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BY
(dedication)
DEDICATED TO MY CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN.
IN the midst of the manifold utterances and discussions on the
burning question of to-day,--the War in South
Africa,--there is one side of the subject which, it seems to me, has
not as yet been considered with the seriousness which it
deserves,--and that is the question of Slavery, and of the treatment
of the native races of South Africa. Though this question has not yet in
England or on the Continent been cited as one of the direct causes of the
war, I am convinced,--as are many others,--that it lies very near
to the heart of the present trouble.
The object of this paper is simply to bring witnesses together who will
testify to the past and present condition of the native
races under British, Dutch, and Transvaal rule. Thee witnesses shall not be all of one nation; they shall come from different countries, and among them there shall be representatives of the native peoples themselves. I shall add little of my own to the testimony of these witnesses. But I will say, in advance, that what I desire to make plain for some sincere persons who are perplexed, is this,--that where a Government has established by Law the principle of the complete and final abolition of Slavery, and made its practice illegal for all time,--as our British Government has done,--there is hope for the native races:--there is always hope that, by an appeal to the law and to British authority, any and every wrong done to the natives, which approaches to or threatens the reintroduction of slavery, shall be redressed. The Abolition of Slavery, enacted by our Government in 1834, was the proclamation of a great principle, strong and clear, a straight line by which every enactment dealing with the question, and every act of individuals, or groups of individuals, bearing on the liberty of the natives can be measured, and any deviation from that straight line of principle can be exactly estimated and judged.
When we speak of injustice done to the natives by the South African
Republics, we are apt to be met with the reproach that the English have
also been guilty of cruelty to native races. This in unhappily true, and
shall not be disguised in the following pages;--but mark
this,--that it is true of certain individuals bearing the English
name, true of groups of individuals, of certain adventurers and
speculators. But this fact does not touch the far more important and
enduring fact that wherever British rule is established, slavery is
abolished, and illegal.
This fact is the ground of the hope for the future of the Missionaries
of our own country, and of other European countries,
as well as of the poor natives themselves, so far as they have come to understand the matter; and in several instances they have shown that they do understand it, and appreciate it keenly.
Those English persons, or groups of persons, who have denied to the
native labourers their hire (which is the essence of slavery), have acted
on their own responsibility, and illegally. This should be
made to be clearly understood in future conditions of peace, and rendered
impossible henceforward.
That future peace which we all desire, on the cessation of the present
grievous war, must be a peace founded on justice, for there is no other
peace worthy of the name; and it must be not only justice as between white
men, but as between white men and men of every shade of complexion.
A speaker at a public meeting lately expressed a sentiment which is more
or less carelessly repeated by many. I quote it, as helping me to define
the principle to which I have referred, which marks the difference between
an offence or crime committed by an individual against the
law, and an offence or crime sanctioned, permitted, or enacted by a State
or Government itself, or by public authority in any way.
This speaker, after confessing, apparently with reluctance, that
"the South African Republic had not been stainless in its relations
towards the blacks," added, "but for these deeds--every
one of them--we could find a parallel among our own people." I
think a careful study of the history of the South African races would
convince this speaker that he has exaggerated the case as against
"our own people" in the matter of deliberate cruelty and
violence towards the natives. However that may be, it does not alter the
fact of the wide difference between the evil deeds of men acting on their
own responsibility and the evil deeds of Governments, and of Communities in
which the
Governmental Authorities do not forbid, but sanction, such actions.
As an old Abolitionist, who has been engaged for thirty years in a war
against slavery in another form, may I be allowed to cite a parallel? That
Anti-slavery War was undertaken against a Law introduced into
England, which endorsed, permitted, and in fact, legalized, a moral and
social slavery already existing--a slavery to the vice of
prostitution. The pioneers of the opposition to this law saw the tremendous
import, and the necessary consequences of such a law. They had previously
laboured to lessen the social evil by moral and spiritual means, but now
they turned their whole attention to obtaining the abolition of the
disastrous enactment which took that evil under its protection. They felt
that the action of Government in passing that law brought the whole nation
(which is responsible for its Government) under a sentence of guilt--a
sentence of moral death. It lifted off from the shoulders of individuals,
in a measure, the moral responsibility which God had laid upon the, and
took that responsibility on its own shoulders, as representing the whole
nation; it foreshadowed a national blight. My readers know that we
destroyed that legislation after a struggle of eighteen years. In the
course of that long struggle, we were constantly met by an assertion
similar in spirit to that made by the speaker to whom I have referred; and
to this day we are met by it in certain European countries. They say to us,
"But for every scandal proceeding from this social vice, which you
cite as committed under the system of Governmental Regulation and sanction,
we can find a parallel in the streets of London, where no Governmental
sanction exists." We are constantly taunted with this, and possibly
we may have to admit its truth in a measure. But our accusers do not see
the immense difference
between Governmental and individual responsibility in this vital matter, neither do they see how additionally hard, how hopeless, becomes the position of the slave who, under the Government sanction, has no appeal to the law of the land; an appeal to the Government which is itself an upholder of slavery, is impossible. The speaker above cited concluded by saying: "The best precaution against the abuse of power on the part of whites living amidst a coloured population is to make the punishment of misdeeds come home to the persons who are guilty of those misdeeds; and if he could but get his countrymen to act up to that view he believed we should really have a better prospect for the future of South Africa than we had had in the past."
With this sentiment I am entirely in accord. It is our hope that the
present national awakening on the whole subject of our position and
responsibilities in South Africa will--in case of the
re-establishment of peace under the principles of British
rule--result in a change in the condition of the native races, both in
the Transvaal, and at the hands of our countrymen and others who may be
acting in their own interests, or in the interests of Commercial
Societies.
I do not intend to sketch anything approaching to a history of South
African affairs during the last seventy or eighty years; that has been ably
done by others, writing from both the British and the Boer side. I shall
only attempt to trace the condition of certain native tribes in connection
with some of the most salient events in South Africa of the century which
is past.
In 1877, as my readers know, the Transvaal was annexed by Sir Theophilus
Shepstone. There are very various opinions as to the justice of that
annexation. I will only here remark that it was at the earnest solicitation
of the Transvaal leaders of that date that an interference on the part of
the British
Commissioner was undertaken. The Republic was in a state of apparently hopeless anarchy, owing to constant conflicts with warlike native tribes around and in the heart of the country. The exchequer was exhausted. By the confession of the President (Burgers) the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.* The acceptance of the annexation was not unanimous, but it was accepted formally in a somewhat sullen and desponding spirit, as a means of averting further impending calamity and restoring a measure of order and peace. Whether this justified or not the act of annexation I do not pretend to judge. The results, however, for the Republic were for the time, financial relief and prosperity, and better treatment of the natives. The financial condition of the country, as I have said, at the tie of the annexation, was one of utter bankruptcy. "After three years of British rule, however, the total revenue receipts for the first quarter of 1879 and 1880 amounted to £22,773 and £47,982 respectively. That is to say, that, during the last year of British rule, the revenue of the country more than doubled itself, and amounted to about £160,000 a year, taking the quarterly returns at the low average of £40,000."+ Trade, also, which in April, 1877, was completely paralysed, had increased enormously. In the middle of 1879, the committee of the Transvaal Chamber of Commerce pointed out that the trade of the country had in two years risen to the sum of two millions sterling per annum. They also pointed out that more than half the land-tax was paid by Englishmen and other Europeans.
In 1881, the Transvaal (under Mr. Gladstone's administration) was
liberated from British control. It was given back to its own leaders, under
certain conditions, agreed to and solemnly
___________________* The financial resources of the
country at that time amounted to 12s.
6d.
___________________+ Quoted from Parliamentary
Blue Book.
Page 7
signed by the President. These are the much-discussed conditions of the Convention of 1881, one of these conditions being that Slavery should be abolished. This condition was indeed, insisted on in every agreement or convention made between the British Government and the Boers; the first being that of 1852, called the Sand River Convention; the second, a convention entered into two years later called the Bloemfontein Convention (which created the Orange Free State); a third agreement as to the cessation of Slavery was entered into at the period of the Annexation, 1877; a fourth was the Convention of 1881; a fifth the Convention of 1884. I do not here speak of the other terms of these Conventions, I only remark that in each a just treatment of the native races was demanded and agreed to.
The retrocession of the Transvaal in 1881 has been much lauded as an act
of magnanimity and justice. There is no doubt that the motive which
prompted it was a noble and generous one; yet neither is there any doubt,
that in certain respects, the results of that act were unhappy, and were no
doubt unanticipated. It was on the natives, whose interests appeared to
have had no place in the generous impulses of Mr. Gladstone, that the
action of the British Government fell most heavily, most mournfully. In
this matter, it must be confessed that the English Government broke faith
with the unhappy natives, to whom it had promised protection, and who so
much needed it. In this, as in many other matters, our country, under
successive Governments, has greatly erred; at times neglecting
responsibilities to her loyal Colonial subjects, and at other times
interfering unwisely.
In one matter, England has, however been consistent, namely, in the
repeated proclamations that Slavery should never be permitted under her
rule and authority.
The formal document of agreement between Her Majesty's Government
and the Boer leaders, known as the Convention of 1881, was signed by both
parties at Pretoria on the afternoon of the 3rd August, in the same room in
which, nearly four years before the Annexation Proclamation was signed by
Sir T. Shepstone.
This formality was followed by a more unpleasant duty for the
Commissioners appointed to settle this business, namely, the necessity of
conveying their message to the natives, and informing them that they had
been handed back by Great Britain, "poor Canaanites," to the
tender mercies of their masters, the "Chosen people," in spite
of the despairing appeals which many of them had made to her.
Some three hundred of the principal native chiefs were called together
in the Square at Pretoria, and there the English Commissioner read to them
the proclamation of Queen Victoria. Sir Hercules Robinson, the Chief
Commissioner, having "introduced the native chiefs to Messrs. Kruger,
Pretorius, and Joubert," having given them good advice as to
indulging in manual labour when asked to do so by the Boers, and having
reminded them that it would be necessary to retain the law relating to
Passes, which is, in the hands of a people like the Boers, almost as unjust
a regulation as a dominant race can invent for the oppression of a subject
people, concluded by assuring them that their "interests would never
be forgotten or neglected by Her Majesty's Government." Having
read this document, the Commission hastily withdrew, and after their
withdrawal the Chiefs were "allowed" to state their opinions to
the Secretary for Native Affairs.
In availing themselves of this permission, it is noticeable that no
allusion was made by the Chiefs to the advantages they
were to reap under the Convention. All their attention was given to the great fact that the country had been ceded to the Boers, and that they were no longer the Queen's subjects. I beg attention to the following appeals from the hearts of these oppressed people. They got very excited, and asked whether it was thought that they had no feelings or hearts, that they were thus treated as a stick or piece of tobacco, which could be passed from hand to hand without question.
Umgombarie, a Zoutpansberg Chief, said: "I am Umgombarie. I
have fought with the Boers, and have many wounds, and they know that what I
say is true. I will never consent to place myself under their rule. I
belong to the English Government. I am not a man who eats with both sides
of his jaw at once; I only use one side. I am English. I have
said."
Silamba said: "I belong to the English. I will never return
under the Boers. You see me, a man of my rank and position; is it right
that such as I should be seized and laid on the ground and flogged, as has
been done to me and other Chiefs?"
Sinkanhla said: "We hear and yet do not hear, we cannot
understand. We are troubling you, Chief, by talking in this way; we hear
the Chiefs say that the Queen took the country because the people of the
country wished it, and again, that the majority of the owners of the
country did not wish her rule, and that therefore the country was given
back. We should like to have the man pointed out from among us black people
who objects to the rule of the Queen. We are the real owners of the
country; we were here when the Boers came, and without asking leave,
settled down and treated us in every way badly. The English Government then
came and took the country; we have now had four
years of rest, and peaceful and just rule. We have been called here to-day, and are told that the country, our country, has been given to the Boers by the Queen. This is a thing which surprises us. Did the country, then, belong to the Boers? Did it not belong to our fathers and forefathers before us, long before the Boers came here? We have heard that the Boers' country is at the Cape. If the Queen wishes to give them their land, why does she not give them back the Cape?"
Umyethile said: "We have no heart for talking. I have
returned to the country from Sechelis, where I had to fly from Boer
oppression. Our hearts are black and heavy with grief to-day at the
news told us. We are in agony; our intestines are twisting and writhing
inside of us, just as you see a snake do when it is struck on the head. We
do not know what has become of us, but we feel dead. It may be that the
Lord may change the nature of the Boers, and that we will not be treated
like dogs and beasts of burden as formerly; but we have no hope of such a
change, and we leave you with heavy hearts and great apprehension as to the
future."* In his Report, Mr.
Shepstone (Secretary for Native Affairs) says, "One chief, Jan
Sibilo, who had been personally threatened with death by the Boers after
the English should leave, could not restrain his feelings, but cried like a
child."
In 1881, the year of the retrocession of the Transvaal, a Royal
Commission was appointed from England to enquire into the internal state of
affairs in the South African Republic. On the 9th of May of that year, an
affidavit was sworn to before that Commission by the Rev. John Thorne, of
St. John the Evangelist, Lydenburg, Transvaal. He stated: "I
was appointed to the
___________________* Report made on the spot by Mr.
Shepstone (not Sir Theophilus Shepstone), Secretary for Native
Affairs.
Page 11
charge of a congregation in Potchefstroom when the Republic was under the Presidency of Mr. Pretorius. I noticed one morning, as I walked through the streets, a number of young natives whom I knew to be strangers. I enquired where they came from. I was told that they had just been brought from Zoutpansberg. This was the locality from which slaves were chiefly brought at that time, and were traded for under the name of 'Black Ivory.' One of these slaves belonged to Mr. Munich, the State Attorney." In the fourth paragraph of the same affidavit, Mr. Thorne says that "the Rev. Dr. Nachtigal, of the Berlin Missionary Society, was the interpreter for Shatane's people, in the private office of Mr. Roth, and, at the close of the interview, told me what had occurred. On my expressing surprise, he went on to relate that he had information on native matters which would surprise me more. He then produced the copy of a register, kept in the Landdrost's office, of men, women, and children, to the number of four hundred and eighty (480), who had been disposed of by one Boer to another for a consideration. In one case an ox was given in exchange, in another goats, in a third a blanket, and so forth. Many of these natives he (Mr. Nachtigal) knew personally. The copy was certified as true and correct by an official of the Republic."*
On the 16th May, 1881, a native, named Frederick Molepo, was examined by
the Royal Commission. The following are extracts from his
examination:--
"(Sir Evelyn Wood.) Are you a
Christian?--Yes.
"(Sir H. de Villiers.) How long were you a
slave?--Half-a-year.
___________________* The name of that official was
held back from publication at the time, as if his act were known by the
Boers, it was believed it might have cost the man his life.
Page 12
"How do you know that you were a slave? Might you not have been an
apprentice?--No, I was not apprenticed.
"How do you know?--They got me from my parents, and
ill-treated me.
"(Sir Evelyn Wood.) How many times did you get the
stick?--Every day.
"(Sir H. de Villiers.) What did the Boers do with you
when they caught you?--They sold me.
"How much did they sell you for?--One cow and a big
pot."
On the 28th May, 1881, amongst the other documents handed in for the
consideration of the Royal Commission, is the statement of a Headman, whose
name also it was considered advisable to omit in the Blue book, lest the
Boers should take vengeance on him. He says, "I say, that if the
English Government dies I shall die too; I would rather die than be under
the Boer Government. I am the man who helped to make bricks for the church
you see now standing in the square here (Pretoria), as a slave without
payment. As a representative of my people, I am still obedient to the
English Government, and willing to obey all commands from them, even to die
for their cause in this country, rather than submit to the Boers.
"I was under Shambok, my chief, who fought the Boers formerly, but
he left us, and we were put up to auction and sold among the
Boers. I want to state this myself to the Royal Commission. I was bought by
Fritz Botha and sold by Frederick Botha, who was then veldt cornet (justice
of the peace) of the Boers."
Many more of such extracts might be quoted, but it is not m motive to
multiply horrors. These are given exactly as they stand in the original,
which may all be found in Blue Books presented to Parliament.
It has frequently been denied on behalf of the Transvaal, and is denied
at this day, in the face of innumerable witnesses to the contrary, that
slavery exists in the Transvaal. Now, this may be considered to be verbally
true. Slavery, they say, did not exist; but apprenticeship did, and does
exist. It is only another name. It is not denied that some Boers have been
kind to their slaves, as humane slave-owners frequently were in the
Southern States of America. But kindness, even the most indulgent, to
slaves, has never been held by abolitionists to excuse the existence of
slavery.
Mr. Rider Haggard, who spent a great part of his life in the Transvaal
and other parts of South Africa, wrote in 1899: "The assertion
that Slavery did not exist in the Transvaal is made to hoodwink the British
public. I have known men who have owned slaves, and who have seen whole
waggon-loads of Black Ivory, as they were called, sold for about
£15 a piece. I have at this moment a tenant, Carolus by name, on some
land I own in Natal, now a well-to-do man, who was for twenty
years a Boer slave. He told me that during those years he worked from
morning till night, and the only reward he received was two calves. He
finally escaped to Natal."
Going back some years, evidence may be found, equally well attested with
that already quoted. On the 22nd August, 1876, Khama, the Christian King of
the Bamangwato (Bechuanaland), one of the most worthy Chiefs which any
country has had the good fortune to be ruled by, wrote to Sir Henry de
Villiers the following message, to be sent to Queen
Victoria:--"I write to you, Sir Henry, in order that your
Queen may preserve for me my country, it being in her hands. The Boers are
coming into it, and I do not like them. Their actions are cruel among us
black people. We are like money; they sell us and our children.
I ask Her Majesty to pity me, and to hear that which I write quickly. I wish to hear upon what conditions Her Majesty will receive me, and my country and my people, under her protection. I am weary with fighting. I do not like war, and I ask Her Majesty to give me peace. I am very much distressed that my people are being destroyed by war, and I wish them to obtain peace. I ask Her Majesty to defend me, as she defends all her people. There are three things which distress me very much--war, selling people, and drink. All these things I find in the Boers, and it is these things which destroy people, to make an end of them in the country. The custom of the Boers has always been to cause people to be sold, and to-day they are still selling people. Last year I saw them pass with two waggons full of people whom they had bought at the river at Tanane (Lake Ngate).--Khama."
The visit of King Khama to England, a few years ago, his interview with
the Queen, and his pathetic appeals on behalf of his people against the
intrusion of any aggressors (drink being one of them), are fresh in our
memory.
Coming down to a recent date, I reproduce here a letter from a Zulu
Chief, which appeared in the London Press in November, 1899. This letter is
written to a gentleman, who accompanied it by the following
remarks:--"After I had read this very remarkable letter, I
found myself half unconsciously wondering what place in the scheme of South
African life will be found for Zulus such as this nephew of the last of the
Zulu Kings. One thing I am fully certain of, that there are few natives in
the Cape Colony (where they are full-fledged voters) capable of
inditing so sensible an epistle. This communication throws a most welcome
light upon the attitude of his people with respect to the momentous events
that are in progress, and also it
reveals to what a high standard of intellectual culture a pure Zulu may attain."
Duff's Road, Durban,
November 3rd, 1899.
Sir,--I keenly appreciate your generous tribute to the loyalty of
the Zulu nation during the fierce crisis of English rule in South Africa.
It is the first real test of the loyalty of the Zulus, and as a Zulu who
was once a Chief, I rejoice to see that the loyalty and gratitude of my
people is appreciated by the white people of Natal.
It is, as you say, respected Sir, a tribute, and a magnificent one, to
England's just policy to the Zulus. I dare to assert it is even a
finer tribute to the natives' appreciation, not only of benefits
already conferred,
but of the spirit that actuated England in her dealings with him. I may
disagree as to the lessons taught by Maxim guns, hollow squares, and the
'thin red line.' I think no one can have read Colonial history,
chronicling as it does, the rise again and again of the native against
Imperial forces, without feeling that he is influenced far less by
England's prowess in war than by her justice in peace. My Zulu
fellow-countrymen understand as clearly as anyone the weakness and
the strength of the present time. If the Zulu wished to remember Kambula
and Ulundi, this would be his supreme opportunity to rise and hurl himself
across the Natal frontier. But I, having just returned from my native
country, have been able to report to the Government at Pietermaritzburg
that there is not the slightest symptom of disloyalty, not the idea of
lifting a finger against the white subjects of the great and good
Queen.
There is among the Chiefs and Indunas of my people an almost
universal hope that the Imperial arms will be victorious, and that a
Government which, by its inhumanity and relentless
injustice, and apparent inability to see that the native has any rights a white man should respect, has forfeited its place among the civilised Governments of the earth, and should therefore be deprived of powers so scandalously abused--formerly by slavery, and in later years by disallowing the native to buy land, and utterly neglecting his intellectual and spiritual needs. There are wrongs to be redressed, and we Zulus believe that England will be more willing to redress them than any other Power. There is still much to be done in the way of educating and civilizing the mass of the Zulu nation. We Chiefs of that nation have observed that wherever England has gone there the Missionary and teacher follow, and that there exists sympathy between the authority of Her Majesty and the forces that labour for civilization and Christianity. We Zulus have not yet forgotten what we owe to the late Bishop Colenso's lifelong advocacy, or to Lady Florence Dixie's kindly interest. These are things that are more than fear of England's might, that keep our people quiet outside and loyal inside. This is not a passive loyalty with us. Speaking for almost all my fellow-countrymen in Zululand, I believe if a great emergency arises in the course of this history-making war, in which England might find it necessary to put their loyalty to the test, they would respond with readiness and enthusiasm equal to that when they fought under King Cetewayo against Lord Chelmsford's army. Again assuring you that the Zulu people are turning deaf ears to Boer promises, as well as threats, I remain, with the most earnest hope for the ultimate triumph of General Buller--who fought my King for half a year. Your humble and most obedient servant,
M'PLAANK, Son of Maguendé, brother of
Cetewayo."
There is unhappily a tendency among persons living for any length of
time among heathen people, to think and speak with a certain contempt for
those people, at whose moral elevation they may even be sincerely aiming.
They see all that is bad in these "inferior races," and little
that is good. This was not so in the case of the greatest and most
successful Missionaries. They never lost faith in human nature, even at its
lowest estate, and hence they were able to raise the standard of the least
promising of the outcast races of the world. This faith in the possibility
of the elevation of these races has been firmly held, however, by some who
know them best, and have lived among them the longest.
Mr Rider Haggard writes thus on this subject:--"So far
as my own experience of natives has gone, I have found that in all the
essential qualities of mind and body they very much resemble white men. Of
them might be aptly quoted the speech Shakespeare puts into Shylock's
mouth: 'Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions?' In the same way, I ask,
has a native no feelings or affections? does he not suffer when his parents
are shot, or his children stolen, or when he is driven a wanderer from his
home? Does he not know fear, feel pain, affection, hate, and gratitude?
Most certainly he does; and this being so, I cannot believe that the
Almighty, who made both white and black, gave to the one race the right or
mission of exterminating or of robbing or maltreating the other, and
calling the process the advance of civilization. It seems to me, that on
only one condition, if at all, have we the right to take the black
men's land; and that is, that we provide them with an equal and a
just Government, and allow no maltreatment of them, either as individuals
or tribes, but, on the contrary, do our best to elevate them, and wean them
from
savage customs. Otherwise, the practice is surely undefensible.
"I am aware, however, that with the exception of a small class,
these are sentiments which are not shared by the great majority of the
public, either at home or abroad."
A French gentleman, who has been for many years connected with the
Missions Evangéliques of France, related recently in my
presence some incidents of the early experience of French Missionaries in
South Africa. One of these had laboured for years without encouragement.
The hearts of the native people around him remained unmoved. One day,
however, he spoke among them especially of Calvary, of the sufferings of
Christ on the Cross. A Chief who was present left the building in which the
teacher was speaking. At the close, this Chief was found sitting on the
ground outside, his back to the door, his head bent forward and buried in
his arms. He was weeping. When spoken to, he raided his arm with a movement
of deprecation, and, in a voice full of pity and indignation,
said--"to think that there was no one even to give Him a drink
of water!" That poor savage had known what thirst is. This one
awakened chord of human sympathy with the human Christ was communicative.
Other hearts were touched, and from that time the Missionary began to reap
a rich harvest from his labours. In the midst of the elaborate services of
our fashionable London churches is there often to be found so genuine a
feeling as that which shook the soul of this Chief, and broke down the
barrier of coldness and hardness in his fellow-countrymen which had
before prevented the acceptance of the message of Salvation and of the
practical obligations of Christianity among them? Men who are capable of
rising to the knowledge and love of divine truth cannot be supposed to be
impervious to the influence of civilization properly
understood.
