[76] There are for the Council seven electoral provinces, each of which returns three members to the Council, besides one for Griqualand West and one for British Bechuanaland.
A Redistribution Act of 1898 altered the areas of some of the electoral divisions, and the number of members returned by some, so as to adjust representation more accurately to population.
[77] Some friction has, however, arisen from the right claimed by the Council of amending money bills, especially for the purpose (one is told) of securing grants to the electoral provinces they represent.
[78] Since the first edition of this book appeared, Mr. Selous has told me—and no one's authority is higher, for he has lived much amongst them—that this statement is exaggerated, and that, great as has been and is the dislike of the Boers to the British Government, the average Boer is friendly to the individual Englishman.
[79] I was told that their frequent term (when they talk among themselves) for an Englishman is "rotten egg," but some persons who had opportunities of knowing have informed me, since this book was first published, that this is not so. Another common Boer name for an Englishman is "red-neck," drawn from the fact that the back of an Englishman's neck is often burnt red by the sun. This does not happen to the Boer, who always wears a broad-brimmed hat.
[80] Their laws at one time forbade the working of gold mines altogether, for they held with the Roman poet (aurum inrepertum et sic melius situm) that it does least harm when undiscovered.
[81] I have elsewhere analysed (in the Forum for April, 1896) this constitution, and discussed the question whether it is to be regarded as a true Rigid constitution, like that of the United States, of the Swiss Confederation, and of the Orange Free State, or as a Flexible constitution, alterable by the ordinary legislative machinery. Further examination of the matter has confirmed me in the view there suggested, that the constitution belongs to the latter category.
[82] Copies of the letters written by Mr. Lionel Phillips were seized after the rising and published by the Boer Government.
[83] There were some 700,000 Kafirs in the Transvaal, but no one reckoned them as possible factors in a contest, any more than sheep or oxen.
[84] This operatic element appeared in the rising itself, when a fire-escape, skilfully disguised to resemble a Maxim gun, was moved backward and forward across the stage at Johannesburg for the purpose of frightening the Boers at a distance.