In spite, however, of the concession to the Boers, made in Sir T. Shepstone’s altered opinion on the border question, they were by no means reconciled to the loss of their independence, although Captain Clarke says (C. 2316, p. 28), in speaking of the Boers in Lydenburg district, “they, in the majority of cases, would forget fancied wrongs if they thought they had security for their lives and property, education for their children, and good roads for the transport of their produce.”[66]
The following “agreement signed by a large number of farmers at the meeting held at Wonderfontein,” and translated from a Dutch newspaper, the Zuid Afrikaan, published at Capetown on the 15th February (C. 2316, p. 1), gives a different impression of the state of feeling amongst the Boers:
“In the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher of all hearts, and prayerfully waiting on His gracious help and pity, we, burghers of the South African Republic, have solemnly agreed, and we do hereby agree, to make a holy covenant for us, and for our children, which we confirm with a solemn oath.
“Fully forty years ago our fathers fled from the Cape Colony in order to become a free and independent people. Those forty years were forty years of pain and suffering.
“We established Natal, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic, and three times the English Government has trampled our liberty and dragged to the ground our flag, which our fathers had baptised with their blood and tears.
“As by a thief in the night has our Republic been stolen from us. We may nor can endure this. It is God’s will, and is required of us by the unity of our fathers, and by love to our children, that we should hand over intact to our children the legacy of the fathers. For that purpose it is that we here come together and give each other the right hand as men and brethren, solemnly promising to remain faithful to our country and our people, and with our eye fixed on God, to co-operate until death for the restoration of the freedom of our Republic.
“So help us Almighty God.”
These pious words, side by side with the horrible accounts of the use made by the Boers of their liberty while they had it, strike one as incredibly profane; yet they are hardly more so than part of the speech made by Sir T. Shepstone to the burghers of the Transvaal on the occasion of the annexation.