THERE is nothing so fallacious or misleading in history as the
popular tendency to trace the causes of a great war to one source alone, or
to fix upon the most recent events leading up to it, as the principal or
even the sole cause of the outbreak of war. The occasion of an event may
not be, and often is not, the cause of it. The occasion of this war was not
its cause. In the present case it is extraordinary to note how almost the
whole of Europe appears to be carried away with the idea that the causes of
this terrible South African war are, as it were, only of yesterday's
date. The seeds of which we are reaping so woeful a harvest were not sown
yesterday, nor a few years ago only. We are reaping a harvest which has
been ripening for a century past.
At the time of the Indian Mutiny, it was given out and believed by the
world in general that the cause of that hideous revolt was a supposed
attempt on the part of England to impose
upon the native army of India certain rules which, from their point of view, outraged their religion in some of its most sacred aspects; (I refer to the legend of the greased cartridges). After the mutiny was over, Sir Herbert Edwardes, a true Seer, whose insight enabled him to look far below the surface, and to go back many years into the history or our dealings with India in order to take in review all the causes of the rebellion, addressed an exhaustive report to the British Government at home, dealing with those causes which had been accumulating for half-a-century or more. This was a weighty document,--one which it would be worth while to re-peruse at the present day; it had its influence in leading the Home Government to acknowledge some grave errors which had led up to this catastrophe, and to make an honest and persevering attempt to remedy past evils. That this attempt has not been in vain, in spite of all that India has had to suffer, has been acknowledged gratefully by the Native delegates to the great Annual Congress in India of the past year.
In the case of the Indian Mutiny, the incident of the supposed insult to
their religious feelings was only the match which set light to a train
which had been long laid. In the same way the honest historian will find,
in the present case, that the events--the "tragedy of
errors," as they have been called,--of recent date, are but the
torch that has set fire to a long prepared mass of combustible material
which had been gradually accumulating in the course of a century.
In order to arrive at a true estimate of the errors and mismanagement
which lie at the root of the causes of the present war, it is necessary to
look back. Those errors and wrongs must be patiently searched out and
studied, without partisanship, with an open mind and serious purpose. Many
of our busy politicians and others have not the time, some perhaps have not
the
inclination for any such study. Hence, hasty, shallow, and violent judgments.
Never has there occurred in history a great struggle such as the present
which has not had a deep moral teaching.
England is now suffering for her past errors, extending over many years.
The blood of her sons is being poured out like water on the soil of South
Africa. Wounded hearts and desolated families at home are counted by tens
of thousands.
But it needs to be courageously stated by those who have looked a little
below the surface that her faults have not been those which are attributed
to her by a large proportion of European countries, and by a portion of her
own people. These appear to attribute this war to a sudden impulse on her
part of Imperial ambition and greed, and to see in the attitude which they
attribute to her alone, the provocative element which was chiefly supplied
from the other side. There will have to be a Revision of this Verdict, and
there will certainly be one; it is on the way, though its approach may be
slow. It will be rejected by some to the last.
The great error of England appears to have been a strange neglect, from
time to time, of the true interests of her South African subjects, English,
Dutch, and Natives. There have been in her management of this great Colony
alternations of apathy and inaction, with interference which was sometimes
unwise and hasty. Some of her acts have been the result of ignorance,
indifference, or superciliousness on the part of our rulers.
The special difficulties, however, in her position towards that Colony
should be taken into account.
It has always been a question as to how far interference from Downing
Street with the freedom of action of a Self-Governing
Colony was wise or practicable. In other instances, the exercise of great freedom of colonial self-government has had happy results, as in Canada and Australia.
Far from our South African policy having represented, as is believed by
some, the self-assertion of a proud Imperialism, it has been the
very opposite.
It seems evident that some of the greatest evils in the British
government of South Africa have arisen from the frequent changes of
Governors and Administrators there, concurrently with changes in the
Government at home. There have been Governors under whose influence
and control all sections of the people, including the natives, have had a
measure of peace and good government. Such a Governor was Sir George Grey,
of whose far-seeing provisions for the welfare of all classes many
effects last to this day.
The nature of the work undertaken, and to a great extent done, by Sir
George Grey and those of his successors who followed his example, was
concisely described by an able local historian in
1877:--"The aim of the Colonial Government since
1855," he said, "has been to establish and maintain peace, to
diffuse civilization and Christianity, and to establish society on the
basis of individual property and personal industry. The agencies employed
are the magistrate, the missionary, the schoolmaster, and the
trader." Of the years dating from the commencement of Sir Geroge
Grey's administration, it was thus
reported:--"During this time peace has been
uninterruptedly enjoyed within British frontiers. The natives have been
treated in all respects with justice and consideration. Large tracts of the
richest land are expressly set apart for them under the name of
'reserves' and 'locations.' The greater part of
them live in these locations, under the superintendence of European
magistrates
or missionaries. As a whole, they are now enjoying far greater comfort and prosperity than they ever did in their normal state of barbaric independence and perpetually recurring tribal wars, before coming into contact with Europeans. The advantages and value of British rule have of late years struck root in the native mind over an immense portion of South Africa. They believe that it is a protection from external encroachment, and that only under the ægis of the Government can they be secure and enjoy peace and prosperity. Influenced by this feeling, several tribes beyond the colonial boundaries are now eager to be brought within the pale of civilized authority, and ere long, it is hoped, Her Majesty's sovereignty will be extended over fresh territories, with the full and free consent of the chiefs and tribes inhabiting them."*
It may be of interest to note here that one of these territories was
Basutoland, which lies close to the South Eastern border of the Orange Free
State.
Between the Basutos and the Orange Free State Boers war broke out in
1856, to be followed in 1858 by a temporary and incomplete pacification.
The struggle continued, and in 1861, and again in 1865, when war was
resumed, and all Basutoland was in danger of being conquered by the Boers.
Moshesh, their Chief, appealed to the British Government for protection. It
was not till 1868, after a large part of the country had passed into Boer
hands, that Sir Philip Wodehouse, Sir George Grey's successor, was
allowed to issue a proclamation declaring so much as remained of Basutoland
to be British territory.
It was Sir George Grey who first saw the importance of endeavouring to
bring all portions of South Africa, including the Boer Republics and the
Native States, into "federal union with
___________________* South Africa, Past and Present
(1899) by Noble.
Page 24
the parent colony" at the Cape. He was commissioned by the British Government to make enquiries with this object (1858.) He obtained the support of the Orange Free State, whose Volksraad resolved that "a union with the Cape Colony, either on the plan of federation or otherwise, is desirable," and was expecting to win over the Transvaal Boers, when the British Government, alarmed as to the responsibilities it might incur, vetoed the project. (Such sudden alarms, under the influence of party conflicts at home, have not been infrequent.)
For seven years, however, this good Governor was permitted to promote a
work of pacification and union.
I shall refer again later to the misfortunes, even the calamities, which
have been the result of our projecting our home system of Government
by Party into the distant regions of South Africa. There are long
proved advantages in that system of party government as existing for our
own country, but it seems to have been at the root of much of the
inconsistency and vacillation of our policy in South Africa. As soon as a
good Governor (appointed by either political party) has begun to develop
his methods, and to lead the Dutch, and English, and Natives alike to begin
to believe that there is something homogeneous in the principles of British
government, a General Election takes place in England. A new Parliament and
a new Government come into power, and, frequently in obedience to some
popular representations at home, the actual Colonial Governor is recalled,
and another is sent out.
Lord Glenelg, for example, had held office as Governor of the Cape
Colony for five years,--up to 1846. His policy had been, it is said,
conciliatory and wise. But immediately on a change of party in the
Government at home, he was recalled, and Sir Harry Smith superseded him, a
recklessly aggressive person.
It was only by great pains and trouble that the succeeding Governor, Sir
George Cathcart, a wiser man, brought about a settlement of the confusion
and disputes arising from Sir Harry Smith's aggressive and violent
methods.
And so it has gone on, through all the years.
Allusion having been made above to the assumption of the Protectorate of
Basutoland by Great Britain, it will not be without interest to notice here
the circumstances and the motives which led to that act. It will be seen
that there was no aggressiveness nor desire of conquest in this case; but
that the protection asked was but too tardily granted on the pathetic and
reiterated prayer of the natives suffering from the aggressions of the
Transvaal.
The following is from the Biography of Adolphe Mabille, a devoted
missionary of the Société des Missions
Evangéliques of Paris, who worked with great success in
Basutoland. His life is written by Mr. Dieterlen (a name well known and
highly esteemed in France), and the book has a preface by the famous
missionary, Mr. F. Coillard.*
"The Boers had long been keeping up an aggressive war against the
Basutos (1864 to 1869), so much so that Mr. Mabille's missionary work
was for a time almost destroyed. The Boers thought they saw in the
missionaries' work the secret of the steady resistance of the
Basutos, and of the moral force which prevented them laying down their
arms. They exacted that Mr. Mabille should leave the country at once, which
theoretically, they said, belonged to them.
"This good missionary and his friends were subjected to long
trials during this hostility of the Boers. Moshesh, the chief of the
Basutos, had for a long time past been asking the Governor
___________________* Adolphe Mabille, Published in
Paris, 1898.
Page 26
of Cape Colony to have him and his people placed under the direction of Great Britain. The reply from the Cape was very long delayed. Moshesh, worn out, was about to capitulate at last to the Boers. Lessuto (the territory of Basutoland) was on the point of being absorbed by the Transvaal. At the last moment, however, and not a day too soon, there came a letter from the Governor of the Cape announcing to Moshesh, that Queen Victoria had consented to take the Basutos under her protection. It was the long-expected deliverance,--it was salvation! At this news the missionaries, with Moshesh, burst into tears, and falling on their knees, gave thanks to God for this providential and almost unexpected intervention."
The Boers retained a large and fertile tract of Lessuto, but the rest of
the country, continues M. Dieterlen, "remained under the Protectorate
of a people who, provided peace is maintained, and their commerce is not
interfered with, know how to work for the right development of the native
people whose lands they annex."
Mr. Dieterlen introduces into his narrative the following
remarks,--which are interesting as coming, not from an Englishman, but
from a Frenchman,--and one who has had close personal experience of
the matters of which he speaks:--
"Stayers at home, as we Frenchmen are, forming our opinions from
newspapers whose editors know no more than ourselves what goes on in
foreign countries, we too willingly see in the British nation an
egotistical and rapacious people, thinking of nothing but the extension of
their commerce and the prosperity of their industry. We are apt to pretend
that their philanthropic enterprises and religious works are a mere
hypocrisy. Courage is absolutely needed in order to affirm, at the risk of
exciting the indignation of
our soi-disant patriots, that although
England knows
perfectly well how to take care of her commercial interests in her colonies, she knows equally well how to pre-occupy and occupy herself with the moral interests of the people whom she places by agreement or by force under the sceptre of her Queen. Those who have seen and who know, have the duty of saying to those who have not seen, and who cannot, or who do not desire to see, and who do not know, that these two currents flowing from the British nation,--the one commercial and the other philanthropic,--are equally active amongst the uncivilized nations of Africa, and that if one wishes to find colonies in which exist real and complete liberty of conscience, where the education and moralisation of the natives are the object of serious concern, drawing largely upon the budget of the metropolis, it is always and above all in English possessions that you must look for them.
"Under the domination of the Boers, Lessuto would have been
devoted to destruction, to ignorance, and to semi-slavery. Under the
English régime reign security and progress. Lessuto became a
territory reserved solely for its native proprietors, the sale of strong
liquors was prohibited, and the schools received generous subvention.
Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, French and English Missionaries, could
then enjoy the most absolute liberty in order to spread, each one in his
own manner, and in the measure in which he possessed it, evangelic
truth.
"It is for this reason that the French missionaries feared to see
the Basutos fall under the Boers' yoke, and that they hailed with joy
the intervention of the English Government in their field of work, hoping
and expecting for the missionary work the happiest fruits. Their hope has
not been deceived by the results."
The clash of opposing principles, and even the violence of party feeling
continued to send its echoes to the far regions of
South Africa, confusing the minds of the various populations there, and preventing any real coherence and continuity in our Government of that great Colony. A good and successful Administrator has sometimes been withdrawn to be superseded by another, equally well-intentioned, perhaps, but whose policy was on wholly different lines, thus undoing the work of his predecessor. This has introduced not only confusion, but sometimes an appearance of real injustice into our management of the colony. In all this chequered history, the interests of the native races have been too often postponed to those of the ruling races. This was certainly the case in connexion with Mr. Galdstone's well-intentioned act in giving back to the Transvaal its independent government.
It has been an anxious question for many among us whether this source of
vacillation, with its attendant misfortunes, is to continue in the
future.
The early history of the South African Colony has become, by this time,
pretty will known by means of the numberless books lately written on the
subject. I will only briefly recapitulate here a few of the principal
facts, these being, in part derived from the annals and reports of the
Aborigines Protection Society, which may be considered impartial, seeing
that that Society has had a keen eye at all times for the faults of British
colonists and the British Government, while constrained, as a truthful
recorder, to publish the offences of other peoples and Governments. I have
also constantly referred to Parliamentary papers, and the words of
accredited historians and travellers.
The first attempt at a regular settlement by the Dutch at the Cape was
made by Jan Van Riebeck, in 1652, for the convenience of the trading
vessels of the Netherlands East India
Company, passing from Europe to Asia. Almost from the first these colonists were involved in quarrels with the natives, which furnished excuse for appropriating their lands and making slaves of them. The intruders stole the natives' cattle, and the natives' efforts to recover their property were denounced by Van Riebeck as "a matter most displeasing to the Almighty, when committed by such as they." Apologising to his employers in Holland for his show of kindness to one group of natives, Van Riebeck wrote: "This we only did to make them less shy, so as to find hereafter a better opportunity to seize them--1,100 or 1,200 in number, and about 600 cattle, the best in the whole country. We have every day the finest opportunities for effecting this without bloodshed, and could derive good service from the people, in chains, in killing seals or in labouring in the silver mines which we trust will be found here."
The Netherlands Company frequently deprecated such acts of treachery and
cruelty, and counselled moderation. Their protests however were of no
avail. The mischief had been done. The unhappy natives, with whom lasting
friendship might have been established by fair treatment, had been
converted into enemies; and the ruthless punishment inflicted on them for
each futile effort to recover some of the property stolen for them, had
rendered inevitable the continuance and constant extension of the strife
all through the five generations of Dutch rule, and furnished cogent
precedent for like action
afterwards.*
After 1652, Colonists of the baser sort kept arriving in cargoes, and
gradually the Netherlands Company allowed persons not of their own nation
to land and settle under severe fiscal and
___________________* These and other details which
follow are taken from Dutch official papers, giving a succinct account of
the treatment of the natives between 1649 and 1809. These papers were
translated from the Dutch by Lieut. Moodie (1838). See Moodie's
"Record."
Page 30
other restrictions. Among these were a number of French Huguenots, good men, driven from their homes by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1690. Then Flemings, Germans, Poles, and others constantly swelled the ranks. All these Europeans were forced to submit to the arbitrary rules of the Netherlands Company's agents, scarcely at all restrained from Amsterdam. Unofficial residents, known as Burghers, came to be admitted to a share in the management of affairs. It was for their benefit chiefly, that as soon as the Hottentots were found to be unworkable as slaves, Negroes from West Africa and Malays from the East Indies began to be imported for the purpose. In 1772, when the settlement was a hundred and twenty years old, and had been in what was considered working order for a century, Cape Town and its suburbs had a population of 1,963 officials and servants of the Company, 4,628 male and 3,750 female colonists, and 8,335 slaves. In these figures no account is taken of the Hottentots and others employed in menial capacities, nor of the black prisoners, among whom, in 1772, a Swedish traveller saw 950 men, women, and children of the Bushman race, who had been captured about a hundred and fifty miles form Cape Town in a war brought about by encroachment on their lands.+
The Aborigines Protection Society endorses the following statement of
Sparrman (visit to the Cape of Good Hope, 1786, Vol. II, p. 165,) who says,
"The Slave business, that violent outrage against the natural rights
of man, which is always a crime and leads to all manner of wickedness, is
exercised by the Colonists with a cruelty that merits the abhorrence of
everyone, though I have been told that they pique themselves upon it; and
not only is the capture of the Hottentots considered by them merely as a
___________________+ Thunberg "Travels in
Europe, Africa, and Asia, between 1770 and 1779."
Page 31
party of pleasure, but in cold blood they destroy the bands which nature has knit between husband and wife, and between parents and their children. Does a Colonist at any time get sight of a Bushman, he takes fire immediately, and spirits up his horse and dogs, in order to hunt him with more ardour and fury than he would a wolf or any other wild beast."
"I am far from accusing all the colonists," he continues,
"of these cruelties, which are too frequently committed. While some
of them plumed themselves upon them, there were many who, on the contrary,
held them in abomination, and feared lest the vengeance of Heaven should,
for all their crimes, fall upon their posterity."
The inability of the Amsterdam authorities to control the filibustering
zeal of the colonists rendered it easy for the people at the Cape to
establish among themselves, in 1793, what purported to be an independent
Republic. One of their proclamations contained the following resolution,
aimed especially at the efforts of the missionaries--most of whom were
then Moravians--to save the natives from utter ruin: "We
will not permit any Moravians to live here and instruct the Hottentots;
for, as there are many Christians who receive no instruction, it is not
proper that the Hottentots should be taught; they must remain in the same
state as before. Hottentots born on the estate of a farmer must live there,
and serve him until they are twenty-five years old, before they
receive any wages. All Bushmen or wild Hottentots caught by us must remain
slaves for life."*
I have given these facts of more than a hundred years ago to show for
how long a time the traditions of the usefulness and lawfulness of Slavery
had been engrained in the minds of the
___________________* Sir John Barrow (Travels in South
Africa, 1806.) Vol ii. p. 165.
Page 32
Dutch settlers. We ought not, perhaps, to censure too severely the Boer proclivities in favour of that ancient institution, nor to be surprised if it should be a work of time, accompanied with severe Providential chastisement, to uproot that fixed idea from the minds of the present generation, of Boer descent. The sin of enslaving their fellow-men may perhaps be reckoned, for them, among the "sins of ignorance." Nevertheless, the Recording Angel has not failed through all these generations to mark the woes of the slaves; and the historic vengeance, which sooner or later infallibly follows a century or centuries of the violation of the Divine Law and of human rights, will not be postponed or averted even by a late repentance on the part of the transgressors. It is striking to note how often in history the sore judgment of oppressors has fallen (in this world), not on those who were first in the guilt, but on their successors, just as they were entering on an amended course of "ceasing to do evil and learning to do well."
In 1795, Cape Town was formally ceded by the Prince of Orange to Great
Britain, as an incident of the great war with France, for which, six
million pounds sterling was paid by Great Britain to Holland. British
supremacy was formally recognized in this part of South Africa by a
Convention signed in 1814, which was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in
1815.
British rule for some thirty years after 1806 was perforce despotic, but
for the most part, with some exceptions, it was a benevolent despotism.
"They had the difficult task of controlling a straggling white
community, at first almost exclusively composed of Boers, who had been too
sturdy and stubborn to tolerate any effective interference by the
Netherlands Company and other authorities in Holland, and who resented both
English domination and the advent of English colonists which more than
doubled the white population in less than two decades." "The Governors sent out from Downing Street had tasks imposed upon them which were beyond the powers of even the wisest and worthiest. Most of the English colonists found it easier to fall in with the thoughts and habits of the Boers than to uphold the purer traditions of life and conduct in the mother country, and it is not strange that many of the officials should have been in like case."*
Great Britain abolished the Slave Trade in 1807, which prevented the
further importation of Slaves, and the traffic in them.
The great Emancipation Act, by which Great Britain abolished Slavery in
all lands over which she had control, was passed in 1834.
The great grievance for the Burghers was this abolition of slavery by
Great Britain. According to a Parliamentary Return of March, 1838, the
slaves of all sorts liberated in Cape Colony numbered 35,750. The British
Parliament awarded as compensation to the slave owners throughout the
British dominions a sum of £20,000,000, of which, nearly
£1,500,000 fell to the share of the Burghers. Concerning this Act of
Compensation there have been very divided opinions; there is not a doubt
that the British Government intended to deal fairly by the former slave
owners, but it is stated that there was great and culpable carelessness on
the part of the British agents in distributing this compensation money. It
seems that many of the Burghers to whom it was due never obtained it, and
these considered themselves aggrieved and defrauded by the British
Government. On the other hand, there are person who have continually
___________________* Mr. Fox Bourne, Secretary of the
Aborigines Protection Society.
Page 34
disapproved of the principle of compensation for a wrong given up, or the loss of an advantage unrighteously purchased. It is however to be regretted, that an excuse should have been given for the Boers' complaints by irregularities attributed to the British in the partition of the compensation money.
It has often been asserted that the first great Dutch emigration from
the Cape was instigated simply by love of freedom on their part, and their
dislike of British Government. But why did they dislike British Government?
There may have been minor reasons, but the one great grievance complained
of by themselves, from the first, was the abolition of slavery. They
desired to be free to deal with the natives in their own manner.
Taking with them their household belongings and as much cattle as they
could collect, they went forth in search of homes in which they hoped they
would be no longer controlled, and as they thought, sorely wronged by the
nation which had invaded their Colony. But they did not all trek; only
about half, it was estimated, did so. The rest remained, finding it
possible to live and prosper without slavery.
They crossed the Orange River, and finally trekked beyond the Vaal.
From 1833, Cape Colony, under British rule, began to be endowed with
representative institutions. In 1854, the Magna Charta of the Hottentots,
as it was called, was created. It was a measure of remarkable liberality.
"It conferred on all Hottentots and other free persons of colour
lawfully residing in the Colony, the right to become burghers, and to
exercise and enjoy all the privileges of burghership. It enabled them to
acquire land and other property. It exempted them from any compulsory
service to which other subjects of the Crown were not liable, and from
'any hindrance, molestation, fine, imprisonment or other
punishment' not awarded to them after trial in due course of law, 'any custom or usage to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding.' Among other provisions it was stipulated that wages should no longer be paid to them in liquor or tobacco, and that, in the event of a servant having reasonable ground of complaint against his master for ill-usage, and not being able to bear the expense of a summons, one should be issued to him free of charge. By this ordinance a stop was put, as far as the law could be enforced, to the bondage, other than admitted and legalized slavery, by which through nearly two centuries the Dutch farmers and others had oppressed the natives whom they had deprived of their lands."*
The Boers who had trekked resented every attempt at interference with
them on the part of the Cape Government with a view to their acceptance of
such principles of British Government as are expressed above. Wearied by
its hopeless efforts to restore order among the emigrant farmers, the
British Government abandoned the task, and contented itself with the
arrangement made with Andries Pretorius, in 1852, called the Sand River
Convention. This Convention conceded to "the emigrant farmers beyond
the Vaal River" "the right to manage their own affairs and to
govern themselves, without any interference on the part of Her Majesty the
Queen's Government." It was stipulated, however, that "no
slavery is or shall be permitted or practised in the country to the north
of the Vaal River by the emigrant farmers." This stipulation has been
made in every succeeding Convention down to that of 1884. These Conventions
have been regularly agreed to and signed by successive Boer Leaders, and
have been as regularly and successively violated.
___________________* Parliamentary paper quoted by Mr.
Fox Bourne "Black and White," page 18.
Page 36
THE following is an extract from the "Missionary Travels
and Researches in South Africa," of the venerable pioneer, David
Livingstone.*
"An adverse influence with which the mission had to contend was
the vicinity of the Boers of the Cashan
Mountains,+ otherwise named
'Magaliesberg.' These are not to be confounded with the Cape
Colonists, who sometimes pass by the name. The word 'Boer,'
simply means 'farmer,' and is not synonymous with our word
boor. Indeed, to the Boers generally the latter term would be quite
inappropriate, for they are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body
of peasantry. Those, however, who have fled from English Law on various
pretexts, and have been joined by English deserters, and every other
variety of bad character in their distant localities, are unfortunately of
a very different stamp. The great objection many of the Boers had, and
still have, to English law, is that it makes no distinction between black
men and white. They felt aggrieved
___________________* The extract commences at chapter
II, page 29.
___________________+ Near Pretoria.
Page 37
by their supposed losses in the emancipation of their Hottentot slaves, and determined to erect themselves into a republic, in which they might pursue, without molestation, the 'proper treatment' of the blacks. It is almost needless to add, that the 'proper treatment' has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, namely, compulsory unpaid labour.
"One section of this body, under the late Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter,
penetrated the interior as far as the Cashan Mountains, whence a Zulu
chief, named Mosilikátze, had been expelled by the well known Kaffir
Dingaan, and a glad welcome was given these Boers by the Bechuana tribes,
who had just escaped the hard sway of that cruel chieftain. They came with
the prestige of white men and deliverers; but the Bechuanas soon found, as
they expressed it, 'that Mosilikátze was cruel to his enemies,
and kind to those he conquered; but that the Boers destroyed their enemies,
and made slaves of their friends.' The tribes who still retain the
semblance of independence are forced to perform all the labour of the
fields, such as manuring the land, weeding, reaping, building, making dams
and canals, and at the same time to support themselves. I have myself been
an eye-witness of Boers coming to a village, and according to their
usual custom, demanding twenty or thirty women to weed their gardens, and
have seen these women proceed to the scene of unrequited toil, carrying
their own food on their heads, their children on their backs, and
instruments of labour on their shoulders. Nor have the Boers any wish to
conceal the meanness of thus employing unpaid labour; on the contrary,
every one of them, from Mr. Potgeiter and Mr. Gert Kruger, the commandants,
downwards, lauded his own humanity and justice in making such an equitable
regulation. 'We make the people work for us, in consideration of
allowing them to live in our country.'
