The writer suggests that "native reserves or locations should be established on the separate mines, or groups of mines, where the natives can have their huts built, and live more or less under the same conditions as they do in their native kraals. If a native found that he could live under similar conditions to those he has been accustomed to, he will soon be anxious to save enough money to bring his wife and children there, and remain in the labour district for a much longer period than at present is the case.
"It would be a distinct gain to the mining industry as well as to the native."
Mr. Bovill goes into much detail on the subject of the "Pass Laws." I should much desire to reproduce his chapter on that subject, if it were not too long. That system must be wholly abolished, he says: "it is at present worse than any conditions under which slavery exists. It is a criminal-making law. Brand a slave, and you have put him to a certain amount of physical pain for once, but penalties under the Pass Law system mean lashes innumerable at the direction of any Boer Field Cornet or Landdrost. It is a most barbarous system, as brutal as it is criminal-making, alone worthy of a Boer with an exaggerated fear of and cowardly brutality towards a race he has been taught to despise."
Treating of the prohibition imposed on the Natives as to the possession in any way or by any means of a piece of land, he writes: "Many natives are now earning and saving large sums of money, year by year, at the various labour centres. They return home with every intention of following a peaceful life; why should they not be encouraged to put their money into land, and follow their 'peaceful pursuits' as well as any Boer farmer? They are capable of doing it. Besides, if they held fixed property in the State, it would be to their advantage to maintain law and order, when they had everything they possessed at stake. With no interest in the land, the tendency must always be to a nomadic life. They are as thoroughly well capable of becoming true, peaceful, and loyal citizens of the State as are any other race of people. Their instincts and training are all towards law and order. Their lives have been disciplined under native rule, and now that the white man is breaking up that rule, what is he going to give as a substitute? Anarchy and lawlessness, or good government which tends to peace and prosperity?
"We can only hope for better times, and a more humane Government for the natives, to wipe out the wrong that has been done to both black and white under a bastard civilization which has prevailed in Pretoria for the past fifteen years. The Government which holds down such a large number of its subjects by treating them as cut-throats and outlaws, will one day repent bitterly of its sin of misrule."[35]
Tyranny has a genius for creeping in everywhere, and under any and every form of government. This is being strikingly illustrated in these days. Under the name of a Republic, the traditions of a Military Oligarchy have grown up, and stealthily prevailed.
When a nation has no recorded standard of guiding principles of government, it matters not by what name it may be called—Empire, Republic, Oligarchy, or Democracy—it may fall under the blighting influence of the tyranny of a single individual, or a wealthy clique, or a military despot.
Too much weight is given just now to mere names as applied to governments. The acknowledged principles which underlie the outward forms of government alone are vitally important, and by the adherence to or abdication of these principles each nation will be judged. The revered name of Republic is as capable of being dragged in the mire as that of the title of any other form of government. Mere names and words have lately had a strange and even a disastrous power of misleading and deceiving, not persons only, but nations,—even a whole continent of nations. It is needful to beware of being drawn into conclusions leading to action by associations attaching merely to a name, or to some crystallized word which may sometimes cover a principle the opposite of that which it was originally used to express. Such names and words are in some cases being as rapidly changed and remodelled as geographical charts are which represent new and rapidly developing or decaying groups of the human race. Yet names are always to a large part of mankind more significant than facts; and names and appearances in this matter appeal to France and to Switzerland, and in a measure to the American people, in favour of the Boers.
Among the concessions made by Lord Derby in the Convention of 1884, none has turned out to be more unfortunate than that of allowing the Transvaal State to resume the title of the "South African Republic." In South Africa it embodied an impossible ideal; to the outside world it conveyed a false impression. The title has been the reason of widespread error with regard to the real nature of the Transvaal Government and of its struggle with this country. If "Republican Independence" had been all that Mr. Kruger was striving for, there would have been no war. He adopted the name, but not the spirit of a Republic. The "Independence" claimed by him, and urged even now by some of his friends in the British Parliament, is shown by the whole past history of the Transvaal to be an independence and a freedom which involve the enslavement of other men.