the end delivered, not by his own strength, but by the mistakes of his antagonists. However, he kept the ship steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool, dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and strong because he is in sympathy with them; adding to his trust in Providence no small measure of worldly craft; uneducated, but able to foil the statesmen of Europe at their own weapons, and perhaps all the more capable because his training has been wholly that of an eventful life and not of books.
This was how things stood in the Transvaal in November, 1895. People have talked of a conspiracy, but never before was there, except on the stage,[84] so open a conspiracy. Two-thirds of the action—there was another third, which has only subsequently become known—went on before the public. The visitor had hardly installed himself in an hotel at Pretoria before people began to tell him that an insurrection was imminent, that arms were being imported, that Maxim guns were hidden, and would be shown to him if he cared to see them, an invitation which he did not feel called on to accept. In Johannesburg little else was talked of, not in dark corners, but at the club where everybody lunches, and between the acts at the play. There was something humorous in hearing the English who dominate in so many other places, talking of themselves as a downtrodden nationality, and the Boers as their oppressors, declaring that misgovernment could not be endured for ever, and that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The effect was increased by the delightful unconsciousness of the English that similar language is used in Ireland to denounce Saxon tyranny. The knowledge that an insurrection was impending was not confined to the Transvaal. All over South Africa one heard the same story; all over South Africa men waited for news from Johannesburg, though few expected the explosion to come so soon. One thing alone was not even guessed at. In November it did not seem to have crossed any one's mind that the British South Africa Company would have any hand in the matter. Had it been supposed that it was concerned, much of the sympathy which the movement received would have vanished.
As I am not writing a history of the revolution, but merely describing the Johannesburg aspects of its initial stage, I need not attempt the task—for which, indeed, no sufficient materials have as yet been given to the world—of explaining by what steps and on what terms the Company's managing director and its administrator and its police came into the plan. But it seems probable that the Johannesburg leaders did not begin to count upon help from the Company's force before the middle of 1895 at earliest, and that they did not regard that force as anything more than an ultimate resource in case of extreme need. Knowing that the great body of the Uitlanders, on whose support they counted, would be unorganised and leaderless, they desired, as the moment for action approached, to have a military nucleus round which their raw levies might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the end, and to avoid all appearance of being an English irruption.[85]
To the visitor who saw and heard what I have been describing—and no Englishman could pass through without seeing and hearing it—two questions naturally presented themselves. One related to the merits of the case. This was a question which only a visitor considered, for the inhabitants were drawn by race or interest to one side or the other. It raised a point often debated by moralists: What are the circumstances which justify insurrection? Some cases are too clear for argument. Obviously any subject of a bloodthirsty tyrant ruling without or against law is justified in taking up arms. No one doubts that the Christian subjects of the Sultan ought to rebel if they had a prospect of success; and those who try to make them rebel are blamed only because the prospect of success is wanting. On the other hand, it is clear that subjects of a constitutional Government, conducted in accordance with law, do wrong and must be punished, if they take arms, even when they have grievances to redress. Here, however, was a case which seemed to lie between the extreme instances. The Uitlanders, it need hardly be said, did not concern themselves with nice distinctions. In the interior of South Africa Governments and Constitutions were still in a rudimentary stage; nor had the habit of obeying them been fully formed. So many non-legal things had been done in a high-handed way, and so many raids into native territories had been made by the Boers themselves, that the sort of respect for legality which Europeans feel was still imperfectly developed in all sections of the population. Those of the Reformers, however, who sought to justify their plans, argued that the Boer Government was an oligarchy which overtaxed its subjects, and yet refused them those benefits which a civilised Government is bound to give. It was the Government of a small and ignorant minority, and, since they believed it to be corrupt as well as incompetent, it inspired no respect. Peaceful agitation had proved useless. Did not the sacred principle of no taxation without representation, which had been held to justify the American Revolution, justify those who had been patient so long in trying to remove their grievances by force, of course with as little effusion of blood as possible?