"I can appeal to the Commandant Kruger if the foregoing is not a
fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am
sensible of no mental bias towards or against these Boers; and during the
several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided the
whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick,
without money and without price. It is due to them to state that I was
invariably treated with respect; but it is most unfortunate that they
should have been left by their own Church for so many years to deteriorate
and become as degraded as the blacks, whom the stupid prejudice against
colour leads them to detest.
"This new species of slavery which they have adopted serves to
supply the lack of field labour only. The demand for domestic servants must
be met by forays on tribes which have good supplies of cattle. The
Portuguese can quote instances in which blacks become so degraded by the
love of strong drink as actually to sell themselves; but never in any one
case, within the memory of man, has a Bechuana Chief sold any of his
people, or a Bechuana man his child. Hence the necessity for a foray to
seize children. And those individual Boers who would not engage in it for
the sake of slaves, can seldom resist the twofold plea of a
well-told story of an intended uprising of the devoted tribe, and
the prospect of handsome pay in the division of captured cattle besides. It
is difficult for a person in a civilized country to conceive that any body
of men possessing the common attributes of humanity, (and these Boers are
by no means destitute of the better feelings of our nature,) should with
one accord set out, after loading their own wives and children with
caresses, and proceed to shoot down in cold blood, men and women of a
different colour, it is true, but possessed of domestic feelings and
affections equal to their own. I saw and conversed
with children in the houses of Boers who had by their own and their master's account been captured, and in several instances I traced the parents of these unfortunates, though the plan approved by the long-headed among the burghers is to take children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I received no other testimony but theirs, I should probably have continued sceptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, and try to account for the cruel anomaly. They are all traditionally religious, tracing their descent from some of the best men (Huguenots and Dutch) the world ever saw. Hence they claim to themselves the title of 'Christians,' and all the coloured race are 'black property' or 'creatures.' They being the chosen people of God, the heathen are given to them for an inheritance, and they are the rod of divine vengeance on the heathen, as were the Jews of old.
"Living in the midst of a native population much larger than
themselves, and at fountains removed many miles from each other, they feel
somewhat in the same insecure position as do the Americans in the Southern
States. The first question put by them to strangers is respecting peace;
and when they receive reports from disaffected or envious natives against
any tribe, the case assumes all the appearance and proportions of a regular
insurrection. Severe measures then appear to the most mildly disposed among
them as imperatively called for, and, however bloody the massacre that
follows, no qualms of conscience ensue: it is a dire necessity for
the sake of peace. Indeed, the late Mr.
Hendrick Potgeiter most devoutly believed himself to be the great peace-maker of the country.
"But how is it that the natives, being so vastly superior in
numbers to the Boers, do not rise and annihilate them? The people among
whom they live are Bechuanas, not Kaffirs, though no one would ever learn
that distinction from a Boer; and history does not contain one single
instance in which the Bechuanas, even those of them who possess firearms,
have attacked either the Boers or the English. If there is such an
instance, I am certain it is not generally known, either beyond or in the
Cape Colony. They have defended themselves when attacked, as in the case of
Sechele, but have never engaged in offensive war with Europeans. We have a
very different tale to tell of the Kaffirs, and the difference has always
been so evident to these border Boers that, ever since 'those
magnificent savages,' (the Kaffirs,) obtained possession of firearms,
not one Boer has ever attempted to settle in Kaffirland, or even face them
as an enemy in the field. The Boers have generally manifested a marked
antipathy to anything but 'long-shot' warfare, and,
sidling away in their emigrations towards the more effeminate Bechuanas,
they have left their quarrels with the Kaffirs to be settled by the
English, and their wars to be paid for by English gold.
"The Bechuanas at Kolobeng had the spectacle of various tribes
enslaved before their eyes:--the Bakatla, the Batlo'kua,
the Bahúkeng, the Bamosétla, and two other tribes of
Bechuanas, were all groaning under the oppression of unrequited labour.
This would not have been felt as so great an evil, but that the young men
of those tribes, anxious to obtain cattle, the only means of rising to
respectability and importance among their own people, were in the habit of
sallying forth, like our Irish and Highland reapers, to procure work in the
Cape Colony. After
labouring there three or four years, in building stone dykes and dams for the Dutch farmers, they were well content if at the end of that time they could return with as many cows. On presenting one to the chief, they ranked as respectable men in the tribe ever afterwards. These volunteers were highly esteemed among the Dutch, under the name of Mantátees. They were paid at the rate of one shilling a day, and a large loaf of bread among six of them. Numbers of them, who had formerly seen me about twelve hundred miles inland from the Cape, recognised me with the loud laughter of joy when I was passing them at their work in the Roggefelt and Bokkefelt, within a few days of Cape Town. I conversed with them, and with Elders of the Dutch Church, for whom they were working, and found that the system was thoroughly satisfactory to both parties. I do not believe that there is a Boer, in the Cashan or Magaliesberg country, who would deny that a law was made, in consequence of this labour passing to the Colony, to deprive these labourers of their hardly-earned cattle, for the very urgent reason that, "if they want to work, let them work for us, their masters," though boasting that in their case their work would not be paid.
"I can never cease to be most unfeignedly thankful that I was not
born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the effect of the
unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of those who, but for
the strange obliquity which prevents them from feeling the degradation of
not being gentlemen enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal in
virtue to ourselves."
After giving his experience of eight years in Sechele's country,
in Bechuanaland, Livingstone continues:--"During that
time, no winter passes without one or two of the tribes in the east country
being plundered of both cattle and children by the Boers. The plan pursued
is the following: one or two
friendly tribes are forced to accompany a party of mounted Boers. When they reach the tribe to be attacked, the friendly native are ranged in front, to form, as they say, 'a shield;' the Boers then coolly fire over their heads till the devoted people flee and leave cattle, wives and children to their captors. This was done in nine cases during my residence in the interior, and on no occasion was a drop of Boer's blood shed. News of these deeds spread quickly among the Bechuanas, and letters were repeatedly sent by the Boers to Sechele, ordering him to come and surrender himself as their vassal, and stop English traders from proceeding into the country. But the discovery of lake Ngami, hereafter to be described, made the traders come in five-fold greater numbers, and Sechele replied, 'I was made an independent chief and placed here by God, and not by you; I was never conquered by Mosilikátze, as those tribes whom you rule over; and the English are my friends; I get everything I wish from them; I cannot hinder them from going where they like.' Those who are old enough to remember the threatened invasion of our own island, may understand the effect which the constant danger of a Boer invasion had on the minds of the Bechuanas; but no others can conceive how worrying were the messages and threats from the endless self-constituted authorities of the Magaliesberg Boers, and when to all this harassing annoyance was added the scarcity produced by the drought, we could not wonder at, though we felt sorry for, their indisposition to receive instruction.
"I attempted to benefit the native tribes among the Boers of
Magaliesberg by placing native teachers at different points. 'You
must teach the blacks,' said Mr. Hendrick Potgeiter, the commandant
in chief, 'that they are not equal to us.' Other Boers told me
'I might as well teach the baboons on the rocks as the
Africans,' but declined the test which I proposed, namely,
to examine whether they or my native attendants could read best. Two of their clergymen came to baptize the children of the Boers, so, supposing these good men would assist me in overcoming the repugnance of their flock to the education of the blacks, I called on them, but my visit ended in a ruse practised by the Boerish commandant, whereby I was led, by professions of the greatest friendship, to retire to Kolobeng, while a letter passed me, by another way, to the missionaries in the south, demanding my instant recall for 'lending a cannon to their enemies.'*
"These notices of the Boers are not intended to produce a sneer at
their ignorance, but to excite the compassion of their friends.
"They are perpetually talking about their laws; but practically
theirs is only the law of the strongest. The Bechuanas could never
understand the changes which took place in their commandants. 'Why,
one can never know who is the chief among these Boers. like the Bushmen,
they have no king--they must be the Bushmen of the English.' The
idea that any tribe of men could be so senseless as not to have an
hereditary chief was so absurd to these people, that in order not to appear
equally stupid, I was obliged to tell them that we English were so anxious
to preserve the royal blood that we had made a young lady our chief. This
seemed to them a most convincing proof of our sound sense. We shall see
farther on the confidence my account of our Queen inspired. The Boers,
encouraged by the accession of Mr. Pretorius, determined at last to put a
stop to English traders going past Kolobeng, by dispersing the tribe of
___________________* Livingstone had given to the
Chief, Sechele, a large iron pot for cooking purposes, and the form of it
excited the suspicions of the Boers, who reported that it was a cannon.
That pot is now in the Museum, at Cape Town.
Page 44
Bechuanas, and expelling all the missionaries. Sir George Cathcart proclaimed the independence of the Boers. A treaty was entered into with them; an article for the free passage of Englishmen to the country beyond, and also another, that no slavery should be allowed in the independent territory, were duly inserted, as expressive of the views of Her Majesty's Government at home. 'But what about the missionaries?' enquired the Boers. 'You may do as you please with them,' is said to have been the answer of the Commissioner. This remark, if uttered at all, was probably made in joke: designing men, however, circulated it, and caused the general belief in its accuracy which now prevails all over the country, and doubtless led to the destruction of three mission stations immediately after. The Boers, 400 in number, were sent by the late Mr. Pretorius to attack the Bechuanas in 1852. Boasting that the English had given up all the blacks into their power, and had agreed to aid them in their subjugation by preventing all supplied of ammunition from coming into the Bechuana country, they assaulted the Bechuanas, and, besides killing a considerable number of adults, carried off 200 of our school children into slavery. The natives, under Sechele, defended themselves till the approach of night enabled them to flee to the mountains; and having in that defence killed a number of the enemy, the very first ever slain in this country by Bechuanas, I received the credit of having taught the tribe to kill Boers! My house, which had stood perfectly secure for years under the protection of the natives, was plundered in revenge. English gentlemen, who had come in the footsteps of Mr. Cumming to hunt in the country beyond, and had deposited large quantities of stores in the same keeping, and upwards of eighty head of cattle as relays for the return journeys, were robbed of all; and when they came back to Kolobeng, found the
skeletons of the guardians strewed all over the place. The books of a good library--my solace in our solitude--were not taken away, but handfuls of the leaves were torn out and scattered over the place. My stock of medicines was smashed; and all our furniture and clothing carried off and sold at public auction to pay the expenses of the foray. I do not mention these things by way of making a pitiful wail over my losses, in order to excite commiseration; for though I feel sorry for the loss of lexicons, dictionaries, &c., &c., which had been the companions of my boyhood, yet, after all, the plundering only set me entirely free for my expedition to the north, and I have never since had a moment's concern for anything I left behind. The Boers resolved to shut up the interior, and I determined to open the country."
Mr. A. McArthur, of Holland Park, wrote on March 22nd of this
year:--
"When looking over some old letters a few days ago, I found one
from the late venerable Dr. Moffat, who was one of the best friends South
Africa ever had. It was written in answer to a few lines I wrote him,
informing him that the Transvaal had been annexed by the British
Government. I enclose a copy of his letter."
Dr. Moffat's letter is as follows:--
July 27th, 1877.
My dear friend,
"I have no words to express the pleasure the late annexation of
the Transvaal territory to the Cape Colony has afforded me. It is one of
the most important measures our Government could have adopted, as regards
the Republic as well as the Aborigines. I have no hesitation in pronouncing
the step as being fraught with incalculable benefits to both
parties,--i.e., the settlers and the native tribes. A residence of
more than half a century beyond
the colonial boundary is quite sufficient to authorize one to write with
confidence that Lord Carnarvon's measure will be the commencement of
an era of blessing to Southern Africa. I was one of a deputation appointed
by a committee to wait on Sir George Clarke, at Bloemfontein, to prevent,
if possible, his handing over the sovereignty, now the Free State, to the
emigrant Boers. Every effort failed to prevent the blunder. Long experience
had led many to foresee that such a course would entail on the native
tribes conterminous oppression, slavery,
strictly to self-defence, and we had invaded
him, we might have had to blame ourselves.
11th, and says, "When I read these in conjunction with the history of
South Africa for the last 18 years, I see that the cause of peace was
hopeless in such hands."
Lessouto, June 28th, 1876.
"Gentlemen,
reached the first village through which we must
pass--Heidelberg--and encamped some distance from there. There
they told us that the Boers knew that we were about to pass, and if they
wished to stop us, it would be there they would do it. Let us take courage,
therefore, we said, and be ready for everything. We unharnessed, and walked
through the village in full daylight, posting our letters. etc. No one
stopped us or spoke to us, and we retired to our encampment, thanking God
that He had kept us through this critical moment. Some days later, we
approached a charming spot, within three hours of Pretoria, near a clear
stream, surrounded with lovely trees and flowers; we took the Communion
together, strengthening each other for the future. Monday, at nine
o'clock, we reached Pretoria. We were looked at with curiosity; the
Field Cornet himself saw us pass, they told me sometime later. But we
passed through the town without opposition.
turn round and go back to Pretoria. One of these men was the Sheriff, who
showed me a warrant for my arrest, and putting his hand on my shoulder,
declared me to be his prisoner. This, I may say in passing, made little
impression on me. We retraced our steps, always believing that when we had
paid some duty exacted for our luggage and our goods, we should be allowed
to go in peace. towards midnight they permitted us to unharness near a
farm. The next morning these gentlemen searched all through the waggon of
the native evangelists, and put any objects which they suspected aside. All
this, with my waggon, must be sent back to Pretoria, there to be inspected
by anyone who chose.
having somewhere a cannon, they proceeded to the examination of my waggon.
They opened everything, ran their hands in everywhere, into biscuit boxes,
among clothes, among candles, etc., and found neither cannon nor petroleum.
The comedy of the smuggling ended, they took note of the contents of my
boxes, and then attacked us from another side. They decided to treat me as
a missionary. The Solicitor-General said to me that the Government
did not care to have French missionaries going to the other side of the
Limpopo. I said, 'these countries do not belong to the
Transvaal;' to which they replied, 'Do you know what our
intentions are? Have you not heard of the treaties which we have been able
to make with the natives and with the Portuguese?' There! that is the
reply which they made to me. They took good care not to inscribe it in the
document in which they ordered us to leave the Transvaal immediately. These
are things which they do not care to write, lest they should awaken the
just susceptibilities of other Governments, or arouse the indignation of
all true Christians. But there is the secret of the policy of the Transvaal
in regard to us missionaries; they feared us, because they know our
attachment to the natives, and our devotion to their interests.
in the Transvaal shall enjoy--I cannot say the same privileges, but a
faint shadow of what every Dutchman, as well as every man, white and black,
in the Cape Colony enjoys. Every Dutchman in the Cape Colony is treated
exactly as if he were an Englishman; and every subject of Her Majesty the
Queen, black and white, is treated in the Transvaal, and has always been,
as a man of an alien and subject race. The franchise is only one of many
grievances, and it is utterly a mistake to suppose that England is going to
war over a question of mere franchise. Let us be just, however. There are
in the Cape Colony and out of it loyal Dutchmen, loyal as the day, to the
British power, which is the ruling power. They know the freedom they enjoy
under it, and the folly and futility of trying to upset it.
Kruger and his supporters do what is right, and give what is barely and
simply and only necessary as well as right, and the whole difficulty will
pass into solution, to the relief of all concerned and the preservation of
peace in South Africa. If not, the blame must rest with him.
that if we love all men we can under no circumstances go to war. There is,
however, a spurious advocacy of peace, which is based, not upon love to men
so much as upon enmity to our own Government, and which levels against it
untrue charges of having caused the Transvaal War. It was to show the
erroneousness of these charges that I wrote this letter."
that has now been brought into play, not to keep the English out of the
Transvaal, but to realise what is called the Afrikander programme of a
Dutch domination over the whole of South Africa. Thus, he a short time ago
imported from Europe 149,000 rifles--nearly five times as many as the
whole military population of the Transvaal--clearly with a view to
arming the Cape Dutch in case of the general rising he hoped for. The
Jameson Raid gave him exactly the grievance he wanted--to persuade
these Cape Dutch that England sought to crush the Transvaal.
three conditions: that the Boers should not make treaties with
foreign Powers without the consent of the paramount Power in South Africa,
i.e., England; that they should not
make slaves of the native tribes; and that they should guarantee equal
treatment for all the white inhabitants of the country as respects
taxation. As the whole war has risen out of Kruger's persistent
refusal to keep his promises, both verbal and in writing, that he would
observe this condition, I append the clause giving rise to the
contention:--
explosive was bad, often causing accident or death. When it did cause
accident or death, the miners were prosecuted by the Government, from whose
agent they were compelled to buy it, and fined for having used it!
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.
though the natives pay 3 per cent. of the revenue, the Boers paying
7½, and the Uitlanders 89½. 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 get 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."
and constitute a large majority of the total number of inhabitants.
the Zambesi. The Boer families, grouped in every town throughout South
Africa, form, collectively, a single nationality, despite the accident of
political frontiers. the question of the future union has already been
frequently discussed by the delegates of the two conterminous Republics.
But, unless these visions can be realized during the present generation,
they are foredoomed to failure. Owing to the unprogressive character of the
purely Boer communities and to the rapid expansion of the
English-speaking peoples by natural increase, by direct immigration,
and by the assimilation of the Boers themselves, the future 'South
African Dominion' can, in any case, never be an 'African
Holland.' Whenever the present political divisions are merged in one
State, that State must sooner or later constitute
an 'African England,' whether consolidated
under the suzerainty of Great Britain or on the basis of absolute political
autonomy. But the internal elements of disorder and danger are too
multifarious to allow the European inhabitants of Austral Africa for many
generations to dispense with the protection of the English sceptre.
Despite their numerous treks, they have contributed next to nothing to the
scientific exploration of the land.
distant date. In 1881, he said, "In the Cession of the Cape of Good
Hope by the King of Holland to England lies the root out of which
subsequent events and our present struggle have grown." The Dutch
believe themselves,--and not without reason,--capable of great
things, they were moved by an ambition to seize the power which they
believed,--and the retrocession fostered that belief,--was
falling from England's feeble and vacillating grasp. "Long
before the present trouble" say a Member of the British Parliament
well acquainted with South African affairs, "I visited every town in
South Africa of any importance, and was brought into close contact with
every class of the population; wherever one went, one heard this ambition
voiced, whether advocated or deprecated, but never denied. It dates back
some forty or fifty years."* The
first reference to it is in a despatch of Governor Sir George Grey, in
1858; and it is to be found more definitely in the speeches of President
Burgers in the Transvaal Raad in 1877 before the annexation, and in his
apologia published after the annexation. The
movement continued under the administration of Sir Bartle Frere, who wrote
in a despatch (published in Blue book) in 1879, "The
Anti-English opposition are sedulously courting the loyal Dutch
party (a great majority of the Cape Dutch) in order to swell the already
considerable minority who are disloyal to the English Crown here and in the
Transvaal." Mr. Theodore Schreiner, the brother of the Cape Premier,
in a letter to the "Cape Times," November, 1899, described a
conversation he had some seventeen years ago with Mr. Reitz, then a judge,
afterwards President of the Orange Free State, and now State Secretary of
the Transvaal, in which Mr. Reitz admitted that it was his object to
overthrow the British power
and expel the British flag from South Africa. Mr. Schreiner adds,
"During the seventeen years that have elapsed I have watched the
propaganda for the overthrow of British power in South Africa being
ceaselessly spread by every possible means, the press, the pulpit, the
platform, the schools, the colleges, the legislature; and it has culminated
in the present war, of which Mr. Reitz and his co-workers are the
origin and the cause."
supporters), in hearing a pronouncement from him on a subject, which to us
was vital, and had been pressing heavily on our hearts. I allude to a great
speech which Mr. Gladstone made in Liverpool during the last period of the
Civil War in America, the Abolitionist War. Our friend spoke with his
accustomed fiery eloquence wholly in favour of the spirit and aims of the
combatants of the Southern States, speaking of their struggle as one on
behalf of liberty and independence, and wishing them success. Not one word
to indicate that the question which, like burning lava in the heart of a
volcano, was causing that terrible upheaval in America, had found any place
in that great man's mind, or had even "cast its shadow
before" in his thoughts. It appeared as though he had not even taken
in the fact of the existence of those four millions of slaves, the uneasy
clanking of whose chains had long foreboded the approach of the avenging
hand of the Deliverer. This obscured perception of the question was that of
a great part, if not of the majority, of the Press of that day, and of most
persons of the "privileged" classes; but that he,
a trusted leader of so many, should be suffering from such an imperfection
of mental vision, was to us an astonishment and sorrow. As we left that
crowded hall, my companion and I, we looked at each other in silent
amazement, and for a long time we found no words.
the American War, that it "had been his misfortune" on several
occasions "not to have perceived the reality and importance of a
question until it was at the door." This was very true.
His noble enthusiasm for some good and vital cause so engrossed him at
times that the humble knocking at the door of some other, perhaps equally
vital question, was not heard by him. The knocking necessarily became
louder and louder, till at last the door was opened; but then it may have
been too late for him to take the part in it which should have been
his.
the door of the Mansion House was closed to them, and by a Quaker Lord
Mayor, renowned for his hospitality!
considerable indignation was felt amongst the friends of the aborigines.
The demand which they made seems to have been moderate. The Transvaal,
which before the war, had been reckoned, for its protection, a portion of
the British dominions, was now made simply a State under British
Suzerainty, with a debt to England of about a quarter of a million (in lieu
of the English outlay during the three years of its annexation), and a
covenant for the protection of the 800,000 natives in the State, and the
Zulu, Bechuana, and Swazi tribes upon its borders. The English sympathisers
with these natives simply asked that the covenant should be adhered to.
There was little chance of the debt being paid, and that they were willing
to forego; but they maintained that honour and humanity demanded that the
Boers should not be allowed to treat their agreement with us as so much
waste paper.
telegram coming from the 'Loyalists of Kimberley' with
'hearty congratulations.' As for his opponents, he was not in
the least moved by anything they said. He held it to be impossible for any
respectable person who know the Boers to support them. This was no doubt
strong language, but it was not stronger than that of Moffat and
Livingstone; not a whit stronger either than that used by W.E. Forster,
who had been a member of the Gladstonian Government."
the Pall Mall (John Morley) replied that the suzerainty over
the Transvaal maintained by us was a 'shadowy term,' and that
those who demanded that our reserved rights should be enforced were bound
to face the question whether they were willing to fight to enforce them.
Was Dr. Dale ready to run the risk of a fresh war in South Africa? Dr. Dale
replied, should the British Government and British people regard with
indifference the outrages of the Boers against tribes that we had
undertaken to protect? .... 'If the Government of the Republic
cannot prevent such crimes as are declared to have been committed in the
Bechuana country, and if we are indifferent to them, we shall have the
South African tribes in a blaze again before many years are over, and for
the safety of our Colonists we shall be compelled to interfere.' In
the ensuing Session the Ministerial policy was challenged in both Houses of
Parliament, and in the Commons Mr. Forster indicted the Government for its
impotence to hold the Transvaal Republic to its engagements. Dr. Dale wrote
a long letter to Mr. Gladstone:--'If it had been said that
power to protect the natives should be taken but not used, it is at least
possible that a section of the party might have declined to approve the
Ministerial policy..... The one point to which I venture to direct
attention is the contrast, as it appears to me, between the declaration of
Ministers in '81, in relation to the native races generally, and the
position which has been taken in the present debate.' Mr.
