‘Well, all the same, it is hard lines that an educated Englishman should submit to laws made by ignorant, uneducated Boers; we won’t submit to it. Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, Britons never, never will be slaves; there you have my opinion.’
‘My dear fellow, no one wants you to submit to it. I don’t believe you got an invitation from the Boer Government to come here and live under their laws. All you have to do is to submit to it or leave. No one will prevent you or ask you to come back. I do not say this because I wish to make myself nasty, but, in common fairness, you must consider what is right. Here you come into a free Republic, inhabited by a quiet, peace-loving, God-fearing people. They have obtained their country after herculean struggles against enemies from within and without. Again and again they had to fight for country and liberty, and at last they seem to be safe, and wealth comes to them. Strangers from afar come unto them. (Strangers, besides, who are of the people who have persecuted and chased them from their old home, “into a new country, and out again”; and still are they threatened by the Government of these self-same strangers.) They share their wealth with these strangers, they give these strangers the protection of their laws, on an equal footing with themselves. But these gold-hunting strangers are not satisfied with this. It is not enough for them to share with the original owners of the soil—no, they want to be masters! And because the owners of the soil will not walk quietly out of their country and give everything up to the would-be usurpers, they are reviled, libelled and abused. You are an Englishman, an Englishman’s boast is supposed to be love of “fair play,” where does your love of fair play come in here?’
‘But if they wish to share with us, why do they not share the franchise with us?’
‘That is it—you are asking for the handle of the knife. You know very well that if the franchise is given to every Tom, Dick and Harry, the Uitlanders will get hold of the handle, and if the Boers should try to pull it out of their hands, they will cut their fingers. You are asking them to simply commit political suicide. No, old man, a thing obtained, as their liberty was obtained, will be more cherished than to be thus lightly given up. Now, if your intentions were honest and fair to the Boers, you would quietly wait your hour until the stipulated time expires, when you may legally become a Burgher; and if the time appears rather long, I have perfect confidence that, if the Uitlanders will only show the Government that they wish to become peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the Republic, anxious to advance the honour and prosperity of the country of their adoption, which they can only do by working with the Government, and ceasing to show their prejudice to everything that is Boer, then I am sure the Government will soon shorten the time of probation, and take them into the fold of full burghership.’
‘Yes; but we are not going to humble ourselves and beg for a vote; no, by Jingo! sooner than that, we will fight for it, and take by force what is refused us when we ask for it. Besides, even though we are not strong enough to take the Government by force, we only have to get up a row, and start some sort of revolution, and ask the British Government to step in, and of course England will say to your President, “You cannot keep the peace, we will have to come and keep it for you,” and the trick is done, wacht een beetje.’
Such reasoning disgusted Steve, as I am sure it would many an honest and fair-thinking Englishman. However, he replied,—
‘All I can say is that, if England does this, her glory shall pass away from her; such injustice will be tolerated by neither God nor man, and England shall raise such a cry of shame as has never been heard before. She shall feel something like the man who opened a hive of angry bees, and when the bees are stinging and buzzing about his ears, she shall be sorry she ever opened that hive. But I must say I have more faith in the honour and justice of your countrymen than you seem to have.’
Such discussions as these were the order of the day, and the sample given above may be taken as a fair example of the opinions of the two parties in the country. We shall leave the debaters now, but on some future occasion we shall take advantage of the privilege of historians to visit them again.