On the other hand, there was much to be said for the Boers, not only from the legal, but from the sentimental, side of the case. They had fled out of Cape Colony sixty years before, had suffered many perils and triumphed over many foes, had recovered their independence by their own courage when Britain had deprived them of it, had founded a commonwealth upon their own lines and could now keep it as their own only by the exclusion of those aliens in blood, speech and manners who had recently come among them. They had not desired these strangers, nor had the strangers come for anything but gold. True, they had opened the land to them, they had permitted them to buy the gold-reefs, they had filled their coffers with the taxes which the miners paid. But the strangers came with notice that it was a Boer State they were entering, and most of them had come, not to stay, and to identify themselves with the old citizens, but to depart after amassing gain. Were these immigrants of yesterday to be suffered to overturn the old Boer State, and build up on its ruins a new one under which the Boer would soon find his cherished customs gone and himself in turn a stranger? Had not the English many other lands to rule, without appropriating this one also? Put the grievances of which the Uitlanders complained at their highest, and they did not amount to wrongs such as had in other countries furnished the usual pretext for insurrection. Life, religion, property, personal freedom, were not at stake. The worst any one suffered was to be overtaxed and to want some of those advantages which the old citizens had never possessed and did not care to have. These were hardships, but were they hardships such as could justify a recourse to arms?
The other question which an observer asked himself was whether an insurrection would succeed. Taking a cooler view of the position than it was easy for a resident to take, he felt some doubt on this point, and it occurred to him to wonder whether, if the Government was really so corrupt as the Uitlanders described it, the latter might not attain their object more cheaply, as well as peaceably, by using those arguments which were said to prevail with many members of the Volksraad. Supposing this to be impossible,—and it may well have been found impossible, for men not scrupulous in lesser matters may yet refuse to tamper with what they hold vital,—were the forces at the disposal of the Reform leaders sufficient to overthrow the Government? It had only two or three hundred regular troops, artillerymen stationed at Pretoria, and said to be not very efficient. But the militia included all Boers over sixteen; and the Boer, though not disciplined in the European way, was accustomed to shoot, inured to hardships by his rough life, ready to fight to the death for his independence. This militia, consisting of eighteen thousand men or more, would have been, when all collected, more than a match in the field for any force the Uitlanders were prepared to arm. And in point of fact, when the rising took place, the latter had only some three thousand rifles ready, while few of their supporters knew anything of fighting. As the Reform leaders were aware that they would be out-matched if the Government had time to gather its troops, it has been subsequently hinted that they meant to carry Pretoria by a coup de main, capturing the President, and forthwith, before the Boer militia could assemble, to issue a call for a general popular vote or plebiscite of all the inhabitants, Boers and Uitlanders, which should determine the future form of government. Others have thought that the Reformers would not have taken the offensive, but have entrenched themselves in Johannesburg, and have held out there, appealing meanwhile to the High Commissioner, as representative of the Paramount Power, to come up, interpose his mediation, and arrange for the peaceable taking of such a general popular vote as I have mentioned. To do this it might not have been necessary to defend the town for more than a week or ten days, before which time the general sympathy which they expected from the rest of South Africa would have made itself felt. Besides, there were in the background (though this was of course unknown to the visitor and to all but a few among the leaders) the British South Africa Company's police force by this time beginning to gather at Pitsani, who were pledged to come if summoned, and whose presence would have enabled them to resist a Boer assault on the town.
As everybody knows, the question of strength was never tested. The rising was to have been ushered in by a public meeting at the end of December. This meeting was postponed till the 6th of January; but the Company's police force, instead of waiting to be summoned, started for Johannesburg at the time originally fixed. Their sudden entrance, taking the Reform leaders by surprise and finding them unprepared, forced the movement to go off at half-cock, and gave to it an aspect quite different from that which it had hitherto borne. That which had been a local agitation now appeared in the light of an English invasion, roused all the Boers, of whatever party, to defend their country, and drew from the High Commissioner an emphatic disclaimer and condemnation of the expedition, which the home Government repeated. The rising at Johannesburg, which the entrance of the police had precipitated, ended more quickly than it had begun, as soon as the surrender of the Company's forces had become known, for the representatives of the High Commissioner besought the Uitlanders to lay down their arms and save the lives of the leaders of that force.[86] This they did, and, after what had happened, there was really nothing else to be done.