Gladstone's reply was courteous, but not reassuring."
wrote:-- "On my way to England I met a friend who had just
landed in South Africa from England. He warned me 'If you say a good
word for South Africa, Mr. Mackenzie, you will get yourself insulted. They
will not hear a word on its behalf in England; they are so disgusted with
the mess that has been made.'
to be hanged now? I am sure we are obliged to Mr. Mackenzie for giving us a
clear view of things.'
than elsewhere, owing to the constant presence at that University of a
large number of students from South Africa. A public meeting was held in
Edinburgh, among the speakers whereat were Bishop Cotterill, who had lived
many years in South Africa; Mr. Gifford, who had been a long time in Natal;
Professor Calderwood, and Dr. Blaikie, biographer of Dr. Livingstone. The
Venerable Mr. Cullen, the first missionary traveller in Bechuanaland, who
had often entertained Dr. Moffat and Dr. Livingstone in his house, was
present to express his interest in that country. There were the kindest
expressions used towards our Dutch fellow-subjects; but grave
condemnation was expressed of the Transvaal policy towards the coloured
people in making it a fundamental law that they were not to be equal to the
whites either in Church or State.
back and back upon other tribes or would perish in the process until an
uninhabitable desert or the sea were reached as the ultimate boundary of
the Transvaal State.*
people even if you desert
us." Then there
followed utter disorder and disorganisation in Bechuanaland. Then came in
the Transvaal Government and virtually said: 'Give us the
country and we will maintain order; if owners of the land object we will
put them down as rebels; we will take their land as we have taken
Mapoch's, and apprentice their children. You have got tired of these
quarrels, leave them to us; we will put a stop to them by protecting the
robbers who have taken the land.'
we will not keep our promise nor fulfil our duty.' Such a course as
that would be as extravagantly costly as it would be shamefully wrong. This
laissez faire policy tends to make things go
from bad to worse until at last by a great and most costly effort, and
perhaps by a really bloody and destructive war, we shall be obliged to do
in the end at a greater cost, and in a worse way, that which we could do
now. It is not impossible to do it now. A gentleman in the meeting said it
was a question of fighting. I do not believe this; but though born a
Quaker, I must admit that if there be no other way by which we can protect
our allies and prevent the ungrateful desertion of those who helped us in
the time of need, than by the exercise of force, I say force must be
exercised."
ciples, that they are Christians, and that they will act on Christian
principles, and respect the rights of the natives. That is perhaps the most
generous view to take of the matter; but, nevertheless, we shall be
inclined to doubt until we see that they have put these
principles into practice.
in Downing Street, but that any remarks which Mr. Mackenzie might make on
his behalf would receive the attention of Government. (Blue Book 3841,
92.)
outside the Transvaal, with Delegates' consent. Debt reduced to a
quarter of a million."* To many
persons it seems that the Convention of 1884, rather than the convention of
1881, was the real blunder. It is remarkable, however, as illustrating the
small attention which South African affairs then received, that no party
controversy was aroused over this later instrument. Very soon afterwards,
however, the question became acute, owing to the action of Mr. Kruger; and
then, it must be remembered, that Mr. Gladstone did not hesitate to appeal
to the armed strength of the Empire in order to defend British interests
and prevent the extension of Boer rule. That there was not war in 1884 was
due only to the fact that Mr. Kruger at that time did not choose to fight.
The raiders and filibusters were put down before by Sir Charles
Warren's force, but Mr. Gladstone had taken every precaution in view
of the contingency of a collision.
challenged by the Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, who
brought forward some very awkward testimonies and facts of recent date. It
was suggested that President Kruger should for ever silence the
calumniators by demanding a Commission of enquiry on this subject which
would take evidence within and round the Transvaal as they might see fit.
The Delegates took good care not to accept this challenge. The firmness of
the British Government at that moment was fully justified by the actual
facts of the case which came so strikingly before them, and their attitude
was supported by public opinion, so far as this public opinion in England
then existed. It was the Transvaal deputation itself which had most
effectually developed it when they first arrived in London, though it was
known they had many friends, and that numbers of the public were generally
quite willing to consider their
claims.* They sat for three months in
conference with members of Her Majesty's Government before coming to
any decision. That decision was known as the London Convention of 1884.
Native question, declaring that "the Suzerain (Great Britain) has not
the right to interfere with their Legislature, and that they cannot agree
to article 3, which gives the Suzerain a voice concerning Native affairs,
nor to article 13, by virtue of which Natives are to be allowed to acquire
land, nor to that part of Article 26, by which it is provided that white
men of a foreign race living in the Transvaal shall not be taxed in excess
of the taxes imposed on Transvaal citizens."
office, are not due to any fault of his, but to a shameful mismanagement of
public affairs before he came to the Colony, and the state of chaos and
utter confusion in which he had the misfortune to find everything on this
arrival; and we are therefore of opinion that the thanks of every loyal
colonist are due to his Excellency for the herculean efforts he has since
made under the most trying circumstances to South
Africa...."*
Orange Free State, to visit President Brand, with whom he was on cordial
terms, and with whom he wished to talk over his plans for the Transvaal;
but instructions came from Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to proceed to
Cape Town. He therefore left Pretoria on May 1st. He was welcomed
everywhere with the utmost cordiality and enthusiasm. At Potchefstroom
there was a public dinner and a reception. On approaching Bloemhof he was
met by a large cavalcade, and escorted into the township, where a triumphal
arch had been erected, and an address was presented.
personally the power, even if he had had the will, to return compliments.
And what made it the more remarkable was that there was no special victory
or success or event of any kind to
celebrate."*
men knew what they were doing. But he was now to be superseded. Was his
policy to be changed, and how?*
the Zulu War, for which he was only in a very minor degree responsible.
sick; then why have you to leave us? By you we have now peace. We sleep now
without fear. Old men tell us of a good Governor Durban (Sir Benjamin
Durban) who had to leave before his good works became law; but red coals
were under the ashes which he left. Words of wicked men, when he left, like
the wind blew up the fire, and the country was again in war. So also Sir
George Grey, a good Governor, good to tie up the hands of bad men, good to
plant schools, good to feed the hungry, good to have mercy and feed the
heathen when dying from hunger, He also had to leave us. We do not
understand this. But your Excellency is not to leave us. Natal has now
peace by you; we have peace by you because God and the Queen sent you. Do
not leave us. Surely it is not the way of the Queen to leave her children
here unprotected until peace is everywhere. We shall ever pray for you as
well as for the Queen. These are our words to our good Governor, though he
turns his back on us."
office of Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, etc., etc., I cannot allow
your departure to take place without conveying to you, which I hereby do,
the profound sense I have of the faithful and conscientious manner in which
you have endeavoured to fulfil those engagements which, at the solicitation
of Great Britain, you entered upon in 1877. The policy was not your own,
but was thrust upon you. Having given in London, in 1876, advice to pursue
a different course in South Africa from the one then all the fashion and
ultimately confided to yourself, it affords met the greatest pleasure to
testify to the consistency of the efforts put forth by you to carry out the
(then) plan of those who commissioned you, and availed themselves of your
acknowledged skill and experience. As a public man of long standing in
South Africa, I would likewise add that since the days of Sir G. Grey, no
Governor but yourself has grasped the native question here at
all, and I feel confident that had your full authority been
retained, and not harshly wrested from you, even at the eleventh hour
initiatory steps of a reformatory nature with respect to the natives would
have been taken, which it is the duty of Britain to follow while she holds
her sovereignty over these parts."
with your Excellency without feeling a better, and, I believe, a wiser
man."
the railway station, the wharves, the housetops, and every available place,
whence a view of the procession could be procured, was closely packed. The
Governor's carriage left Government House at half-past
four,--Volunteer Cavalry furnishing the escort, and Volunteer Rifles,
Engineers, and Cadets falling in behind,--and amid farewell words and
ringing cheers, moved slowly along the streets gay with flags and
decorations. At the dock gates the horses were taken out and men drew the
carriage to the quay, where the Pretoria lay alongside. Here
the General, the Ministers, and other leading people, were assembled; and
the 91st Regiment, which had been drawn up, presented arms, the Band played
"God save the Queen," and the Volunteer Artillery fired a
salute as the Governor for the last time stepped off African soil.
edge from the central jetty to the breakwater basin. The vessel's
speed increased, the light faded, and the night fell on the last, the most
glorious, and yet the saddest day of Sir Bartle Frere's
forty-five years' service of his Queen and country.
parent or offspring is threatened by a stranger; and then it is seen that
the old instinct and yearnings are not dead, but only latent. The mother
country had hitherto to bee forgetful of its natural obligations to its
South African offspring."
statesmanlike and humane view of things, and his courage and patience under
exasperating conditions. He returned to England under a cloud, and died of
a broken heart."
distinguished, noble-minded, and self-forgetful Christian
man, who had befriended me as an obscure person,--our
meeting-ground and common object being the future welfare of all
races in South Africa. I went forth to complete my life work: he
remained to die."
we come to intricacies and technicalities of laws, even though based on
these great fundamental lines, that the study becomes dry, useful to the
professional lawyer, but not to the pupil in school or the public
generally.
recognition by our rulers, politicians, editors, writers, and people at
large as the expression of essential Justice and Morality.
Swiss trader,--there is no difference. The general feeling among these
is against the coloured race being educated and evangelized..... Only
what can and must be said is this, that the Laws of the English
Colonies are just; those of the Boer States are the negation of
every right, civil and religious, which the black man ought to have."
I have similar testimonies from missionaries (not Englishmen); but I regret
to say that these good men hesitate to have their names
published,--not from selfish reasons,--but from love of their
missionary work and their native converts, to whom they fear they will
never be permitted to return if the ascendancy of the present Transvaal
Government should continue, and Mr. Kruger should learn that they have
published what they have seen in his country. It is to be hoped that these
witnesses will fell impelled before long to speak out. The writer just
quoted, says:--"I firmly believe that the native question
is at the bottom of all this trouble. The time is coming when, cost what it
will, we missionaries must speak out."
We recall a noble passage in which Mr. Gladstone stated with great
clearness the inevitable tendency of the times in which we live.
"There is," he said, "a continual tendency on the part of
enterprising people to overstep the limits of the Empire, and not only to
carry its trade there, but to form settlements in other countries beyond
the sphere of a regularly organized Government, and there to constitute a
civil Government of their own. Let the Government adopt, with mathematical
rigour if you like, an opposition to annexation, and what does it effect?
It does nothing to check that tendency--that perhaps irresistible
tendency--of British enterprise to carry your commerce, and to carry
the range and area of your settlement beyond the limits of your
sovereignty..... There the thing is, and you cannot repress it.
Wherever your subjects go, if they are in pursuit of objects not unlawful,
you must afford them all the protection which your power enables you to
give." "There the thing is." (But many Liberals have
lacked the imagination to see it.) And being there, it affords a great
opportunity; for "to this great Empire is committed (continued Mr.
Gladstone) a trust and a function given from Providence as special and as
remarkable as ever was entrusted to any portion of the family of
man." But not all Liberals share Mr. Gladstone's faith. They
thus cut themselves off from one of the chief tendencies and some of the
noblest ideals of the time. Liberalism must broaden its outlook, and seek
to promote "the large and efficient development of the British
Commonwealth on liberal lines, both within and outside these
islands."
great affection of the Kaffirs, and more especially those of the Basuto
tribes, who love peace better than war, for the Queen's rule. I will
cite one other instance among many of the gladness with which different
native races placed themselves under the protection of the Queen.
and object of the Protectorate, and the manner in which it was to be
supported.
Montsioa, mounted between the wheels of an ox-waggon, was also
brought into requisition to proclaim the general joy and satisfaction.
treaty-signing and the rejoicings at Mafeking. Its departing rays
now saw the cattle of the Barolong safe in the Transvaal, and the Barolong
owners and Her Majesty's Deputy Commissioner looking at one another,
at Mafeking."*
does not deserve to succeed after all that they have made us--loyal
colonists--suffer in the Transvaal. For a long time scarcely a day has
passed without our being insulted by the more ignorant Boers, till we are
almost tired of our lives, and yet we cannot go away, having invested our
all in the country."
name respected and beloved by many in our own country. It is welcome news
that such good work has been undertaken, that the President has himself
encouraged it, and that a number of Zulus and Kaffirs have recently been
baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church of the Transvaal. But the fact
strikes one painfully that in this pleading, (which has a pathetic note in
it,) these clergymen appear to have obliterated from their mind and memory
the whole past history of their nation and to have forgotten that the
harvest from seed sown through many generations may spring up and bear its
bitter fruit in their own day. They do not seem to have accepted the
verdict, or made the confession, "we and our fathers have
sinned." They seem rather to argue, "our fathers may have
sinned in these respects, but it cannot be laid to our charge that we are
continuing in their steps."
the Transvaal, and condemns severely every act on the part of the English
which does not accord with the principles of our Constitutional Law, and
therefore this statement will not be regarded as the statement of a
partisan:--"It is laid down as a fundamental principle in
the Transvaal Grondwet that there is no equality of rights between white
men and blacks. In theory, if not in practice, the Boers regard the
natives, all of whom they contemptuously call Kaffirs, whatever their
tribal differences, pretty much as the ancient Jews regarded the
Philistines and others whom they expelled from Palestine, or used as hewers
of wood and drawers of water, but with added prejudice due to the
difference of colour. So it was in the case of the early Dutch settlers,
and so it is to-day, with a few exceptions, due mainly to the
influence of the missionaries, whose work among the natives has from the
first been objected to and hindered. It is only by social sufferance, and
not by law, that the marriage of natives with Christian rites is
recognised, and it carries with it none of the conditions as regards
inheritance and the like, which are prescribed by the Dutch Roman code in
force with white men. As a matter of fact, natives have no legal rights
whatever. If they are in the service of humane masters, mindful of their
own interests and moral obligations, they may be properly lodged and fed,
not overworked, and fairly recompensed; but from the cruelties of a brutal
master, perpetrated in cold blood or a drunken fit, the native practically
has no redress."
of the working out--especially as regards the natives--of the
principles of the Grondwet or Constitution of the Transvaal.
always be law. Woe to the judge who should dare to mention the Constitution
or the Code, for there is one: he would at once be dismissed by the
President who appointed him."
to be done by the Volksraad for the natives in this respect. It appears
inconceivable," he continues, "that a Government making any
pretence of being a civilized power, at the end of the nineteenth century,
should be so completely ignorant of the most elementary principles of good
government for such a large number of its subjects."
were a conquered nation, and the conquerors should say: 'All
your laws and customs are abrogated; your marriage laws are of no
consequence to us; you may follow or leave them as you please, but we do
not undertake to support them, and you may live like cattle if you wish; we
cannot recognise your marriage laws a binding, nor yet will we legalise any
form of marriage among you.' Such is in effect, the present position
of the natives in the Transvaal.
to commit the most heinous offences against the laws of morality and social
order, and protects such a one from the legal consequences which would
necessarily follow in any other civilised State."
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.
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?
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 many 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.
been looking in Latin Dictionaries for the correct and original meaning of
'impero,', (I govern,) and 'imperium.' The word
'Empire' has an unpleasant ring from some points of view and to
some minds. One thinks of Roman Emperors, Domitian, Nero,
Tiberius,--of the word 'imperious,' and of the French
'Empire' under Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. The Latin word
means 'the giving of commands.' All depends on whether the
commands given are good, and the giver of them also good and
wise. The Ten Commandments are in one sense 'imperial.' Now, I
think the word as used in the phrase British Empire has, in
the most modern and best sense, quite a different savour or flavour from
that of Napoleon's Empire, or the Turkish or Mahommedan Empires of
the past. It has come to mean the 'Dominion of Freedom' or the
'Reign of Liberty,' rather than the giving of despotic or
tyrannical or oligarchic commands. In fact, our Imperialism is freedom for
all races and peoples who choose to accept it, whilst Boer
Republicanism is the exact opposite. How strangely words
change their weight and value!
prepared for war. This last fact is itself a complete answer to those who
pretend that she was the aggressor.
the Transvaal seem to be largely attributable to the corrupting effect on
President Kruger and his allies in the Government, of the sudden
acquisition of enormous wealth, through the development, by other hands
than his own, of the hidden riches within his country.
name and viler reality--should be unknown in the affairs of small
nations. Is not honesty one of the cardinal virtues which we should expect
to find amongst small nations, if nowhere else? What can the chief of a
small state of 250,000 inhabitants do with such a large amount of Secret
funds?
and a quick perception of the existence of this crowning quality in a man.
Livingstone said that he found that they also have a keen eye for a man of
pure and moral life.
away all that which savoured of barbarism, the husk which often however,
contained within it a kernel of truth capable of a great development.
"Ye have heard it said of old times," He reiterated,
"but I say unto you"--and then He set forth
the higher, the eternally true principles of action.
be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for
ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his
work."
British Empire. It is a reason why Crown colonies should supersede
Chartered Companies; it is a reason for much that is often called
'shallow Imperialism.' If the present war had been staved off,
and if, by mere lapse of time and increase of numbers without British
intervention, the Outlanders had come to be the masters of the South
African Republic, they might have established a system of independent
government quite as bad as that now in existence, though not hardened
against reform by the same archaic traditions."
They regard British Colonization as having been accomplished by a series of
acts of aggression, solely inspired by the love of conquest and desire for
increased territory. This is an error.
form the independence of character of our men, and also to strengthen
rather than to weaken the ties of affection and kinship with the
Motherland. Many men, "nobly born and gently nurtured," have
thus learned self-dependence, to endure hardships, and to share
manual labour with the humblest; and such an experience does not work for
evil. Then when communities have been formed, some sort of government has
been necessitated. An appeal is made to the Mother Country, and her
offspring have grown up more or less under her regard and care, until
self-government has developed itself.
made the Boers a people whom he regards as the germ of the Afrikander
nation; a people chastened, selected, welded, and strong enough to attract
and assimilate all their kindred in South Africa, and thus to realize the
dream of a Dutch Republic from the Zambesi to Cape Town.
history of that people, much is seen which accounts for their extraordinary
love of isolation, and their ingrained and passionate aversion to control;
much, too, that draws to them a world of sympathy; and when one realizes
the old President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization,
from which his people have fled for generations--trying to fight both
fate and Nature--standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the
eternal sea--one realizes the pathos of the picture. But this is as
another generation may see it. We are now too close--so close that the
meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible, the
corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity--all the
unlovely touches that will bye and bye be forgotten--sponged away by
the gentle hand of time, when only the picturesque will
remain."*
war in which we have together been engaged, and perhaps they will bear with
me now; but whether they will do so or not, I must speak that which seems
to me the truth, that which is laid on my heart to speak. I refer
especially to the temper of mind of those whose present denunciations of
our country are apparently not restrained by considerations derived from a
deeper and calmer view of the whole situation.
war as the Initial Crime, a sudden and fatal error into which
our nation has leapt in a fit of blind passion aroused by some quite recent
event, and chiefly chargeable to certain individuals living among us
to-day, who represent, in their view, a deplorable deterioration of
the whole nation. The evils (which are not chiefly attributable to our
nation) which have led up to this war, and made it from the human point of
view, inevitable, are all ignored by these judges. Like the servant in one
of the Parables of Christ, who said "my Lord delayeth his
coming," (God is nowhere among us,) and began to beat and abuse his
fellow-servants, they fall to inflicting on their fellow citizens
unmeasured blows of the tongue and pen, because of this war. Their hearts
are so full of indignation that they cannot see anything higher or deeper
than the material strife. They judge the combatants, our poor soldiers, the
first victims, with little tenderness or sympathy. When King David was
warned by God of approaching chastisement for his sins as a ruler, he
pleaded that that chastisement should fall upon himself alone, saying,
"these sheep (the people) what have they done?" We may ask the
same of the rank and file of our army. What have they done? It was not they
who ordained the war, and so far as personal influence may have gone to
provoke war, many of those who sit at home at ease are more to blame than
the men who believe that they are obeying the call of duty when they offer
themselves for perils, for hardships, wounds, sickness, and lingering as
well as sudden death.
information are from "the front," they are many and they are
trustworthy. It seems to me that in visiting the sins of the fathers on the
children, or of rulers on the people, the Great Father of all, in His
infinite love has said to these multitudes: "Your bodies are
given to destruction, but I have set wide open for you the door of
salvation; you shall enter into my kingdom through death." And many
have so entered.*
jingoes, neither are they millionaires. They are care-worn toilers,
hard-worked fathers and mothers of children. They have in many cases
given sons and brothers and husbands to our ranks; their hearts are aching
with passionate sorrow for the dead. Many more are enduring the racking
agony of suspense. Multitudes, besides, spend their lives in a hard fight
to keep the wolf from the door. Already they are pinched, and they know
that in the months ahead their poverty will be deeper. Yet they have no
thought of surrender. They do not even complain, but give what they can
from their scanty means to succour those who are touched still more nearly.
It is quite possible to slander a nation when one simply intends to tell it
plain truths. The British nation, we are inclined to believe, is a great
deal better and sounder than many of its shrillest censors of the moment.
And, for our part, we find among our patient, brave, and silent people
great seed-beds of trust and
hope."*
all sides. Good works on many hands are languishing for lack of the funds
and zeal needful to carry them on. The Public Press, and especially the
Pictorial Press, fosters a morbid sentiment in the public mind by
needlessly vivid representations of mere slaughter; to all this may be
added (that which some mourn over most of all) the drain upon our
pockets,--upon the country's wealth. All these things are a part
of the great tribulation which is upon us. They are inevitable ingredients
of the chastisement by war.
mind which leads you to turn your back on the opened book of judgment, and
refuse to read it? Does your sense of duty to your country claim from you
to send forth such a cry against your fellow-citizens and your
nation that you have no ears for the solemn teachings of Providence? Might
it not be more heroic in us all to cease to denounce, and to begin to
enquire?--with humility and courage to look God in the face, and
enquire of Him the inner meanings of His rebukes, to ask Him to "turn
back the floods of ungodliness" which have swelled this inundation of
woe, rather than to use our poor little besoms in trying to sweep back the
Atlantic waves of His judgments.
adopt it, if they could see the look of pain, the sudden pallor, followed
by hours and days of depression of the mourners, widows, bereaved parents,
sisters and friends, when called upon to read (their hearts full of the
thought of their beloved dead) that those who have fought in the ranks were
morally criminal, legalized murderers, "full of hatred," actors
in a "hellish panorama." Some of these sufferers may not be
much enlightened, but they know what love and sorrow are. Would it not be
more tender and tactful, from the Christian point of view, to leave to them
their consoling belief that those whom they loved acted from a sense of
duty or a sentiment of patriotism; and not, just at a time of
heart-rending sorrow, to press upon them the criminality of all and
every one concerned in any way with war? I commend this suggestion to those
who are not strangers to the value of personal sympathy and gentleness
towards those who mourn.
from sinking; only this can there be hope for the native races. Who shall
chastise them? Another nation, which God wishes also to chastise. Is
therefore God for one nation and not for another? May He not be for one,
and for the other too? If both pray, must He refuse one? Perhaps God is
great enough to answer both, and bringing both through the fire, purge and
teach them."
of beings devoted to degradation and contempt, or brought under any
oppression or servitude."
Christianized, and if Great Britain is to maintain the high and responsible
place among the nations which has been given to her.
(epilogue)
A letter from a Son of Dr. Moffat may have some interest here. It is
dated December 20th, 1899.
The Rev. John Moffat, son of the famous Dr. Moffat, and himself for a
long time resident in South Africa, has sent to a friend in London a letter
regarding the relations of the British and Dutch races previous to the war.
Mr. Moffat, throughout his varied experiences, has been a special friend to
the natives. One of his younger sons, Howard, is with a force of natives 60
miles south west of Khama's town (at the time of writing, December
20th), and Dr. Alford Moffat, another son, was medical officer to 300
Volunteers occupying the Mangwe Pass, to prevent a Boer raid into Rhodesia
at that point.
He writes:--
"1. Had Steyn sat still and minded his own business
no one would have meddled with him. Had Kruger confined himself
Page 47
"2. To have placed an adequate defensive force on our borders
before we were sure that there was going to be war would have been accepted
(perhaps justly) by the Boers as a menace. We did not do it, out of respect
for their susceptibilities.
"3. To most people in South Africa who knew the Boers it was quite
plain that Kruger was all along playing what is colloquially known as the
game of ':spoof.' He never intended to make the slightest
concession.
"4. Take them as a whole, the Boers are not pleasant people to
live with, especially to those who are within their power, as the natives
have found out sufficiently, and as the British have found out ever since
Majuba, and the retrocession of the Transvaal. The wrongs of the Uitlanders
were only one symptom of a disease which originated at Pretoria in 1881,
and was steadily spreading itself all over South Africa.
"5. With regard to the equal rights question, it is quite true
that all is not as it ought to be in the Cape Colony. But the condition of
the native in the Transvaal is 100 years behind that of our natives in the
Cape Colony, and you may take it as a broad fact that in proportion as Boer
domination prevails the gravitation of the native towards slavery will be
accelerated."
In conclusion, Mr. Moffat has this to say of the "Boer dream of
Afrikander predominance": "We, who have been living out
here, have been hearing about this thing for years, but we have tried not
to believe it. We felt, many of us, that the struggle had to come, but we
held our peace because we did to want to be charged with fomenting race
hatred." He refers to Ben Viljoen's manifesto of September
29th, and to President Steyn's manifesto, and State Secretary
Reitz's proclamation of October
Page 48
Almost contemporaneously with the expression of opinion of Dr. Moffat
(in 1877), the following report was written by M. Dieterlen, to the
Committee of the Missions Evangéliques de
Paris:--
"I must give you details of the journey which I have just made
with four native evangelists; for no doubt you will wish to know why a
missionary expedition, begun under the happiest auspices, and with the good
wishes of so many Christians, has come to grief, on account of the
ill-will of certain men, and has been, from a human point of view, a
humiliating failure. Having placed myself at the head of the expedition,
and being the only white man in the missionary group, I must bear the whole
responsibility of our return, and if there is anyone to blame it is I.
