"At the time the Convention was signed, in 1884, the franchise was obtainable after one year's residence. President Kruger determined to serve the Uitlanders, however, as George III.'s Government served the American Colonists, that is, tax them while refusing them representation in the control of the taxes. He went on at one and the same time increasing their burdens monstrously, while he prolonged the period of residence that qualified for a vote from one year to five, and so on, till he made it fourteen years—or fourteen times as long as when the Convention was signed. Nor was this all. He reserved the right personally to veto any Uitlander being placed on the register even after the fourteen years if he thought he was for any reason objectionable. That is, the majority of the taxpayers were disfranchised for ever! These Uitlanders had bought and paid for 60 per cent. of all the property in the Transvaal, and 90 per cent. of the taxes were levied from them; an amount equal to giving every Boer in the country $200 a year of plunder.
"Is a country that is so governed justly to be called a 'Republic?'
"But even the Boers themselves have been adroitly edged out of power by Paul Kruger. The Grondwet, or Constitution, provided that to prevent abuses in legislation, no new law should be passed until the bill for it had been published three months in advance. To evade this, Kruger passed all kinds of measures as amendments to existing laws; which, as he explained, not being new laws, required no notification! Finally, however, he got the Volksraad to rescind this article of the Grondwet; and now, as for some time past, any law of any sort can be passed by a small clique of Kruger's in secret session of the Raad without notice of any sort, and without the knowledge or assent of the people. The Boers have no more voice in such legislation than if they were Chinese. The Transvaal is only a Republic in the same sense that a nutshell is a nut, or a fossil oyster shell is an oyster.
"All that the British Government has ever contended for with President Kruger has been the fair and honourable observance of his engagement in respect of equal rights in Article XIV. of the 1884 Convention. This he has persistently and doggedly refused, while he has been using the millions of money he has wrung from the Uitlanders to purchase the material for the war he has been long years preparing on such a colossal scale to drive the English out of those Colonies in which they have given absolute equality to all. It is this very equality which has upset his calculations, by its leaving too few malcontents among the Dutch population to make any general rising of them possible in Natal or the Cape, on which rising Kruger staked his hope of success in the struggle. As for the Transvaal Boers, the only part they have in the war is to fight for their independence, which was never threatened until they invaded British territory, and thus compelled the Queen's Government to defend it.
"The only alternative left to England to refuse fighting would have been the ground that all war is wrong; but as neither England nor any other nation has ever taken this Christian ground, there was in reality no alternative. Is it fair to stigmatise England as endeavouring to crush two small and weak nations because they have been so small in wisdom and weak in common sense as to become the tools of the daring and crafty autocrat who has decoyed both friend and foe into this war?—I am, with high esteem, thy friend,—JOHN BELLOWS."
It does not come within the scope of this treatise to deal with the case of the Uitlanders, but I have given the foregoing, because it is a clear and concise statement of that case, and because it expresses the strong conviction that I and many others have had from the first, that the worst enemy the Boers have is their own Government. A Government could scarcely be found less amenable to the principles of all just Law, which exists alike for Rulers and ruled. These principles have been violated in the most reckless manner by President Kruger and his immediate supporters. The Boers are suffering now, and paying with their life-blood for the sins of their Government. Pity and sympathy for them, (more especially for those among them who undoubtedly possess higher qualities than mere military prowess and physical courage,) are consistent with the strongest condemnation of the duplicity and lawlessness of their Government.
The Rev. Charles Phillips, who has been eleven years in South Africa, has given his opinion on the native question.
It was part of the Constitution of the Transvaal that no equality in Church or State should be permitted between whites and blacks. In Cape Colony, on the contrary, the Constitution insisted that there should be no difference in consequence of colour. Mr. Phillips enumerates the oppressive conditions under which the natives live in the Transvaal. They may not walk on the sidepaths, or trade even as small hucksters, or hold land. Until two years ago there was no marriage law for the blacks, and that which was then passed was so bad—a £3 fee being demanded for every marriage, with many other difficulties placed in the way of marriage—that the missionaries endeavoured to procure its abolition, and to return to the old state of things. No help is given towards the education of native children, though the natives pay 3 per cent. of the revenue, the Boers paying 7-1/2, and the Uitlanders 89-1/2. The natives have, therefore, actually been helping to educate the Boer children. "In 1896," says Mr. Phillips, "only £650 was granted to the schools of those who paid nine-tenths of the revenue, £63,000 being spent upon the Boer Schools. In other words, the Uitlander child gets 1s. 10d., the Boer child £8 6s. 1d. The Uitlander pays £7 per head for the education of every Boer child, and he has to provide in addition for the education of his own children."