The most obvious moral of the failure is the old one, that revolutions are not so easy to carry out as they look when one plans them beforehand. Of all the insurrections and conspiracies recorded in history, probably not five per cent. have succeeded. The reason is that when a number of private persons not accustomed to joint action have to act secretly together, unable to communicate freely with one another, and still less able to appeal beforehand to those on whose eventual support they rely, the chances of disagreement, of misunderstanding, of failure to take some vital step at exactly the right moment, are innumerable; while the Government in power has the advantage of united counsels, and can issue orders to officers who are habituated to prompt obedience.[87] In this instance, the plan was being conducted by three groups of persons in three places distant from one another,—Johannesburg, Pitsani, and Cape Town,—so that the chances of miscarriage were immensely increased. Had there been one directing mind and will planted at Johannesburg, the proper centre for direction, the movement might have proved successful.
Another reflection will have occurred to the reader, as it occurred to the visitor who saw the storm brewing in November, 1895: Why could not the Reformers have waited a little longer? Time was on their side. The Uitlanders were rapidly growing by the constant stream of immigrants. In a few years more they would have so enormously outnumbered the native Boers that not only would their material strength have been formidable, but their claim to the franchise would have become practically irresistible. Moreover, President Kruger was an old man, no longer in strong health. When age and infirmity compelled his retirement, neither of the persons deemed most likely to succeed would have thrown obstacles in the way of reform, nor would any successor have been able to oppose a resistance as strong as Mr. Kruger's had proved. These considerations were so obvious that one asks why, with the game in their hands at the end of a few years, the various groups concerned did not wait quietly till the ripe fruit fell into their mouths. Different causes have been assigned for their action. It is said that they believed that the Transvaal Government was on the eve of entering into secret relations, in violation of the Convention of 1884, with a European Power, and that this determined them to strike before any such new complication arose. Others hint that some of those concerned believed that a revolution must in any case soon break out in the Transvaal, that a revolution would turn the country into an independent English Republic, that such a republic would spread Republican feelings among the British Colonies, and lead before long to their separation from the mother country. To prevent this, they were resolved to take control of the movement and steer it away from those rocks. Without denying that these or other still more conjectural motives which one hears assigned may have influenced some of the more long-sighted leaders,—and the Transvaal, with its vast wealth and growing population, was no doubt becoming the centre of gravity in South African politics,—I conceive that a more obvious cause of haste may be found in the impatience of those Uitlander residents who were daily vexed by grievances for which they could get no redress, and in the annoyance of the capitalists, who saw their mining interests languishing and the work of development retarded. When people have long talked over their wrongs and long planned schemes for throwing off a detested yoke, they yield at last to their own impatience, feeling half ashamed that so much talk should not have been followed by action.
Whatever were the motives at work, whatever the ultimate aims of the leaders, few things could have been more deplorable than what in fact occurred. Since the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 nothing has done so much to rekindle racial hostility in South Africa; nothing has so much retarded and still impedes the settlement of questions which were already sufficiently difficult.
I have described in this chapter only such part of the circumstances which led up to the rising as I actually saw, and have, for reasons already stated, confined myself to a narrative of the main facts, and a statement of the theories put forward, abstaining from comments on the conduct of individuals. The expedition of the British South Africa Company's police took place after I left the country. Of it and of what led to it oral accounts have been given by some of the principal actors, as well as by many independent pens, while the visible phenomena of the Johannesburg movement have been less described and are certainly less understood. I have dwelt on them the more fully not only because they are a curious episode in history which will not soon lose its interest, but also because the political and industrial situation on the Witwatersrand remained in 1897 substantially what it was in November 1895. Some few reforms have been given, some others promised. But the mine owners did not cease to complain, and the Uitlanders were excluded from the suffrage as rigorously as ever. The Transvaal difficulty remained, and still disturbed the tranquillity of South Africa. The problem is not a simple one, and little or no progress had been made towards its solution.