"From our departure from Leriba, as far as the other side of
Pretoria, our voyage was most agreeable. We went on with energy, thinking
only of our destination, the Banyaïs country, making plans for our
settling amongst those people, and full of happiness at the thought of our
new enterprise. An excellent spirit prevailed in our little
troop,--serious and gay at the same time; no regrets, no murmurings;
with a presentiment, indeed, that the Transvaal Government might make some
objection to our advance, but with the certainty that God was with us, and
would over-rule all that man might try to do. We crossed the Orange
Free State without hindrance, we passed the Vaal, and continued our route
towards the capital of the Transvaal; we
Page 49
"We continued our way to the north-east full of
thankfulness, saying to each other that after all the Government of the
Transvaal was not so ill-disposed towards us. Our oxen continued to
walk with sturdy steps we had not yet lost one, although the cattle plague
was prevalent at the time. Wednesday, at four o'clock in the evening,
we left the house of an English merchant, with whom we had passed a little
time, and who had placed at our disposal everything which we needed.
Towards eight o'clock, by a splendid moonlight, I was walking in
front of my waggon with Asser (one of the native missionaries), seeking a
suitable place where we could pass the night, when two horsemen galloped
up, and drawing bridle, brusquely asked for my papers, and seeing that I
had not the papers that they desired, ordered us to
Page 50
"That same day I arrived in Pretoria in a cart, seated between the
Field Cornet and the Sheriff, who were much softened when they saw that I
did not reply to them in the tone which they themselves adopted, and that I
had not much the look of a smuggler. The Secretary of the Executive Council
exacted from the bail to the amount of £300 sterling, for which a
German missionary from Berlin, Mr. Grüneberger, had the goodness to be
my guarantor. I made a deposition, saying who we were, whence we came, and
where we were going, insisting that we had no merchandise in our waggon,
only little objects of exchange by which we could procure food in countries
where money has no value. We had no intention of establishing ourselves
within the limits of the Transvaal; we were going beyond the Limpopo, and
consequently were simple travellers, and were not legally required to take
any steps in regard to the Government, nor even to ask a passport. All this
was written down and addressed to the Executive committee, who took the
matter in hand.
"As they, however, accused us of being smugglers, and
Page 51
"They then ordered me to retrace at once my steps, threatening
confiscation of our goods and the imprisonment of our persons if we
attempted to force a passage through the country. I had to pay £14
sterling for the expenses of this mock trial. They brought the four native
Evangelists out of the prison where they had spent two nights and a day in
a very unpleasant manner; they gave me leave to take our two waggons out of
the square of the Hotel de Ville where they had been put, together with the
Transvaal Artillery, some pieces of ordnance, a large Prussian cannon and a
French mitrailleuse from Berlin.
Page 52
"We were free, we were again united, but what a sorrowful reunion!
We could hardly believe that all was ended, and that we must retrace our
steps; so many hopes dissipated in a moment! and the thought of having to
turn back after having arrived so near to our destination, was heart
breaking. We were all rather sad, asking each other if we were merely the
sport of a bad dream or if this was indeed the will of God. I resolved to
make one more effort and ask an interview with the President of the
Transvaal, Mr. Burgers. It was granted to me. I went therefore to the
Cabinet of the President and spoke a long time with the
Solicitor-General, protesting energetically against the force they
had used against us, and I discussed the matter also with the President
himself, but without being able to obtain any reasonable reply to the
objections I raised. I saw clearly that I had to do with men determined to
have their own way, and putting what they chose to consider the interests
of the State above those of all Divine and human laws.
"Their Parliament (Raad) was sitting, and I addressed myself to
two of its members whom I had seen the day before, and who had seemed
annoyed at the conduct of the Government towards us. I besought them for
the honour of their country, to bring before their Parliament a question on
the subject: but they dared not consent to this, declaring that if
the Government were to put the matter before the representatives of the
country these latter would decide in our favour, but that they could never
take the initiative.
"I had now exhausted all the means at my disposal. I did all I
could to obtain leave to continue our journey, and only capitulated at the
last extremity. I received a written order from the Government telling me
to leave the soil of the Republic immediately.
Page 53
"These gentlemen had made me wait a long time, perhaps because
they found it more difficult and dangerous to put down on paper orders
which it was much easier to give vocally. This note was only a reproduction
of the accusations they had made against us from the beginning. They
declared to us that we were driven from the country because we had
introduced guns, ammunition, and a great quantity of merchandise, and
because we had entered the Transvaal without a passport, in spite of the
Government itself having recently proclaimed a passport unnecessary for
evangelists going through the country. In this document they systematically
misrepresented and violated the right which every white man had had until
then of travelling without permission. From the beginning to the end of
this document it was open to criticism, which the feeblest jurist could
have made; but in the Transvaal, as elsewhere, might dominates right, and
we have to suffer the consequences of this odious principle.
"We sorrowfully retraced the route towards the Vaal; this time no
more joyous singing around our fire at night, no more cheerful projects, no
more the hope of being the first to announce the glad Evangel among pagan
populations. The veldt we traversed seemed to have lost its poetry and to
have become desolate. To add to our misfortunes the epidemic seized our
oxen. We lost first one and then a second,--altogether eight. Those
which were left, tired and lean, dragged slowly and with pain the waggons
which before they had drawn along with such vigour. At last we were in
sight of Mabolela, and arrived at our destination, sorrowful, yet not
unhappy, determined not to be discouraged by this first check. And now we
were again at Lessouto, waiting for God to open to us a new
door."
Page 54IV.
INTERVIEW WITH DR. JAMES STEWART, MODERATOR (1899) OF THE FREE
CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. LETTER OF MR. BELLOWS TO SENATOR HOAR, U.S.A. THE REV.
C. PHILLIPS. EXTRACTS FROM THE "CHRISTIAN AGE," AND FROM M.
ELISÉE RECLUS, GEOGRAPHER. RETROCESSION OF THE TRANSVAAL. MR.
GLADSTONE'S ACTION. ITS EFFECT ON THE TRANSVAAL LEADERS, AND ITS
CONSEQUENCES FOR THE NATIVE SUBJECTS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
THE Rev. Dr. James Stewart, of Lovedale Mission Institute,
South Africa, who, in May, 1899, was elected Moderator of the General
Assembly of the Scotch Free Church, imparted his views with regard to the
Transvaal question to a representative of the New York Tribune
on the occasion of his visit to Washington in the autumn of 1899, to attend
the Pan-Presbyterian Council as a delegate from the Free Church of
Scotland.
Dr. Stewart's title to speak on matters connected with the
Transvaal rests upon thirty years' residence in South Africa.
On the morning of his election as Moderator of the General Assembly the
Scotsman coupled his name with that of Dr. Livingstone as the
men to whom the British Central Africa Protectorate was due.
The interview was published in the Tribune of September
24th, 1899.
Dr. Stewart said:--
"As to the principle politically in dispute, the British
Government asks nothing more than this--That British subjects
Page 55
"No superfluous pity or sympathy need be wasted on President
Kruger or the Transvaal Republic. The latter (Republic) is a shadow of a
name, and as great a travesty and burlesque on the word as it is possible
to conceive.
"Paul Kruger is at the present moment the real troubler of South
Africa. If the spirit and principles which he himself and his Government
represent were to prevail in this struggle, it would arrest the development
of the southern half of the continent. It is too late in the day by the
world's clock for that type of man or government to continue.
"The plain fact is this:--President Kruger does not
mean to give, never meant to give, and will not give anything as a
concession in the shape of just and necessary rights, except what he is
forced to give. He wants also to get rid of the suzerainty. That darkens
and poisons his days and disturbs his nights by fearful dreams. There is no
excuse for him, and, as I say, there need be no sentiment wasted on the
subject. Let President
Page 56
"I am sorry I cannot give any information or express any views
different from what I have now stated. They are the result of thirty
years' residence in Africa. But I would ask your readers to believe
that the British Government are rather being forced into war than choosing
it of their own accord. I would also ask your readers to believe that Sir
Alfred Milner, the present Governor of Cape Colony, though undoubtedly a
strong man, is also one of the least aggressive, most cautious, and pacific
of men; and that he has the entire confidence of the whole British
population of the Cape Colony. I know also that when he began his rule
three years ago, he did so with the expectation that by pacific measures
the Dutch question was capable of a happier and better solution than that
in which the situation finds it to-day. The question and trouble
to-day is, briefly, whether the British Government is able to give
protection and secure reasonable rights for its subjects abroad."
The following was addressed by Mr. John Bellows of Gloucester, to
Senator Hoar, United States, America, and was published in the New
York Tribune, Feb. 22nd, 1900. Mr. Bellows, on seeing the
publication of his letter, wrote the following postscript, to Senator
Hoar:--
"As the foregoing letter was headed by the Editor of the New
York Tribune, 'A Quaker on the War,' I would say, to
prevent misunderstanding, that I speak for myself only, and not for the
Society of Friends, although I entirely believe in its teaching,
Page 57
The following is the text of the letter:--
"Dear Friend, I am glad to receive thy letter, as it gives me the
opportunity of pointing out a misconception into which thou hast fallen in
reference to the Transvaal and its position with respect to the present
war.
"Thou sayest: 'I am myself a great lover of England;
but I do not like to see the two countries joining hands for warlike
purposes, and especially to crush out the freedom of small and weak
nations.'
"To this I willingly assent. I am certain that war is in all
circumstances opposed to that sympathy all men owe one to another, and to
that Greater Source of love and sympathy in which 'we live and move
and have our being.' Where this bond has been broken, we long for its
restoration; but it cannot but tend to retard this restoration, to impute
to one or other of the parties concerned motives that are entirely foreign
to its action. Peace, to be lasting, must stand on a foundation of truth;
and there is no truth whatever in the idea that the English Government
provoked the present war, or that it intended, at any time during the
negotiations that preceded the war, an attack on the independence either of
the Transvaal or of the Orange Free State. It is true that President Kruger
has for many years carefully propagated the fear of such an attempt among
the Dutch in South Africa, as a means of separating Boers and Englishmen
into two camps, and as an incentive to their preparing the colossal
armament
Page 58
"An examination of the 'Blue Book,' which contains the
whole of the correspondence immediately preceding the war, will at once
show the patient efforts put forth by the London Cabinet to maintain peace.
There are no irritating words used, and the last despatch of importance
before the outbreak of hostilities, dealing with the insinuations just
alluded to, is not only most courteous and conciliatory in tone, but it
states that the Queen's Government will give the most solemn
guarantees against any attack upon the independence of the Transvaal either
by Great Britain or the Colonies, or by any foreign power. I am absolutely
certain that no American reading that despatch would say that President
Kruger was justified in seizing the Netherlands Railway line within one
week after he had received it, and cutting the telegraph wires, to prepare
for the invasion of British territory, in which act of violence lay his
last and only hope of forcing England to fight; his last and desperate
chance of setting up a racial domination instead of the freedom and
equality of the two races that prevail in the Cape and Natal, and that did
prevail in the Orange Free State.
"The cause of the dispute was this: In 1884 a Convention was
agreed on between Great Britain and the Transvaal, acknowledging the
independence of the Transvaal, subject to
Page 59
"Article XIV. (1884 Convention).--'All persons other
than natives conforming themselves to the laws of the South African
Republic will not be subject in respect to their persons or property or in
respect of their commerce and industry to any taxes, whether general or
local, other than those which are or may be imposed upon citizens of the
said Republic.
"The mines brought so large a population to Johannesburg that it
at last outnumbered by very far the entire Boer burghers in the State.
Kruger, seeing that the inevitable effect of such an increase must be the
same amalgamation of the new and old populations which was going on in
Natal and Cape Colony, and to a smaller extent in the Orange Free State,
unless artificial barriers could be devised to keep the races apart, at
once set to scheme modes of taxation that should evade Article XIV. of the
Convention, throwing the entire burden on the Uitlanders, and letting the
Boers, who were nearly all farmers, escape scot free. Farmers, for example,
use no dynamite, miners do; and President Kruger gave
a monopoly of its supply to a
German, nonresident in the country, who taxed the miners for this article
alone $2,600,000 a year beyond the highest price it could otherwise
have been bought for. This was his own act, the Volksraad not being
consulted. Besides the high price, the quality of the
Page 60
"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
Page 61
"All 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."
Page 62
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,
Page 63
The following extract is from a more general point of view, but one
which it is unphilosophical to overlook.
The Christian Age reproduces a communication from an
American gentleman residing in the Transvaal to the New York
Independent.
"The Boers," Mr. Dunn says, "are, as a
race--with, of course, individual exceptions--an extraordinary
instance of an arrested civilisation, the date of stoppage being somewhere
about the conclusion of the seventeenth century. But they have not even
stood still at that point. They have distinctly and dangerously degenerated
even from the general standard of civilisation existing when Jan van
Riebeck hoisted the flag of the Dutch East Indian Company at Cape Point.
The great cardinal fact in connection with the Uitlander population is
that, owning to their numbers and activity, they have brought in their
train an influx of new wealth into the Transvaal of truly colossal
dimensions. Thus, to sum up the distinctive and divergent characteristics
of the two classes into which the population of the South African Republic
is divided--the Boers, or old population, are conservative, ignorant,
stagnant, and a minority; the Uitlanders, or new population, are
progressive, full of enterprise, energy and work,
Page 64
"It has so happened, therefore, that the Boers, as the ruling and
dominant class, have hopelessly failed to master or comprehend the new
conditions with which they have been called upon to deal. They have not, as
a body, shown either capacity or desire to treat the new developments with
even a remote appreciation of their inherent value and inevitable trend.
The Boer has simply set his back against the floodgates, apparently
oblivious or indifferent to the fact that the hugely accumulating forces
behind must one day burst every barrier he may choose to set up. That is
the whole Transvaal situation in a sentence.
"It is necessary to point out, further, that this blind and dogged
determination on the part of the Boers to 'stop the clock'
affects not merely the Transvaal; it is vitally and perniciously affecting
the whole of South Africa. But for the obstructiveness and obscurantism of
the Transvaal Boers, the rate of progress and development which would
characterise the whole South African continent would be unparalleled in the
history of any other country. The reactionary policy of the Transvaal is
the one spoke in the wheel. It must therefore be removed in the name of
humanity and civilisation."
M. Elisée Reclus, the great Geographer, an able and admittedly
impartial Historian, wrote some years ago in his "Africa," Vol.
4, page 215:--
"The patriotic Boers of South Africa still dream of the day when
the two Republics of the Orange and the Transvaal, at first connected by a
common customs union, will be consolidated in a single 'African
Holland,' possibly even in a broader confederacy, comprising all the
Afrikanders from the Cape of Good Hope to
Page 65
"Possessing for two centuries no book except the Bible, the South
African Dutch communities are fond of comparing their lot with that of the
'Chosen People.' Going forth, like the Jews, in search of a
'Promised Land,' they never for a moment doubted that the
native populations were specially created for their benefit. They looked on
them as mere 'Canaanites, Amorites, and Jebusites,' doomed
beforehand to slavery or death.
"They turned the land into a solitude, breaking all political
organization of the natives, destroying all ties of a common national
feeling, and tolerating them only in the capacity of
'apprentices,' another name for slaves.
"In general, the Boers despise everything that does not contribute
directly to the material prosperity of the family group.
Page 66
"Of all the white intruders, the Dutch Afrikanders show
themselves, as a rule, most hostile to their own kinsmen, the Netherlanders
of the mother country. At a distance the two races have a certain
fellow-feeling for each other, as fully attested by contemporary
literature; but, when brought close together, the memory of their common
origin gives place to a strange sentiment of aversion. The Boer is
extremely sensitive, hence he is irritated at the civilized Hollanders, who
smile at his rude African customs, and who reply, with apparent
ostentation, in a pure language to the corrupt jargon spoken by the
peasantry on the banks of the Vaal of Limpopo."
No impartial student of recent South African History can fail, I think
to see that the results of Mr. Gladstone's policy in the retrocession
of the Transvaal have been unhappy, however good the impulse which prompted
his action. To his supporters at home, and to many of his admirers
throughout Europe, his action stood for pure magnanimity, and seemed a sort
of prophetic instalment of the Christian spirit which, they hoped, would
pervade international politics in the coming age.
To the Transvaal leaders it presented a wholly different aspect. It
meant to them weakness, and an acknowledgment of defeat. "Now let us
go on," they felt, "and press towards our
goal, i.e., the expulsion of the
British from South Africa." The attitude and conduct of the Transvaal
delegates who came to London in 1883, and of their chiefs and supporters,
throws much light on this effect produced by the act of Mr. Gladstone.
There can be no doubt that the desire to supplant British by Dutch
supremacy has existed for a long time. President Kruger puts back the
origin of the opposition of the two races to a very
Page 67
___________________* Speech of Mr. Drage, M.P., at
Derby, December, 1899.
Page 68
The Retrocession of the Transvaal (1881) gave a strong impulse to this
movement, and encouraged President Kruger in his persistent efforts since
that date to foster it. A friend of the late General Joubert,--in a
letter which I have read,--wrote of Mr. Kruger as "the man who,
for more than twenty years past, has persistently laboured to drive in the
wedge between the two races. It has been his deliberate policy
throughout."
I always wish that I could separate the memory of that truly great man,
Mr. Gladstone, from this Act of his Administration. Few people cherish his
memory with more affectionate admiration than I do. Independently of his
great intellect, his eloquence, and his fidelity in following to its last
consequences a conviction which had taken possession of him, I revered him
because he seemed like King Saul, to stand a head and shoulders above all
his fellows,--not like King Saul in physical, but in moral stature.
Pure, honourable and strong in character and principles, a sincere
Christian, he attracted and deserved the affection and loyalty of all to
whom purity and honour are dear. I may add that I may speak of him, in a
measure also as a personal friend of our family. I have memories of
delightful intercourse with him at Oxford, when he reprresented that
constituency, and later, in other places and at other times.
I recall, however, an occasion in which a chill of astonishment and
regret fell upon me and my husband (politically one of his
Page 69
As I look back now, there seems in this incident some explanation of Mr.
Gladstone's total oblivion of the interests of our loyal native
subjects of the Transvaal at the time when he handed them over to masters
whose policy towards them was well known. These poor natives had appealed
to the British Government, had trusted it, and were deceived by it.
I recollect that Mr. Gladstone himself confessed, with much humility it
seemed to us, in a pamphlet written many years after
Page 70
Page 71V.
VISIT OF TRANSVAAL DELEGATES TO ENGLAND. THE LORD
MAYOR'S REFUSAL TO RECEIVE THEM AT THE MANSION HOUSE. DR.
DALE'S LETTER TO MR. GLADSTONE. MR. MACKENZIE IN ENGLAND. MEETINGS
AND RESOLUTIONS ON TRANSVAAL MATTERS. MANIFESTO OF BOER DELEGATES. SPEECHES
OF W.E. FORSTER, LORD SHAFTESBURY, SIR FOWELL BUXTON, AND OTHERS. THE
LONDON CONVETION (1884).
IN 1883, two years after the retrocession of the Transvaal, the
Boers, encouraged by the hesitating policy of the British Government, sent
a deputation to London of a few of their most astute statesmen, to put
fresh claims before Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Derby, then Colonial Minister.
They did not ask the repeal of the stipulations of the Convention of
1881--that was hardly necessary, as these stipulations had neither
been observed by them nor enforced by our Government, but what they desired
and asked was the complete re-establishment of the Republic, freed
from any conditions of British Suzerainty. This would have given them a
free hand in dealing with the natives, a power which those who knew them
best were the least willing to concede.
Sir R.N. Fowler was at that time Lord Mayor of London. According to the
custom when any distinguished foreigners visit our Capital, of giving them
a reception at the Mansion House, these Transvaal delegates were presented
for that honour. But
Page 72
The explanation of this unusual act is given in the biography of Sir R.
Fowler, written by J. S. Flynn, (page 260.) The following extract from that
biography was sent to the Friend, the organ of the Society of
Friends, in November, 1899, by Dr. Hodgkin, himself a quaker, whose name is
known in the literary world:--"The scene of Sir R.
Fowler's travels in 1881 was South Africa, where he went chiefly for
the purpose of ascertaining how he could best serve the interests of the
native inhabitants. He left no stone unturned in his search for
information--visiting Sir Hercules Robinson, the Governor of the Cape,
Sir Theophilus Shepstone, Sir Evelyn Wood, Colonel Mitchell, Bishops
Colenso and Macrorie, the Zulu King Cetewayo, the principal statesmen, the
military, the newspaper editors, the workers at the diamond-fields,
and many others. The result of his inquiries was to confirm his belief of
the charges which were made against the Transvaal Boers of wronging and
oppressing the blacks.
"It was the opinion of many philanthropists that the only way to
insure good Government in the Transvaal--justice to the natives, the
suppression of slavery, the security of neighbouring tribes--was by
England's insisting on the Boer's observance of the Treaty
which had been made to this effect, and the delimitation of the boundary of
their territory in order to prevent aggression. With this object in view
meetings were held in the City, petitions presented by Members of
Parliament, resolutions moved in the House; and when at last it was
discovered that Mr. Gladstone's Government was unwilling to fulfil
its pledges in reference to South Africa, and that in consequence the
native inhabitants would not receive the support they had been led to
expect,
Page 73
"The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for the Colonies
received the Transvaal delegates graciously, but the doors of the Mansion
House were shut against them. Its occupant at that time would neither
receive them into his house nor bid them God-speed. He had made a
careful study of the South African question, and he felt no doubt that this
deputation represented a body of European settlers who were depriving the
natives of their land, slaying their men, and enslaving their women and
children. He desired to extend the hospitality of the Mansion House to
visitors from all countries, and to all creeds and political parties; but
the line must be drawn somewhere, and he would draw it at the Boers. The
boldness of his action on this occasion startled some even of his friends.
He was, of course, attacked by that portion of the press which supported
the Government. On the other hand, he had numerous sympathisers. Approving
letters and telegrams came from many quarters, one
Page 74
Dr. Hodgkin prefaced this extract by the following lines, addressed to
the Editor of the Friend:
"Dear Friend,--In re-perusing a few days ago the life
of my late brother-in-law, Sir R.N. Fowler, I came upon the
enclosed passage, which I think worthy of our consideration at the present
time.
Of late years the disputes between our Government and the African
Republic have turned so entirely on questions connected with the status of
the settlers in and around Johannesburg, that we may easily forget the old
subjects of dispute which existed for a generation before it was known that
there were any workable goldfields in South Africa, and before the word
"Uitlander" had been mentioned amongst us. I must confess that
for my part I had forgotten this incident of Sir R.N. Fowler's
Mayoralty, and I think it may interest some of your readers to be reminded
of it at the present time. I am, thine
truly,--THOMAS HODGKIN. Barmoor,
Northumberland."
The late Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, was one of those whose minds were
painfully exercised on the matter of the abandonment of the natives of the
Transvaal to the Boers. An extract from his life was sent in February this
year to the Spectator, with the following
preface:--
Page 75
"Sir,--I have been greatly impressed by the justice of much
that has been said in the Spectator on the fact that the
present war is a retribution for our indifference and apathy in 1881. We
failed in our duty then. We have taken it up now, but at what a cost! In
reading lately the life of Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, I was struck by his
remarks (pp. 438 and 439) on the Convention of Pretoria. These remarks have
such a bearing on the present situation that I beg you will allow me to
quote them:"--
"In relation to South African affairs he (Dr. Dale) felt silence
to be impossible. He had welcomed the policy initiated by the Convention of
Pretoria (1881) conceding independence to the Transvaal, but imposing on
the Imperial Government responsibility for the protection of native races
within and beyond the frontiers. In correspondence with members of the
House of Commons and in more than one public utterance, he expressed his
satisfaction that the freedom of the Boers did not involve the slavery of
the natives. At first the outlook was hopeful, but the Boers soon began to
chafe against the restrictions to which they were subjected..... The Rev.
John Mackenzie brought a lamentable record of outrage and cruelty.... Dr.
Dale particularly urged that the Government should insist on carrying
out the 18th article of the Convention of Pretoria. 'The policy of
the Government seemed to me both righteous and expedient, singularly
courageous and singularly Christian. But that policy included two distinct
elements. It restored to the Boers internal independence, it reserved to
the British Government powers for the protection of native races on the
Transvaal frontier. It is not unreasonable for those who in the face of
great obloquy supported the Government in recognising the independence of
the Transvaal, to ask that it should also use its treaty powers, and use
them effectively for the protection of the natives.' To this
statement
Page 76
Mr. Mackenzie, British Commissioner for Bechuanaland, came to England in
1882. In the following year the Delegates from the Transvaal came to
London, and in 1884 the Convention was signed, which was called the
"London Convention."
These years included events of great interest. Mr. Mackenzie
Page 77
'They had good reason to be disgusted, but I want all the same to
tell them a number of things about the true condition of the
country.'
'They will not listen,' my friend declared, 'They will
only swear at you.' This was not very encouraging, but it was not far
from the truth as to the public feeling at that time.
Being in the ---- counties of England I was offered an
introduction to the Editor of a well-known newspaper, who was also a
pungent writer on social questions under a nom de
plume which had got to be so well known as no longer to serve the
purpose of the writer's concealment of identity.
'You come from South Africa, do you,' said the great man;
'a place where we have had much trouble, but mean to have no
more.'
'Trouble, however,' I answered, 'is inseparable from
Empire. Whoever governs South Africa must meet with some trouble and
difficulty, although not much when honestly faced.'
'I assure you,' he broke in, 'we are not going to try
it again after the one fashion or the other. We are out of it, and we mean
to remain so.'
'You astonish me,' I answered; 'what about the
Convention recently signed at Pretoria (1881)? What about the speeches
still more recently made in this country in support of it?'
'As to the Convention, I know we signed something; people often do
when they are getting out of a nasty business. We never meant to keep it,
nor shall we.'
Page 78
I believe I whistled a low whistle just to let off the steam, and then
replied calmly, 'Will you allow me to say that by your own showing
you are a bad lot, a very bad lot, as politicians.'
'That may be, but it does not alter the fact, which is as I
state.'
'Well, I am an outsider, but I assure you that the English people,
should they ever know the facts, will agree with me in saying that you are
a bad lot. Such doctrines in commerce would ruin us in a day. You know
that.'
'The people are with us. They are disgusted and heart-sore
with the whole business.'
'I grant you that such is their frame of mind, but I think their
attitude will be different when they come to consider the facts, and face
the responsibilities of our position in South Africa. The only difficulty
with me is to communicate the truth to the public mind.'
I was much impressed by this interview. Did this influential editor
represent a large number of English people? Were they in their own minds
out of South Africa, and resolved never to return?
...... 'I do not know what you think, Mr. Mackenzie, but we
are all saying here that Mr. Gladstone made a great mistake in not
recalling Sir Bartle Frere at once. In fact, we are of opinion that Frere
should have been tried and hanged.'
The speaker was a fine specimen of an Englishman, tall, with a good
head, intelligent and able as well as strong in speech. He was a large
manufacturer, and a local magnate. His wife was little and gentle, and yet
quite fearless of her grim-looking lord. She begged that I would
always make a deduction when her husband referred to South Africa. He could
never keep his temper on that subject. My host abruptly demanded,
'But don't you think that Frere should have been
hanged?'
Page 79
'My dear, you will frighten Mr. Mackenzie with your vehemence, and
you know you do not mean it a bit.'
'Mean
it! Isn't
it what everybody is saying here? At anyrate I have given Mr. Mackenzie a
text, and he must now give me his discourse.'
I then proceeded to sketch out the work which Sir Bartle Frere had had
before him, its fatal element of haste, with its calamitous failures in no
way chargeable to him. 'In short, I concluded, but for the grave
blunders of others you would have canonized Sir Bartle Frere instead of
speaking of him as you do. He is the ablest man you ever sent to South
Africa. As to his personal character, I do not know a finer or manlier
Christian.' ...
'I am quite bewildered,' said my host, at the end of a long
conversation. 'I know more of South Africa than I knew before. But we
shall not believe you unless you pitch into someone. You have not done that
yet; you have only explained past history, and have had a good word for
everybody.'
'Then, Sir,' I quickly answered, 'I pitch into you,
and into your Governments, one after another, for not mastering the facts
of South African life. Why do you now refuse to protect your own highway
into the Interior, and at the same time conserve the work of the
missionaries whom you have supported for two generations, and thus put an
end to the freebooting of the Boers, and of our own people who joined them?
At present there is a disarmed coloured population, disarmed by your own
laws on account only of their colour; and there is an armed population,
armed under your laws, because they are white; and you decline to interfere
in any way for the protection of the former. You will neither protect the
natives nor give them fairplay and an open field, so that they may protect
themselves.'
'Now, my dear,' said the little wife, 'I wonder who
deserves
Page 80
'No, no, you are always too hasty,' said my host, quite
gravely. 'The thing gets very serious. Do I rightly understand you,
Mr. Mackenzie, that practically we Englishmen arm those freebooters (from
the Transvaal,) and practically keep the blacks disarmed, and that when the
blacks have called on us for protection and have offered themselves and
their country to the Queen we have paid no heed? Is this true?'
'Every word true,' I replied.
'Then may I ask, did you not fight for these people? You had
surely got a rifle,' said my host, turning right round on me.
'My dear, you forget Mr. Mackenzie has been a Missionary,'
said his wife. 'You yourself, as a Director of the London Missionary
Society, would have had him cashiered if he had done anything of the
kind.'
'Nonsense, you don't see the thing. I assure you I could not
have endured such meanness and injustice. I should have broken such
confounded laws. I should have shouldered a rifle, I know,' said the
indignant man as he paced his room.
'My dear, you would have got shot, you know,' said his
wife.
'Shot! yes, certainly, why not?' said my host; and added
gravely, 'A fellow would know why he was shot. Is it
true, Mr. Mackenzie, that those blacks were kind to our people who fled to
them from the Transvaal, and that they there protected them?'
'Quite true,' I rejoined.
'Then by heaven,' said Mr.----, raising his
voice----
'Let us go to supper,' broke in the gentle wife, 'you
are only wearying Mr. Mackenzie by your constant wishes to hang some
one.'
Page 81
"I trust my friends will forgive me for recalling this
conversation, which vividly pictures the state of people's mind
concerning South Africa in 1882. I found that most people were incredulous
as to the facts being known at the Colonial Office, and there was a uniform
persuasion that Mr. Gladstone was ignorant that such things were going
on."
I have given these interviews (much abridged) because they illustrate in
a rather humourous way a state of mind which unhappily has long existed and
exists to some degree to this day in England--an impatience of
responsibility for anything concerning interests lying beyond the shores of
our own Island, a certain superciliousness, and a habit of expressing and
adhering to suddenly formed and violent opinions without sufficient study
of the matters in question,--such opinions being often influenced by
the bias of party politics. Our countrymen are now waking up to a graver
and deeper consideration of the tremendous interests at stake in our
Colonies and Dependencies, and to a greater readiness to accept
responsibilities which once undertaken it is cowardice to reject or even to
complain of.
At the request of the London Missionary Society, Mr. Mackenzie drew up
an extended account of the Bechuanaland question, which had a wide
circulation. He did not enter into part politics, but merely gave evidence
as to matters of fact. There was surprise and indignation expressed
wherever the matter was carefully studied and understood. Many resolutions
were transmitted to the Colonial Secretary from public meetings; one which
came from a meeting in the Town Hall of Birmingham was as
follows:--
"This meeting earnestly trusts that the British Government will
firmly discharge the responsibilities which they have undertaken in
protection of the native races on the Transvaal border."
Page 82
Among the people who took up warmly the cause of the South African
natives were Dr. Conder, Mr. Baines, and Mr. Yates of Leeds (who addressed
themselves directly to Mr. Gladstone), Dr. Campbell and Dr. Duff of
Edinburgh, the Rev. Arnold Thomas and Mr. Chorlton of Bristol, Mr. Howard
of Ashton-under-Lyne, Mr. Thomas Rigby of Chester, and
others.
A Resolution was sent to the Colonial Office by the Secretary of the
Congregational Union of England and Wales, which had been passed
unanimously at a meeting of that body in Bristol:--
"That the Assembly of the Congregational Union, recognising with
devout thankfulness the precious and substantial results of the labours of
two generations of Congregational Christian Missionaries in Bechuanaland,
learns with grief and alarm that the lawless incursions of certain Boers
from the Transvaal threaten the utter ruin of peace, civilization, and
Christianity in that land. This Assembly therefore respectfully and most
urgently entreats Her Majesty's Government, in accordance with the
express provision of the Convention by which Self-Government was
granted to the Boers, to take such steps as shall eventually put a stop to
a state of things as inconsistent with the pledged word of England as with
the progress of the Bechuanaland nations." Signed at Bristol, Oct.
1882.
"These," says Mr. Mackenzie, "were not words of war,
but of peace; they were not the words of enemies, but of friends of the
Transvaal, many of whom had been prominent previously in agitating for the
Boers getting back their independence. They felt that this was the just
complement of that action; the Boers were to have freedom within the
Transvaal; but not licence to turn Bechuanaland (and other neighbouring
natives states) into a pandemonium."
There was a closer contact in Edinburgh with South Africa
Page 83
A South African Committee was formed in London from which a largely
supported address was presented to Mr. Gladstone.
The High Commissioner for Bechuanaland gave his impressions at several
different times during that and the preceding year on the subject of the
constant illegal passing of the Western Boundary line of the Transvaal by
the Boers. Readers will remember that the delimitation of the western
boundary of the Transvaal was fixed condition of the Convention of 1881, a
Convention which was continually violated by the Boers. No rest was
permitted for the poor natives of the different tribes on that side, the
Boers' land-hunger continuing to be one of their strongest
passions. The High Commissioner wrote, "If Montsioa and Mankoroane
were now absorbed, Banokwani, Makobi and Bareki would soon share the same
fate. Haseitsiwe and Sechele would come next. So long as there were native
cattle to be stolen and native lands to be taken possession of, the
absorbing process would be repeated. Tribe after tribe would be pushed
Page 84
The Manifesto presented by the Transvaal delegates to the English people
convinced no one, and its tone was calculated rather to beget suspicion.
The following is an extract from that document:
"The horrible misdeeds committed by Spain in America, by the Dutch
in the Indiana Archipelago, by England in India, and by the Southern
planters in the United States, constitute an humiliating portion of the
history of mankind, over which we as Christians may well blush, confessing
with a contrite heart our common guiltiness."
"The labours of the Anti-slavery and Protection of
Aborigines Societies which have been the means of arousing the public
conscience to the high importance of this matter cannot be, according to
our opinion, sufficiently lauded and encouraged."
The manifesto then goes on to meet the charges concerning slavery and
ill-treatment of natives brought against the Transvaal by flat
denial. "They may be true," they say, "as to actions done
long ago, and they humbly pray to the Lord God to forgive them the sins
that may have been committed in hidden corners. Believe us, therefore,
Gentlemen, when we say that the opposition to our Government is caused by
prejudice, and fed by misunderstanding. If you leave us untrammelled, we
hope to God that before a new generation has passed, a considerable portion
of our natives in the Transvaal will be converted to Christianity; at least
our Government is preparing arrangements for a more thorough Christian
mission among them."
___________________* "Austral Africa, Ruling it
or Losing it," p.157.
Page 85
A public Meeting was held at the Mansion House, called by the Lord
Mayor, Sir R. Fowler, at which the Right Hon. W.E. Forster, referring to
the Sand River and the other conventions said: "can anything be
more grossly unfair and unjust than on the one hand, to hand over these
native people to the Transvaal Government, and on the other hand to do our
utmost to prevent them from defending themselves when their rights are
attacked? I cannot conceive any provision more contrary to that principle
of which we are so proud--British fair play."
Speaking of the treatment of the Bechuanaland people by the Boers he
said: "The story of these men is a very sad one; I would rather
never allude to it again." He then referred to "the settlement
of the western boundary of the Transvaal by Governor Keate, and the
immediate repudiation of it by the Transvaal Rulers. Then came the Pretoria
Convention only two years ago which added a large block of native land to
the Transvaal. That was not enough. Freebooters came over, mostly from the
Transvaal, and afterwards from other parts of the country. Representations
and remonstrances were made to the Transvaal Government. There was a non
possumus reply. 'We cannot stop them;' We seem to have good
ground for believing that the freebooters were stimulated by the officers
of the Transvaal Government. The result was that the native Chiefs of the
people lost by far the larger portion of their land. They appealed to our
Government, and we did nothing; there came again and again despairing
appeals to England, and how were they met? I can only believe it was
through ignorance of the question that it was possible to meet them as we
did. It was proposed to meet them by a miserable compensation in money or
in land, not to the people but to the few Chiefs, who to their credit, as a
lesson to us, a great Christian Country said: "We will not
desert our
Page 86
"That practically is the demand. Are you prepared to grant it? I
for my part say, that rather than grant it I would (a voice in the
meeting--'fight!') yes, if necessary, fight; but I will do
my utmost to persuade my fellow countrymen to make the declaration that, if
necessary, force will be used, which, if it was believed in, would make it
unnecessary to fight.
"The Transvaal Boers know our power, and the Delegates know our
power. It is our will that they doubt. If I could not persuade my fellow
countrymen that they meant to show that they would never grant such demands
as these, I would rather do--what I should otherwise oppose with all
my might,--withdraw from South Africa altogether. I am not so proud of
our extended Empire as to wish to preserve it at the cost of England
refusing to discharge her duties. If we have obligations we must meet them,
and if we have duties we must fulfil them; and I have confidence in the
English people that first or last they will make our Government fulfil its
obligations. But there is much difference between first and last; last is
much more difficult than first, and more costly than first. The cost
increases with more than geometrical progression. There are people who say,
(but the British nation will not say it;) 'leave us alone, let these
Colonists and Boers and Natives whom we are tired of, fight it out as best
they can; let us declare by our deeds, or rather by our non deeds that
Page 87
Readers will remark how extraordinarily prophetic are these words of Mr.
Forster, spoken in 1883.
The "venerable and beloved Lord Shaftesbury," as Mr.
Mackenzie calls him, spoke as follows:--
"This morning has been put into my hands the reply of the
Transvaal delegates to the Aborigines Protection Society. I read it with a
certain amount of astonishment and of comfort too,--of astonishment
that men should be found possessing such a depth of Christianity, such
sentiments of religion, such love for veracity, and such regard for the
human race as to put on record and to sign with their own hands such a
denial of the atrocities and cruelties which have been recorded against
them for so many years. It is most blessed to contemplate the depth of
their religious sentiments; they express the love they bear to our Lord and
Saviour, and their desire to walk in His steps. All this is very beautiful,
and if true, is the greatest comfort ever given us concerning
the native races. I will take that document as a promise for the future
that they will act upon these prin-
Page 88
"Let me come to the laws of the Transvaal. It is a fundamental law
of that State that there can be no equality either in Church or in State
between white and coloured men. No native is allowed to hold land in the
Transvaal with such a fundamental law. It is nothing more than a necessary
transition to the conclusion that the coloured people should be contemned
as being of an inferior order, and only fit for slavery. That is a
necessary transition, and it is for Englishmen to protest against it, and
to say that all men, of whatever creed, or race, or colour, are equal in
Church and State, and in the sight of God, and to assert the principle of
Civil and Religious Liberty whenever they have the opportunity. I have my
fears at times of the consequences of democratic action; but I shall never
feel afraid of appealing to the British democracy on a question of Civil
and Religious liberty. That strikes a chord that is very deep and dear to
every Briton everywhere. They believe,--and their history shows that
they act upon the belief,--that the greatest blessing here below that
can be given to intellectual and moral beings is the gift of Civil and
Religious liberty. Sensible of the responsibility we have assumed, we
appeal to the British public, and I have no doubt what the answer will be.
It will be that by God's blessing, and so far as in us lies, Civil
and Religious liberty shall prevail among all the tribes of
South Africa, to the end that they may become civilized nations, vying with
us in the exercise of the gifts that God has bestowed upon us."
Page 89
Sir Henry Barkly, who had held the office of Governor of the Cape
Colony, and of High Commissioner for a number of years,
said:--
"Apart from other considerations, it is essential in the interests
of civilization and of commerce that the route to the interior of the Dark
Continent should be kept in our hands. It has been through the stations
planted by our missionaries all along it, as far as Matabeleland, that the
influence of the Gospel has been spread among the natives, and that the way
has been made safe and easy for the traveller and the trader. Can we
suppose that these stations can be maintained if we suffer the road to fall
within the limits of the Transvaal? We need not recall our melancholy
experience of the past in this region. I would rather refer to the case of
the Paris Evangelical Society, whose missionaries were refused leave only a
short time ago to teach or preach to the Basuto-speaking population
within the Transvaal territory."
The Hon. R. Southey said:--
"I concur entirely with what has been said by the Right Hon. Mr.
Forster with regard to slavery. It must be admitted that the institution
does not exist in name; but in reality something very closely allied to it
exists, for in that country there is no freedom for the coloured races. The
road to the interior must be kept open, not only for the purposes of trade,
but also as a way by which the Gospel may be carried from here to the vast
regions beyond Her Majesty's possessions in that part of the world.
If we allow the Transvaal State to annex a territory through which the
roads to the interior pass, not only will there be difficulties put in the
way of our traders, but the missionary also will find it no easy task to
obey the injunction to carry the Gospel into all lands, and to preach it to
all peoples."
Page 90
Sir Fowell Buxton presented the following thought, which might with
advantage be taken to heart at the present time:--
"We know how in the United States they have lately been
celebrating the events that recall the time a century ago of the
declaration of their independence. I will ask you to consider what would
have been the best advice that we could have given at that time to the
Government at Washington? Do we not know that in regard to all that relates
to the well-being of the country, to mere matters of wealth and
property, the best advice to have given them would have been, to deliver
their country at once from all connection with slavery in the days when
they formed her constitution."
Sir William M'Arthur, M.P., said:--
"I have never seen in the Mansion House a larger or more
enthusiastic meeting, and I believe that the feeling which animates this
meeting is animating the whole country. Any course of action taken by Her
Majesty's Ministers towards the Transvaal will be very closely
watched. I myself am for peace, but I am also for that which maintains
peace. viz., a firm and decided policy."
The poor Chief, Mankoroane, having heard that the Transvaal Delegates
would discuss questions of vital importance to his people, left
Bechuanaland and went as far as Cape Town on his way to England to
represent his case there. Lord Derby, however, sent him word that he could
not be admitted to the Conference in London, where the ownership of his own
country was to be discussed. Mankoroane then begged Mr. Mackenzie to be his
representative, but was again told that neither personally nor by
representative could he be recognised at the Conference
Page 91
The first and great question which the Transvaal Delegates desired to
settle in their own interests was that of the Western boundary line,
amended by themselves, which was represented on a map. They were informed
that their amended treaty was "neither in form nor in substance such
as Her Majesty's Government could adopt," there being
"certain Chiefs who had objected, on behalf of their people, to be
included in the Transvaal, and there being a strong feeling in London in
favour of the independence of these natives, or (if they, the natives,
desired it) of their coming under British rule." There was now
brought before the delegates a map showing the addition of land which was
eventually granted to the Transvaal, but the delegates would not agree to
any such arrangement. Her Majesty's Government were giving away to
them some 2,600 square miles of native territory, concerning which there
was no clear evidence that its owners wished to be joined to the Transvaal.
But this was nothing to the Transvaal demand, as shown by a map which they
put in, and which included an additional block of 4,000 square
miles. Not finding agreement with the Government possible, the delegates
then turned from that position, and took up the question of the remission
of the debt which the Transvaal owed to England, saying that the wishes of
the native chiefs should be consulted first about the boundary line. This
was a bold stroke; they were professing to be representing the interests of
certain chiefs, which was not the case.
Lord Derby telegraphed to the Cape on the 27th of Feb. 1884, the result
of the protracted labours of the Conference at Downing Street,
mentioning:--"British Protectorate established
Page 92
The conditions laid down in the Convention did not satisfy the
Delegates, although they formally assented to them. Their disappointment
began to be strongly manifested. They had stoutly denied that slavery
existed in their country. This denial was
___________________* When the Transvaal was annexed,
in 1877 the public debt of that country amounted to £301,727.
"Under British rule this debt was liquidated to the extent of
£150,000, but the total was brought up by a Parliamentary grant, a
loan from the Standard Bank, and sundries to £390,404, which
represented the public debt of the Transvaal on the 31st December, 1880.
This was further increased by monies advanced by the Standard Bank and
English Exchequer during the war, and till the 8th August, 1881 (during
which time the country yielded no revenue.) to £457,393. To this must
be added an estimated sum of £200,000 for compensation charges,
pension allowances, &c., and a further sum of £383,000, the cost
of the successful expedition against Secocoemi, that of the unsuccessful
one being left out of account, bringing up the total public debt to over a
million, of which about £800,000 was owing to this country. This sum
the Commissioners (Sir Evelyn Wood dissenting) reduced by a stroke of the
pen to £265,000, thus entirely remitting an approximate sum of
£500,000 or £600,000. To the sum of £265,000 still owning
must be added say another £150,000 for sums lately advanced to pay
the compensation claims, brining up the actual amount owing to England to
about a quarter of a million."--Report of Assistant Secretary to
the British Agent for Native Affairs. (Blue Book 3947, 46.)
Page 93
The displeasure of the Boer Delegates matured after their return to the
Transvaal, and was expressed in a message sent by the Volksraad to our
Government not many months after the signing of the Convention in
London.
In this document the Boers seem to regard themselves as a victorious
people making terms with those they had conquered. It is interesting to
note the articles of the Convention to which they particularly object. In
the telegram which was sent to "His Excellency, W.E.
Gladstone," the Volksraad stated that the London Convention was not
acceptable to them. They declared that "modifications were desirable,
and that certain articles must be altered." They
attached importance to the
___________________* "Austral africa."
Mackenzie.
Page 94
It should be observed here that this reference to unequal and excessive
taxation of foreigners in the Transvaal, pointing to a tendency on the part
of the Boers to load foreigners with unjust taxation, was made before the
development of the goldfields and the great influx of Uitlanders.
The Message of the Volksraad was finally summed up in the following
words: "we object to the following articles, 15, 16, 26, and
27, because to insist on them is hurtful to our sense of honour."
(sic.)
Now what are the articles to which the Boer Government here objects, and
has continued to object?
Article 15 enacts that no slavery or apprenticeship shall be
tolerated.
Article 16 provides for religious toleration (for Natives and all
alike.)
Article 26 provides for the free movement, trading, and residence of all
persons, other than natives, conforming themselves to the laws of the
Transvaal.
Article 27 gives to all, (Natives included,) the right of free access to
the Courts of Justice.
Putting the "sense of honour" of the Transvaal Volksraad out
of the question, past experience had but too plainly proved that these
Articles were by no means superfluous.
Page 95VI.
THE CAREER AND RECALL OF SIR BARTLE FRERE. UNFORTUNATE EFFECT
IN SOUTH AFRICA OF PARTY SPIRIT IN POLITICS AT HOME. DEATH OF SIR BARTLE
FRERE. THE GREAT PRINCIPLES OF BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND LAW. HOPE FOR SOUTH
AFRICA IF THESE ARE MAINTAINED AND OBSERVED. WORDS OF MR. GLADSTONE ON THE
COLONIZING SPIRIT OF ENGLISHMEN.
THE case of Sir Bartle Frere illustrates forcibly the
inexpediency of allowing our party differences at home to sow the seeds of
discord in a distant Colony, and the apparent injustices to which such
action may give rise.
While in England Sir Bartle Frere was being censured and vilified, in
South Africa an overwhelming majority of the colonists, of whatever race or
origin, were declaring, in unmistakable terms, that he had gained their
warmest approbation and admiration. Town after town and village after
village poured in addresses and resolutions in different forms, agreeing in
enthusiastic commendation of him as the one man who had grasped the many
threads of the South African tangle, and was handling them so as to promise
a solution in accordance with the interests of all the many and various
races which inhabited it.
"In our opinion," one of these resolutions (from Cradock)
says, "his Excellency, Sir Bartle Frere, is one of the best
Governors, if not the best Governor, this Colony has ever had, and the
disasters which have taken place since he has held
Page 96
Another, from Kimberley says--"It has been a source of much
pain to us that your Excellency's policy and proceedings should have
been so misunderstood and misrepresented.... The time, we hope, is not
far distant when the wisdom of your Excellency's native policy and
action will be as fully recognized and appreciated by the whole British
nation as it is by the colonists of South
Africa."+
At Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal, a public meeting was held
(April 24th), which resolved that:--
"This meeting reprobates most strongly the action of a certain
section of the English and Colonial Press for censuring, without sufficient
knowledge of local affairs, the policy and conduct of Sir B. Frere; and it
desires not only to express its sympathy with Sir B. Frere and its
confidence in his policy, but also to go so far as to congratulate most
heartily Her Majesty the Queen, the Home Government, and ourselves, on
possessing such a true, considerate, and faithful servant as his Excellency
the High Commissioner."
A public dinner also was given to Sir B. Frere at Pretoria, at which his
health was drunk with the greatest enthusiasm; there was a public holiday,
and other rejoicing.
Sir Bartle Frere was intending to go to Bloemfontein, in the
___________________* Blue Book, C, p 28,2673.
___________________+ Blue Book, C. 2454, p.
57.
Page 97
"At Kimberley he had been sworn in as Governor of Griqualand West.
Fifteen thousand people, it was estimated, turned out to meet and welcome
him. From thence to Cape Town his journey was like a triumphal progress,
the population at each place he passed through receiving him in
flag-decorated streets, with escorts, triumphal arches,
illuminations, and addresses. At Worcester, where he reached the railway,
there was a banquet, at which Sir Gordon Sprigg was also present. At Paarl,
which was the headquarters of the Dutch Afrikander league, and where some
of the most influential Dutch families live, a similar reception was given
him. Finally, at Cape Town, where, if anywhere, his policy was likely to
find opponents among those who regarded it from a provincial point of view,
the inhabitants of all classes and sections and of whatever origin, gave
themselves up to according him a reception such as had never been surpassed
in Capetown.
"In England, complimentary local receptions and addresses to men
in high office or of exalted rank do not ordinarily carry much meaning.
Party tactics and organization account for a proportion of such
manifestations. But the demonstration on this occasion cannot be so
explained. There was no party organization to stimulate it. It was too
general to confer notoriety on any of its promoters, and Sir B. Frere had
not
Page 98
On reaching Cape Town, a telegraphic message was handed to him,
preparing him for his recall, by the statement that Sir H. Bulwer was to
replace him as High Commissioner of the Transvaal, Natal, and all the
adjoining eastern portion of South Africa, and that he was to confine his
attention for the present to the Cape Colony.
To deprive him of his authority as regarded Natal, Zululand, the
Transvaal--the Transvaal, which almost by his single hand and voice he
had just saved from civil war--and expressly to direct Colonel Lanyon
to cease to correspond with him, was to discredit a public servant before
all the world at the crisis of his work.
Sir Bartle Frere's great object had been to bring about a
Confederation of all the different States and portions of South Africa, an
object with which the Home Government was in sympathy.
What was wanting to bring about confederation was confidence, founded on
the permanent pacification and settlement of Zululand, the Transvaal, the
Transkei, Pondoland, Basutoland, West Griqualand, and the border generally.
How could there, under these circumstances, be confidence any longer? There
was no doubt what he had meant to do . By many a weary journey he had made
himself personally known throughout South Africa. His aims and intentions
were never concealed, never changed. In confederating under his
superintendence all
___________________* Life and Correspondence of Sir
Bartle Frere, by J. Martineau.
Page 99
It was expected by the political majority in England that as soon as Mr.
Gladstone came into power, Sir Bartle Frere, whose policy had been so
strongly denounced, would be at once recalled. When the new Parliament met
in May, the government found many of their supporters greatly dissatisfied
that this had not been done. Notice of motion was given of an address to
the Crown, praying for Sir B. Frere's removal. Certain members of
parliament met together several times at the end of May, and a memorial to
Mr. Gladstone was drawn up, which was signed by about ninety of them, and
sent to him on June 3rd, to the following effect:--
"To the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, M.P., First Lord of the
Treasury."
"We the undersigned, members of the Liberal party, respectfully
submit that as there is a strong feeling throughout the country in favour
of the recall of Sir Bartle Frere, it would greatly conduce to the
unity of the party and relieve many members from the charge of breaking
their pledges to their constituents if that step were
taken."+
The first three signatures to this document were those of L.L. Dillwyn,
Wilfrid Lawson, and Leonard Courtney.
This has been called not unjustly, "a cynically candid
document." The "unity of the Party," and "pledges
to constituents" are the only considerations alluded to in favour of
the recall of a man to whose worth almost the whole of South Africa had
witnessed, in spite of divided opinions concerning
___________________* Life and Correspondence of Sir
Bartle Frere, by J. Martineau.
___________________+ The italics are my
own.
Page 100
The Memorial to the Government had its effect; the successor of Sir
Bartle Frere was to be Sir Hercules Robinson. He was in New Zealand, and
could not reach the Cape at once; therefore Sir George Strahan was
appointed ad interim governor, Sir Bartle
being directed not even to await the arrival of the latter, but to leave by
the earliest mail steamer.
At the news of his recall there arose for the second time a burst of
sympathy from every town, village, and farm throughout the country, in
terms of mingled indignation and
sorrow.* The addresses and resolutions,
being spontaneous at each place, varied much, and laid stress on different
points, but in all there was a tone of deep regret, of conviction that Sir
B. Frere's policy and his actions had been wise, just, and merciful
towards all men, and of hope that the British government and people would
in time learn the truth.+
One from farmers of East London concludes: "May God Almighty
bless you and grant you and yours a safe passage to the Mother Country,
give you grace before our Sovereign Lady the Queen, and eloquence to
vindicate your righteous cause before the British
nation."++
The address of the Natives of Mount Cake is pathetic in its simplicity
of language.
"Our hearts are very bitter this day. We hear that the Queen calls
you to England. We have not heard that you are
___________________* There are between sixty and
seventy resolutions and addresses recorded in the Blue-book, all
passed unanimously except in one case, at Stellenbosch where a minority
opposed the resolution. The spokesman of the minority, however, based his
opposition not on Frere's general policy, still less on his
character, but as a protest against an Excise Act, which was one of Mr.
Sprigg's measures.
___________________+ Life and Correspondence of
Sir Bartle Frere.
___________________++ Blue Book, C. 2740,
p.46.
Page 101
The Malays and other Orientals, of whom there is a considerable
population at Capetown, looked upon Frere, a former Indian Statesman, as
their special property. The address from the Mahommedan subjects of the
Queen says:--
"We regret that our gracious Queen has seen fit to recall your
Excellency. We cannot help thinking it is through a mistake. The white
subjects of Her Majesty have had good friends and good rules in former
Governors, but your Excellency has been the friend of white and coloured
alike."*
The following letter is from Sir John Akerman, a member of the
Legislative Council of Natal:--
"August 9th, 1880.
"Having become aware of your recall to England from the
___________________* Blue Book. C. 2740, p. 63.
Page 102
Sir Gordon Sprigg wrote:--
"August 29th, 1880.
"I don't feel able yet to give expression to my sentiments
of profound regret that Her Majesty's Government have thought it
advisable to recall you from the post which you have held with such
conspicuous advantage to South Africa. They have driven from South Africa
'the best friend it has ever known.' For myself I may say that
in the midst of all the difficulties with which I have been surrounded, I
have always been encouraged and strengthened by the cheerful view you have
taken of public affairs, and that I have never had
half-an-hour's conversation
Page 103
Madame Koopmans de Wet, a lady of an old family, Dutch of the Dutch,
wrote to him, Nov. 16th, 1880:--
"It is with feelings of the deepest sorrow that I take the liberty
of addressing these lines to you.... What is to be the end of all this
now? for now, particularly, do the Cape people miss their
Governor, for now superior qualities in everything are wanted. Dear Sir
Bartle, you know the material we have; it is good, but who is to guide? It
is plain to every thinking mind that our position is becoming more critical
every day....
"But with deep sorrow let me say, England's, or rather
Downing Street's treatment, has not tightened the bonds between the
mother country and us. You know we have a large circle of acquaintances,
and I cannot say how taken aback I sometimes am to hear their words. See,
in all former wars there was a moral support in the thought that England,
our England, was watching over us. Now there is but one cry, 'We
shall have no Imperial help.' Why is this? We have lost confidence in
a Government who could play with our welfare; and among the many injuries
done us, the greatest was to remove from among us a ruler such as your
Excellency was."
"As the day drew near, the Cape Town people were perplexed how to
express adequately their feelings on the occasion. It was suggested that on
the day he was to embark, the whole city should mourn with shops closed,
flags half-mast high, and in profound silence. But more cheerful
counsels prevailed.
"He was to leave by the Pretoria on the afternoon of
Sept. 15th. Special trains had brought in contingents from the country. The
open space in front of Government House, Plein Street, Church Square,
Adderley Street, the Dock Road, the front of
Page 104
"There had been some delay at starting, the tide was ebbing fast,
the vessel had been detained to the last safe moment, and she now moved out
slowly, and with caution, past a wharf which the Malays, conspicuous in
their bright-coloured clothing, had occupied, then, with a flotilla
of boats rowing alongside, between a double line of yachts,
steam-tugs and boats, dressed out with flags, and dipping their
ensigns as she passed, and lastly, under the stern of the
Boadicea man-of-war, whose yards were manned,
and whose crew cheered. The guns of the castle fired the last salute from
the shore, which was answered by the guns of the Boadicea; and
in the still bright evening the smoke hung for a brief space like a
curtain, hiding the shores of the bay from the vessel. A puff of air from
the south-east cleared it away, and showed once more in the sunset
light the flat mass of Table Mountain, the "Lion's Head"
to its right, festooned with flags, the mountain slopes dotted over with
groups thickening to a continuous broad black line of people, extending
along the water's
Page 105
"For intensity of feeling and unanimity it would be hard in our
time to find a parallel to this demonstration of enthusiasm for a public
servant. The Cape Town people are by race and habit the reverse of
demonstrative; yet it was noticed that day, as it had been noticed when
Frere left Sattara (India) thirty years before, and again when he left Sind
twenty-one years before--a sight almost unknown amongst men of
English or German race in our day--that men looking on
were unable to restrain their tears. At Sattara and in Sind the regret at
losing him was softened by the knowledge that his departure was due to a
recognition of his merit; that he was being promoted in a service in which
his influence might some day extend with heightened power to the country he
was leaving. It was far otherwise when he left the Cape. On that occasion
the regret of the colonists was mingled with indignation, and embittered
with a sense of wrong."*
The writer just quoted makes the following remarks:--
"No one who has not associated with colonists in their homes can
rightly enter into the mixed feelings with which they regard the mother
country. As with a son who is gone forth into the world, there is often on
one side the conceit of youth and impatience of restraint, shown in
uncalled for acts of self-assertion or in dogmatic speech; and on
the other side a supercilious want of sympathy with the changed
surroundings, the pursuits and the aspirations of the younger generation.
It seems as if there were no bond left between the two. But a day of trial
comes;
___________________* Life and Correspondence of the
Right Hon. Sir Bartle Frere, by Martineau.
Page 106
"But those" he goes on to say, "who on that fateful
evening watched the hull of the Pretoria slowly dipping below
the western horizon felt that if, as seemed only too probably,
dismemberment of the British Empire in South Africa were sooner or later to
follow, the fault did not lie with the colonists."
The mother country had, he asserts, sacrificed the interests of her
loyal sons abroad to those which were at that moment pre-occupying
her at home, and appearing to her in such dimensions as to blot out the
larger view which later events gradually forced upon her vision. The words
above quoted are strong, perhaps too strong, but if we are true lovers of
our country and race and of our fellow creatures everywhere, we shall not
shrink from any such warnings, though their wording may seem exaggerated.
For we have a debt to pay back to South Africa; and if we cannot resume our
solemn responsibilities towards her and her millions of native peoples, in
a chastened, a wiser and a more determined spirit than that which for some
time has prevailed, it would be better to relinquish them altogether. But
we are beginning to understand the lesson written for our learning in this
solemn page of contemporary history which is to-day laid open before
our eyes and before those of the whole world.
I have recorded some few of the many testimonies in favour of Sir Bartle
Frere, because he,--a man beloved and respected by many of
us,--was the subject of a hastily formed judgment which continues in a
measure even to this day, to obscure the memory of his worth.
A friend writes: "his letters are admirable as showing his
Page 107
Mr. Mackenzie, writing of his own departure from England in 1884 to
return to South Africa, says:--
"The farewell which affected me most was that of Sir Bartle Frere,
who was then stretched on what turned out to be his death-bed. He
was very ill, and not seeing people, but was so gratified that what he had
proposed in 1878 as to Bechuanaland should be carried out in 1884, that
Lady Frere asked me to call and see him before I sailed.
"The countenance of this eminent officer was now thin, his voice
was weaker; but light was still in his eye and the mind quite unclouded.
'Here I am, Mackenzie, between living and dying, waiting the will of
God.'
'I expressed my hope for his recovery.'
'We won't talk about me. I wanted to see you. I feel I can
give you advice, for I am an old servant of the Queen. I have no fear of
your success now on the side of Government. Sir Hercules Robinson, having
selected you, will uphold you with a full support. The rest will depend on
your own character and firmness and tact. I am quite sure you will succeed.
Your difficulties will be at the beginning. But you will get them to
believe in you--the farmers as well as the natives. They will soon see
you are their friend. Now remember this: get good men round you; get,
if possible, godly men as your officers. What has been done in India has
been accomplished by hard-working, loyal-hearted men, working
willingly under chiefs to whom they were attached. Get the right stamp of
men round you and the future is yours.'
"This was the last kindly action and friendly advice of a
Page 108
It was a costly sacrifice made on the Altar of Party.
My friends have sometimes asked me, what then is the ground of my hope
for the future of our country and all over whom our Queen reigns? I
reply,--my hope lies in the fact that above all party differences,
above all private and political theories, above all the mere outward forms
of Government and the titles given to these, there stand, eternally firm
and unchangeable, the great principles of our Constitution which are the
basis of our Jurisprudence, and of every Law which is inherently just. I
use these words deliberately--"eternally firm and
unchangeable." A long and deep study of these principles, and some
experience of the grief and disaster caused by any grave departure from
them, have convinced me that these principles are founded on the highest
ethics,--the ethics of Christ.
The great Charter of our Liberties was born, as all the most precious
things are, through "great tribulation," at a time when our
whole nation was groaning under injustice and oppression, and when sorrow
had purified the eyes of the noble "Seers" of the time, and
their appeal was to the God of Justice Himself, and to no lower tribunal.
These Seers were then endowed with the power to bend the will of a stubborn
and selfish monarch, and to put on record the stern principles of our
"Immortal Charter."
I have often longed that every school-boy and girl should be
taught and well-grounded in these great principles. It would not be
a difficult nor a dry study, for like all great things, these principles
are simple, straight, and clear as the day. It is when
Page 109
The principles of our Constitution have been many times in the course of
our national history disregarded, and sometime openly violated. But such
disregard and such violation have happily not been allowed to be of long
duration. Sometimes the respect of these principles has been restored by
the efforts of a group of enlightened Statesmen, but more frequently by the
awakened "Common Sense"* of
the people, who have become aware that they, or even some very humble
section of them, have been made to suffer by such violation. Again and
again the gallant "Ship of our Constitution," carrying the
precious cargo of our inalienable rights and liberties, has righted herself
in the midst of storms and heavy seas of trouble. Having been called for
thirty years of my life to advocate the rights of a portion of our
people,--the meanest and most despised of our fellow
citizens,--when those rights had been destroyed by an Act of
Parliament which was a distinct violation of the Constitution, and having
been driven, almost like a ship-wrecked creature to cling, with the
helpless crew around me, during those years to this strong rock of
principle, and having found it to be political and social salvation in a
time of need, I cannot refrain, now in my old age, from embracing every
opportunity I may have of warning my fellow countrymen of the danger there
is in departing form these principles.
My hope for the future of South Africa, granting its continuance as a
portion of our Colonial Empire, is in the resurrection of these great
principles from this present tribulation, and their
___________________* In the sense in which the great
Lord Chatham used the words.
Page 110
France possesses, equally with ourselves, a record of these principles
in its famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man," born also in
a period of great national tribulation. That document is in principle
identical with our own great Charter. But France has only possessed it a
little more than a century, whereas our own Charter dates back many
centuries; hence the character of our people has been in a great measure
formed upon its principles, and they have been made sensitive to any grave
or continued violation of them. In France, earnest and sometimes almost
despairing appeals are now made to these fundamental principles expressed
in their own great Charter by a minority of men who continue to see
straight and clearly through the clouds of contending factions in the midst
of which they live; but for a large portion of the nation they are a dead
letter, even if they have ever been intelligently understood.
How far has South Africa been governed on these principles? I boldly
affirm that on the whole, since the beginning of the last century, it is
these principles of British Government and Law, so far as they have been
enforced, which have saved that colony from anarchy and confusion, and its
native populations from bondage or annihilation. But they have not been
sufficiently strongly enforced. They have not been brought to bear upon
those Englishmen, traders, speculators, company-makers, and others
whose interests may have been in opposition to these principles.
A Swiss missionary who has lived a great part of his life in South
Africa, writes to me:--"The whole of South Africa is to
blame in its treatment of the natives. Take the British merchant, the Boer
and Dutch official, the German colonist, the French and
Page 111
In connection with this subject, I give here a quotation from the
"Daily News," March 21st, 1900. The article was inspired by a
thoughtful speech of Sir Edward Grey. The writer asks the reason of the
loss of the capacity in our Liberal party to deal with Colonial matters;
and replies:: "It is to be found, we think, in want of
imagination and in want of faith. There are many among us who have failed,
from want of imagination, to grasp that we have been living in an age of
expansion; or who, recognising the fact, have from want of faith seen in it
occasion only for lamentation and woe. Failure in either of these respects
is sure to deprive a British party of popular support. For the
'expansion of England' now, as in former times, proceeds from
the people themselves, and faith in the mission of England is firmly
planted in the popular creed."
Page 112
Page 113VII.
TRANSVAAL POLICY SINCE 1884. DELIMITATION OF BOUNDARY AGREED
TO AND NOT OBSERVED. THE CHIEF MONTSIOA. HIS COUNTRY PLACED UNDER BRITISH
PROTECTION. TRANSVAAL LAW. THE GRONDWET OR CONSTITUTION. THE HIGH COURTS OF
JUSTICE SUBSERVIENT TO THE VOLKSRAAD OR PARLIAMENT. ARTICLE 9 OF THE
GRONDWET REFERRING TO NATIVES. NATIVE MARRIAGE LAWS. THE PASS SYSTEM.
MISPLACED GOVERNMENTAL TITLES,--REPUBLIC, EMPIRE, ETC.
THE Boer policy toward the natives did not undergo any change
for the better from 1881 and onwards.
At the time of the rising of the Boers against the British Protectorate,
which culminated in the battle of Majuba Hill and the retrocession of the
Transvaal, a number of native chiefs in districts outside the Transvaal
boundary, sent to the British Commissioner for native affairs to offer
their aid to the British Government, and many of them took the
"loyals" of the Transvaal under their protection. One of these
was Montsioa, a Christian chief of the Barolong tribe. He and other chiefs
took charge of Government property and cattle during the disturbances, and
one had four or five thousand pounds in gold, the product of a recently
collected tax, given him to take care of by the Commissioner of his
district, who was afraid that the money would be seized by the Boers.
In every instance the property entrusted to their charge was returned
intact. The loyalty of all the native chiefs under very trying
circumstances, is a remarkable proof of the
Page 114
In May, 1884, in the discharge of his office as Deputy Commissioner in
Bechuanaland, and on behalf of Her Majesty, the Queen, Mr. Mackenzie
entered into a treaty with the chief, Montsioa, by which his country (the
Barolong's country) was placed under British protection, and also
with Moshette, a neighbouring chief, who wrote a letter to Mr. Mackenzie
asking to be put under the same protection as the other
Barolong.*
Mr. Mackenzie
wrote:+--
"Whatever may have been the feelings of disapproval of the British
Protectorate entertained by the Transvaal people, I was left in no manner
of doubt as to the joy and thankfulness with which it was welcomed in the
Barolong country itself.
"The signing of the treaty in the courtyard of Montsioa, at
Mafeking, by the chief and his headmen, was accompanied by every sign of
gladness and good feeling. The speech of the venerable chief Montsioa was
very cordial, and so cheerful in its tone as to show that he hoped and
believed that the country would now get peace.
"Using the formula for many years customary in proclamations of
marriages in churches in Bechuanaland, Montsioa, amid the smiles of all
present, announced an approaching political union, and exclaimed with
energy. "Let objectors now speak out or henceforth for ever be
silent." There was no objector.
"I explained carefully in the language of the people, the nature
___________________* Parliamentary Blue Book, 4194,
42.
___________________+ Austral Africa. Chap. 4,
pages 235-250.
Page 115
"Montsioa then demanded in loud tones: "Barolong! what
is your responses to the words that you have heard?"
"With one voice there came a great shout from one end of the
courtyard to the other, "We all want it."
"The chief turned to me and said, "There! you have the
answer of the Barolong we have no uncertain feelings here." As I was
unfolding the views of Her Majesty's Government that the Protectorate
should be self-supporting, the chief cried out, 'We know all
about it, Mackenzie, we consent to pay the tax.' I could only reply
to this by saying that that was just what I was coming to; but, inasmuch as
they knew all about it, and saw its importance, I need say no more on the
subject.
"Montsioa, in the first instance, did not like the appearance of
Moshette's people in his town. I told him I was glad they had come,
and he must reserve his own feelings, and await the results of what was
taking place. I was pleased, therefore, when in the public meeting in the
courtyard, just before the signing of the treaty, Montsioa turned to the
messengers of Moshette and asked them if they saw and heard nicely what was
being done with the Barolong country? They replied in the affirmative, and
thus, from a native point of view, became assenting parties. In this manner
something definite was done towards effacing an ancient feud. The signing
of the treaty then took place, the translation of which is given in the
Blue Book.
"After the treaty had been signed, the old chief requested that
prayer might be offered up, which was accordingly done by a native
minister. The satisfaction of the great event was further marked by the
discharge of a volley from the rifles of a company of young men told off
for the purpose; and the old cannon of
Page 116
"But alas! such feelings were destined to be of short duration.
While we were thus employed at Mafeking, the openly-declared enemies
of the Imperial Government, and of peace and order in Bechuanaland, had
been at their appropriate work elsewhere within the Protectorate. Before
sunset the same evening, I was surprised to hear the Bechuana war cry
sounded in Montsioa's Town, and shortly afterwards I saw the old
chief approaching my waggon, followed by a large body of men.
"'Monare Makence!' (Mr. Mackenzie), 'the cattle
have been lifted by the Boers,' was his first announcement. I shall
never forget the scene at that moment. The excitement of the men, some of
whom were reduced to poverty by what had taken place, and also their
curiosity as to what step I should take, were plainly enough revealed on
the faces of the crowd who, with their chief, now stood before me.
"'Mr. Mackenzie,' said Montsioa, 'you are master
now, you must say what is to be done. We shall be obedient to your
orders.' 'We have put our names on your paper, but the Boers
have our cattle all the same,' said one man.
Another shouted out with vehemence, 'please don't tell us to
go on respecting the boundary line. Why should we do so when the Boers
don't?'
'Who speaks about a boundary line?' said another speaker,
probably a heavy loser. 'Is it a thing that a man can eat? Where are
our cattle?'
"As I have already said, I shall never forget the scene in which
these and similar speeches were made at my waggon as the sun went down
peacefully--the sun which had witnessed the
Page 117
Mr. Mackenzie then resolved what to do, and announced that he would at
once cross the boundary and go himself to the nearest Transvaal town to
demand redress. There was a hum of approval, with a sharp enquiry from
Montsioa,--did he really mean to go himself? "Having no one to
send, I must go myself," Mackenzie replied. The old Chief, in a
generous way, half dissuaded him from the attempt. "The Boers cannot
be trusted. What shall I say if you do not return?" "All right,
Montsioa," replied Mackenzie, "say I went of my own accord. I
will leave my wife under your care."
"Poor old fellow." writes Mackenzie,
"brave"-hearted, though 'only a native,' he
went away full of heaviness, promising me his cart and harness, and an
athletic herd as a driver, to start early next morning."
Mr. Mackenzie had little success in this expedition. He was listened to
with indifference when he represented to certain Landdrosts and Field
Cornets that he had not come to talk politics, but to complain of a theft.
Those to whom he spoke looked upon the cattle raid not as robbery, but as
"annexation" or "commandeering." A man, listening
to the palaver, exclaimed: "Well, anyhow, we shall have cheap
beef as long as Montsioa's cattle last." At the hotel of the
place Mr. Mackenzie met some Europeans, who were farming or in business in
the Transvaal. They said to him: "Mr. Mackenzie, we are sorry
to have to say it to you, for we have all known you so long, but, honestly
speaking, we hope you won't succeed; the English Government
___________________* Austral Africa, p. 233 and
on.
Page 118
"Many such speeches were made to me," says Mackenzie,
"I give only one."
I cannot find it in my heart to criticize the character of the Boers at
a time when they have held on so bravely in a desperate war, and have
suffered so much. There are Boers and Boers,--good and bad among
them,--as among all nations. We have heard of kind and generous
actions towards the British wounded and prisoners, and we know that there
are among them men who, in times of peace, have been good and merciful to
their native servants. But it is not magnanimity nor brutality on the part
of individuals which are in dispute. Our controversy is concerning the
presence or absence of Justice among the Boers, concerning the purity of
their Government and the justice of their Laws, or the reverse.
I turn to their Laws, and in judging these, it is hardly possible to be
too severe. Law is a great teacher, a trainer, to a great extent, of the
character of the people. The Boers would have been an exceptional people
under the sun had they escaped the deterioration which such Laws and such
Government as they have had the misfortune to live under inevitably
produce.
A pamphlet has lately been published containing a defence of the Boer
treatment of Missionaries and Natives, and setting forth the efforts which
have been made in recent years to Christianize and civilize the native
populations in their midst. This paper is signed by nine clergymen of the
Dutch Reformed Church, and includes the name of the Rev. Andrew Murray, a
Page 119
No late repentance will avail for the salvation of their country unless
Justice is now proclaimed and practised;--Justice in Government and in
the Laws.
Their Grondwet, or Constitution, must be removed our of its place for
ever; their unequal laws, and the administrative corruption which unequal
laws inevitably foster, must be swept away, and be replaced by a very
different Constitution and very different Laws. If this had been done
during the two last decades of Transvaal history, while untrammelled (as
was desired) by British interference, the sincerity of this recent
utterance would have deserved full credit, and would have been recognized
as the beginning of a radical reformation.
The following is from the last Report of the Aborigines Protection
Society (Jan., 1900). Its present secretary leans towards a favourable
judgment of the recent improvements in the policy of
Page 120
The Rev. John H. Bovill, Rector of the Cathedral Church, Lorenço
Marquez, and sometime Her Majesty's Acting Consul there, has worked
for five years in a district from which numbers of natives were drawn for
work in the Transvaal, has visited the Transvaal from time to time, and is
well acquainted with Boers of all classes and occupations. He has given us
some details
Page 121
To us English, the most astonishing feature, to begin with, of this
Constitution, is that it places the power of the Judiciary below that of
the Raad or Legislative Body. The Judges of the Highest Court of Law are
not free to give judgment according to evidence before them and the light
given to them. A vote of the Raad, consisting of a mere handful of men in
secret sitting, can at any time override and annul a sentence of the High
Court.
This will perhaps be better understood if we picture to ourselves some
great trial before Lord Russell and other of our eminent judges, in which
any laws bearing on the case were carefully tested in connection with the
principles of our Constitution; that this supreme Court had pronounced its
verdict, and that the next day Parliament should discuss, with closed
doors, the verdict of the judges, and by a vote or resolution, should
declare it unjust and annul it.
Let us imagine, to follow the matter a little further on the lines of
Transvaal justice, that our Sovereign had power to dismiss at will from
office any judge or judges who might have exercised independence of
judgment and pronounced a verdict displeasing to Parliament or to herself
personally! Such is law and justice in the Transvaal; and that country is
called a Republic! "This is Transvaal justice," says M.
Naville; "a mockery, an ingenious legalizing of tyranny. There are no
laws, there are only the caprices of the Raad. A vote in a secret sitting,
that is what binds the Judges, and according to it they will administer
justice. The law of to-day will perhaps not be the law
to-morrow. The fifteen members of the majority, or rather President
Kruger, who influences their votes, may change their opinion from one day
to the next--it matters not; their opinion, formulated by a vote, will
Page 122
It was prescribed by the Grondwet that no new law should be passed by
Parliament (the Volksraad) unless notice of it had been given three months
in advance, and the people had had the opportunity to pronounce upon it.
This did not suit the President; accordingly when desirous of legalizing
some new project of his own, he adopted the plan of bringing in such
project as an addition or amendment to some existing law, giving it out as
no new law, but only a supplementary clause. Law No. 1 of 1897
was manipulated in this manner. By this law, the Judges of the High Court
were formally deprived of the right to test the validity of any law in its
relation to the Constitution, and they were also compelled to accept as
law, without question or reservation of any kind, any resolution passed at
any time and under any circumstances by the Volksraad. This Law No. 1 of
1897 was passed through all its stages in three days, without being
subjected in the first instance to the people.
But I am especially concerned with what affects the natives.
Article I of this section says:--A native must not own fixed
property.
(2) He must not marry by civil or ecclesiastical process.
(3) He must not be allowed access to Civil Courts in any action against
a white man.
Article 9 of the Grondwet is not only adhered to, but is exaggerated in
its application as follows:--"The people shall not permit
any equality of coloured persons with white inhabitants, neither in the
Church, nor in the State."
"These principles" says Mr. Bovill, "are so engrained
in the mind of an average Boer that we can never expect anything
Page 123
As to the access by the natives to the Courts of Law.
"If you ask a native he will tell you that access to the
law-courts is much too easy, but they are the Criminal Courts of the
Field Cornets and Landdrosts. He suffers so much from these, that he cannot
entertain the idea that the Higher Courts are any better than the ordinary
Field Cornets' or Landdrosts'. However, there are times when
with fear and trepidation he does appeal to a Higher Court. With what
result? If the decision is in favour of the native, the burghers are up in
arms, crying out against the injustice of a judgment given in favour of a
black against a white man; burghers sigh and say that a great disaster is
about to befall the State when a native can have judgment against a white
man. The inequality of the blacks and superiority of the white (burghers)
is largely discussed. Motions are brought forward in the Volksraad to
prohibit natives pleading in the Higher Courts. Such is the usual outcry.
Summary justice (?) by a Landdrost or Field Cornet is all the Boer would
all a native. No appeal should be permitted, for may it not lead to a
quashing of the conviction? The Landdrost is the friend of the Boer, and he
can always "square" him in a matter against a native. "It
was only to prevent an open breach with England that these appeals to the
Higher Courts were permitted in a limited
degree."*
No. 2.--The Native Marriage Laws. "Think," says Mr.
Bovill, "what it would mean to our social life in England if we
___________________* Natives under the Transvaal Flag.
Revd. John H. Bovill.
Page 124
"I occasionally took my holidays in Johannesburg, and assisted the
Vicar, during which time I could take charge of Christian native marriages,
of which the State took no cognisance. A native may marry, and any time
after leave his wife, but the woman would have no legal claim on him. He
could marry again as soon as he pleased, and he could not be proceeded
against either for support of his first wife or for bigamy. and so he might
go on as long as he wished to marry or could get anyone to marry him. The
same is applicable to all persons of colour, even if only slightly
coloured--half-castes of three or four generations if the
colour is at all apparent. All licenses for the marriage of white people
must be applied for personally, and signed in the presence of the
Landdrost, who is very cautious lest half-castes or persons of
colour should get one. Colour is evidently the only test of unfitness to
claim recognition of the marriage contract by the Transvaal State.
"The injustice of such a law must be apparent; it places a premium
on vice.* It gives an excuse to any
'person of colour'
___________________* It is stated on the authority of
The Sentienel (London, June, 1900), that Mr. Kruger was asked
some years ago to permit the introduction in the Johannesburg mining
district of the State regulation of vice, and that Mr. Kruger stoutly
refused to entertain such an idea. Very much to his credit! Yet it seems to
me that the refusal to legalize native marriages comes rather near, in
immorality of principle and tendency, to the legalizing of promiscuous
intercourse.
Page 125
Mr. Bovill has an instructive chapter on the "Compound
system," and the condition of native compounds. This is a matter
which it is to be hoped will be taken seriously to heart by the Chartered
Company, and any other company or group of employers throughout African
mining districts. "The Compound system of huddling hundreds of
natives together in tin shanties is the very opposite to the free life to
which they are accustomed. If South African mining is to become a settled
industry, we must have the conditions of the labour market settled, and
also the conditions of living. We cannot expect natives to give up their
free open-air style of living, and their home life. They love their
homes, and suffer from homesickness as much as, or probably more than most
white people. The reason so many leave their work after six months is that
they are constantly longing to see their wives and children. Many times
have they said to me, 'It would be all right if only we could have
our wives and families with us.'"
"The result of this compound life is the worst possible
morally." ....
"We must treat the native, not as a machine to work when required
under any conditions, but as a raw son of nature, very often without any
moral force to control him and to raise him much above the lower animal
world in his passions, except that which native custom has given
him."
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
Page 126
"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
Page 127
"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."*
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 capable of
___________________* Natives under the Transvaal Flag,
by Rev. J. Bovill.
Page 128
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 the 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.
A friend writes:--"In order to satisfy my own mind I
have
Page 129
"And yet there still remains the sense of 'command' in
'Empire;' and in the past history of our Government of the Cape
Colony there has been too little wholesome command and obedience, and too
much opportunism, shuffling off of responsibility, with
self-sufficient ignorance and doctrinaire foolishness taking the
place of knowledge and insight. Want of courage is, I think, in short, at
the bottom of the past mismanagement."
The assertion is repeatedly made that "England coveted the gold of
the Transvaal, and hence went to war." It is necessary it seems,
again and again, to remind those who speak thus that England was not the
invader. Kruger invaded British Territory, being fully prepared for war.
England was not in the least
Page 130
In regard to the assertion that "England coveted the gold of the
Transvaal," what is here meant by "England?" Ours is a
representative Government. Are the entire people, with their
representatives in Parliament and the Government included in this
assertion, or is it meant that certain individuals, desiring gold, went to
the Transvaal in search of it? The expression "England" in this
relation, is vague and misleading.
The search for gold is not in itself a legal nor a moral offence. But
the inordinate desire and pursuit of wealth, becoming the absorbing motive
to the exclusion of all nobler aims, is a moral offence and a source of
corruption.
Wherever gold is to be found, there is a rush from all sides; among some
honest explorers with legitimate aims, there are always found, in such a
case, a number of unruly spirits, of scheming, dishonest and careless
persons, the scum of the earth, cheats and vagabonds. The Outlanders who
crowded to the Rand were of different nations, French, Belgians and others,
besides the English who were in a large majority. The presence and eager
rush of this multitude of gold seekers certainly brought into the country
elements which clouded the moral atmosphere, and became the occasion of
deeds which so far from being typical of the spirit of
"England" and the English people at large, were the very
reverse, and have been condemned by public opinion in our country.
But, admitting that unworthy motives and corrupting elements were
introduced into the Transvaal by the influx of strangers urged there by
self-interest, it is strange that any should imagine and assert that
the "corrupting influence of gold," or the lust of gold told
upon the British alone. The disasters brought upon
Page 131
What are the facts? In 1885 the revenue of the Transvaal State was a
little over £177,000. this rose, owing to the Outlanders'
labours, and the taxes exacted from them by the Transvaal government to
£4,400,000 (in 1899). Thus they have increased in the proportion of 1
to 25. "If the admirers of the Transvaal government, who place no
confidence in documents emanating from English sources, will take the
trouble to open the Almanach de Gotha, they will there find
the financial report for 1897. There they will read that of these
£4,400,000, salaries and emoluments amount to nearly
one-quarter--we will call it £1,000,000,--that is,
£40 per head per adult Boer, for it goes without saying that in all
this the Outlanders have no share. If we remember that the great majority
of the Boers consist of farmers who do not concern themselves at all about
the Administration, and who consequently get no slice of the cake, we can
judge of the size of the junks which President Kruger and the chiefly
foreign oligarchy on which he leans take to themselves. The President has a
salary of £7,000--(the President of the Swiss Confederation has
£600)--and besides that, what is called
"coffee-money." This is his official income, but his
personal resources do not end there. The same table of the Almanach
de Gotha shows a sum of nearly £660,000 entitled "other
expenses.". Under this head are included secret funds, which in the
budget are stated at a little less than £40,000 (more than even
England has), but which always exceed that sum, and in 1896 reached about
£200,000. Secret Service Funds!--vile
Page 132
"We can picture to ourselves what the financial administration of
the Boers must be in this plethora of money, provided almost entirely by
the hated Outlander. An example may be cited. The Raad were discussing the
budget of 1989, and one of the members called attention to the fact that
for several years past advances to the amount of £2,400,000 had been
made to various officials, and were unaccounted for. That is a specimen of
what the Boer régime has become in
this school of opulence."* M.
Naville continues:--"We do not consider the Boers, as a
people, to be infected by the corruption which rules the administration.
The farmers who live far from Pretoria have preserved their patriarchal
virtues; they are upright and honest, but at the same time very proud, and
impatient of every kind of authority..... They are ignorant, and read no
books or papers--only the Old Testament; but Kruger knew he could
rouse these people by waving before them the spectre of England, and crying
in their ears the word 'Independence.' And this is what
disgusts us, that under cover of principles so dear to us all, independence
and national honour, these brave men are sent to the battlefield to
preserve for a tyrannical and venal oligarchy the right to share amongst
themselves, and distribute as they please, the gold which is levied on the
work of foreigners."
___________________* La question du Transvaal, by
Professor Ed. Naville, of Geneva.
Page 133VIII.
THE THEOLOGY OF THE BOERS. EXPLOITATION OF NATIVES BY
CAPITALISTS. BRITISH COLONIZING,--ITS CAUSES AND NATURE. CHARACTER OF
PAUL KRUGER AS A RULER. THE MORAL TEACHINGS OF THE WAR. OUR
RESPONSIBILITIES. HASTY JUDGMENTS. DENUNCIATIONS OF ENGLAND BY ENGLISHMEN.
THE OPEN BOOK. MY LAST WORD IS FOR THE NATIVES RACES.
EVEN in these enlightened days there seems to be in some minds
a strange confusion as to the understanding of the principle of Equality
for which we plead, and which is one of the first principles laid down in
the Charter of our Liberties. What is meant in that charter is
Equality of all before the Law; not by any means social
equality, which belongs to another region of political ideas
altogether.
A friend who has lived in South Africa, and who has had natives working
for and with him, tells me of this confusion of ideas among some of the
more vulgar stamp of white colonists, who, my friend observes, amuse
themselves by assuming a familiarity in intercourse with the natives, which
works badly. It does not at all increase their respect for the white man,
but quite the contrary, while it is a little calculated to produce
self-respect in the native. My friend found the natives naturally
respectful and courteous, when treated justly and humanely, in fact as a
gentleman would treat them. Above all things, they honour a
man who is just. They have a keen sense of justice,
Page 134
The natives in the Transvaal have never asked for the franchise, or for
the smallest voice in the Government. In their hearts they hoped for and
desired simple legal justice; they asked for bread, and they received a
stone. It does not seem desirable that they should too early become
"full fledged voters." Some sort of Education test, some proof
of a certain amount of civilization and instruction attained, might be
applied with advantage; and to have to wait a little while for that does
not seem, from the Englishwoman's point of view at least, a great
hardship, when it is remembered how long our agricultural labourers had to
wait for that privilege, and that for more than fifty years English women
have petitioned for it, and have not yet obtained it, although they are
not, I believe, wholly uncivilized or uneducated.
The Theology of the Boers has been much commented upon; and it is
supposed by some that, as they are said to derive it solely from the Old
Testament Scriptures, it follows that the ethical teaching of those
Scriptures must be extremely defective. A Swiss Pastor writes to me:
"It is time to rescue the Old Testament from the Boer interpretation
of it. We have not enough of Old Testament righteousness among us
Christians." This is true. Those who have studied those Scriptures
intelligently see, through much that appears harsh and strange in the
Mosaic prescriptions, a wisdom and tenderness which approaches to the
Christian ideal, as well as certain severe rules and restrictions which,
when observed and maintained, lifted the moral standard of the Hebrew
people far above that of the surrounding nations. When Christ came on
earth, He swept
Page 135
Yet if the Transvaal teachers and their disciples had read impartially
(though even exclusively) the Old Testament Scriptures, they could not have
failed to see how grossly they were themselves offending against the divine
commands in some vital matters. I cite, as an example, the following
commands, given by Moses to the people, not once only, but repeatedly. Had
these commands been regarded with as keen an appreciation as some others
whose teaching seems to have an appreciation as some others whose teaching
seems to have an opposite tendency, it is impossible that the natives
should have been treated as they have been by Boer Law, or that Slavery or
Serfdom should have existed among them for so many generations. The
following are some of the often-repeated commands and
warnings:--
Ex. xii.v 19.--"One law shall be
to
him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among
you."
Num. ix. v 14.--"If a stranger
shall
sojourn among you, .... ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger,
and for him that was born in the land."
Num. xv. v 15.--"One ordinance
shall
be both for you of the congregation and also for the stranger that
sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever in your generation: as ye
are so shall the stranger be before the Lord."
Verse 16.--"One law and one manner shall be for you, and for
the stranger that sojourneth with you."
Lev. xix. v 33.--"And if a
stranger
sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him."
Verse 34.--"But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall
Page 136
Verse 35.--"Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in
mete-yard, in weight, or in measure."
Although the natives of the Transvaal were the original possessors of
the country, they have been reckoned by the Boers as strangers and
foreigners among them. They have treated them as the ancient Jews treated
all Gentiles as for ever excluded from the Commonwealth of
Israel,--until in the "fulness of time" they were forced
by a great shock and terrible judgments to acknowledge, with astonishment,
that "God had also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto
life," and that they also had heard the news of the glorious
emancipation of all the sons of God throughout the earth.
Not only is the non-payment, but even delay in the payment of
wages condemned by the Law of Moses. Is it possible that Boer theologians,
who quote Scripture with so much readiness, have never read the
following?
Lev. xix. v 13.--"Thou shalt not
defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is
hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning."
Deut. xxiv. v 14--"Thou shalt not
oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy
brethren, or of the strangers that are in thy land, within thy
gates:"
Verse 15.--"At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither
shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon
it: lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto
thee."
Jer. xxii. v 13.--"Woe unto him
that
buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that
useth his
Page 137
Mal. iii. v 5.--"And I will come
near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against ... those
that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and
that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the
Lord of hosts."
The following is from the New Testament, but it might have come under
the notice of Boer theologians and Law makers:--
The epistle of St. James v. v
4.--"Behold the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your
fields which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them
which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth."
Verse 3.--"Your gold and your silver is cankered, and the
rust of them shall be a witness against you."
Jer. xxxv. v 17.--"Because ye have
not proclaimed Liberty every man to his neighbour, behold I proclaim
Liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the Sword, to the pestilence, and to
the famine."
I am aware that there will be voices raised at once in application to
certain English people of the very commands here cited; and justly so, so
far as that application is made to individuals or groups of persons who
have transgressed not only Biblical Law but the Law of our Land in their
dealings with native races; and the warning conveyed to us in such
recriminations must not and, I believe, will not be unheeded.
The following occurs in a number of the "Ethical World,"
published early in the present year:--"We know that
capitalists, left to themselves, would mercilessly exploit the labour of
the coloured man. That is precisely the reason why they should not be left
to themselves, but should be under the control of the
Page 138
To my mind some of the published utterances of the Originator and
members of the "Chartered Company" are not such as to inspire
confidence in those who desire to see the essential principles of British
Law and Government paramount wherever Great Britain has sway. There is the
old contemptuous manner of speaking of the natives; and we have heard an
expression of a desire to "eliminate the Imperial Factor."
This elimination of the Imperial Factor is precisely that which is the
least desired by those who see our Imperialism to mean the continuance of
obedience to the just traditions of British Law and Government. The
granting of a Charter to a Company lends the authority (or the appearance
of it) of the Queen's name to acts of the responsible heads of that
company, which may be opposed to the principles of justice established by
British Law; and such acts may have disastrous results. It is to be hoped
that the present awakening on the subject of past failures of our
government to enforce respect for its own principles may be a warning to
all concerned against any transgression of those principles.
Continental friends with whom I have conversed on the subject of the
British Colonies have sometimes appeared to me to leave out of account some
considerations special to the subject.
Page 139
I would ask such friends to take a Map of Europe, or of the World, and
steadily to regard it in connection with the following facts. Our people
are among the most prolific,--if not the most prolific,--of all
the nations. Energy and enterprise are in their nature, together with a
certain love of free-breathing, adventure and discovery. Now look at
the map, and observe how small is the circumference of the British Isles.
"Our Empire has no geographical continuity like the Russian Empire;
it is that larger Venice with no narrow streets, but with the sea itself
for a high-road. It is bound together by a moral continuity
alone." What are our Sons to do? Must our immense population be
debarred from passing through these ocean tracts to lands where there are
great uninhabited wastes capable of cultivation? What shall we do with our
sons and our daughters innumerable, as the ways become overcrowded in the
mother land, and energies have not the outlets needful to develop them.
Shall we place legal restrictions on marriage, or on the birth of children,
or prescribe that no family shall exceed a certain number? You are
shocked,--naturally. It follows then that some members of our large
British families must cross the seas and seek work and bread elsewhere.
The highest and lowest, representing all ranks, engage in this kind of
initial colonization. Our present Prime Minister, a "younger
son," went out in his youth,--as others of his class have
done,--with his pickaxe, to Australia, to rank for a time among
"diggers," until called home by the death of the elder son, the
heir to the title and estate. This necessity and this taste for wandering
and exploring has helped in some degree to
Page 140
The great blot on this necessary and natural expansion is the record
(from time to time) of the displacement of native tribes by force and
violence, when their rights seemed to interfere with the interests of the
white man. Of such action we have had to repent in the past, and we repent
more deeply than ever now when our responsibilities towards natives races
have been brought with startling clearness before those among us who have
been led to look back and to search deeply into the meanings of the present
great "history-making war."
The personality of Paul Kruger stands out mournfully at this moment on
the page of history. Mr. FitzPatrick wrote of him in 1896, as
follows:--
"L'Etat c'est moi, is
almost as true of the old Dopper President as it was of its originator; for
in matters of external policy and in matters which concern the Boer as a
party, the President has his way as completely as any anointed autocrat. To
anyone who has studied the Boers and their ways and policy .... it must
be clear that President Kruger does more than represent the opinion of the
people and execute their policy: he moulds them in the form he wills.
By the force of his own strong convictions and prejudices, and of his
indomitable will, he has
Page 141
"In the history of South Africa the figure of the grim old
President will loom large and striking,--picturesque as the figure of
one who, by his character and will, made and held his people; magnificent
as one who, in the face of the blackest fortune, never wavered from his aim
or faltered in his effort.... and it maybe, pathetic too, as one whose
limitations were great, one whose training and associations,--whose
very successes had narrowed and embittered and hardened him;--as one
who, when the greatness of success was his to take and to hold, turned his
back on the supreme opportunity, and used his strength and qualities to
fight against the spirit of progress, and all that the enlightenment of the
age pronounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy
State.
"To an English nobleman, who in the course of an interview
remarked, 'my father was a Minister (of the Queen),' the
Dutchman answered, 'and my father was a shepherd!' it was not
pride rebuking pride; it was the ever present fact which would not have
been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. He, too,
was a shepherd,--a peasant. It may be that he knew what would be right
and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realized
that to educate would be to emancipate, to broaden their views would be to
break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would
be to spoil the old bread, to give to all men the rights of men would be to
swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one
thinks of the one century
Page 142
And now that his sun is setting in the midst of clouds, and the great
ambition of his life lies a ruin before him, and age, disappointment, and
sorrow press heavily upon him, reproach and criticism are silenced.
Compassion and a solemn awe alone fill our hearts.
A late awakening and repentance may not serve to maintain the political
life of a party or a nation; but it is never too late for a human soul to
receive for itself the light that may have been lacking for right guidance
all through the past, and God does not finally withdraw Himself from one
who has ever sincerely called upon His name.
I beg to be allowed to address a word, in conclusion, more especially to
certain of my own countrymen,--among whom I count some of my valued
fellow-workers of the past years. These latter have been very
patient with me at times when I have ventured a word of warning in
connection with the Abolitionist
___________________* The Transvaal from Within.
FitzPatrick.
Page 143
When God's Judgments are in the earth, "the people of the
world will learn righteousness." Are we learning righteousness? Am I,
are you, friends, learning righteousness? I desire, at least, to be among
those who may learn something of the mind of God towards His redeemed
world, even in the darkest hour. But you will tell me perhaps that there is
nothing of the Divine purpose in all this tribulation, that God has allowed
evil to have full sway in the world for a time. Others among us, as firmly
believe that there is a Divine permission in the natural vengeance which
follows transgression, that we are never the sport of a senseless fate, and
that God governs as well as reigns.
"God's fruit of
justice ripens slow;
"Men's souls are narrow; let them
grow.
"My brothers, we must wait."
Many among us are learning to see more and more clearly that the present
"tribulation" is the climax of a long series,--through
almost a century past,--of errors of which till now we had never been
fully conscious,--of neglect of duty, of casting off of
responsibility, of oblivion of the claims of the millions of native
inhabitants of Africa who are God's creatures and the redeemed of
Christ as much as we,--of ambitions and aims purely worldly, of a
breathless race among nations for present and material gain.
There are hasty judges it seems to me who look upon this
Page 144
God's thoughts, however, are "not as our thoughts,"
nor "His ways as our ways." The record I might give of
spiritual awakening and extraordinary blessing bestowed by Him at this time
in the very heart of this war on these, the "first victims" of
it, would be received I fear with complete incredulity by those to whom I
now address myself. Be it so. The sources of my
Page 145
The following is the expression of the thought of many of our humble
people at home, who are neither "jingoes" nor yet impatient
judges of others. The Journal from which the extract is taken represents
not the wealthy nor ambitious part of society, but that of the middle class
of people, dependent on their own efforts for their daily bread, among whom
we often find much good sense:--"Some persons are
humiliated for the sins and mistakes they see in other people. As for
themselves, their one thought is 'If my advice had been taken the
country would never have been in this pass!' This is the expression
of an utterly un-Christian self-conceit. Others, again, take
delight in recording the sins of the nation. That our ideals have been
dimmed, that a low order of public morality has been openly defended in the
highest places, and that the reckoning has come to us we fully believe. Yet
it is possible to judge the heart of our people far too harshly. It is a
sound heart when all is said and done. We fix our eyes upon the great and
wealthy offenders; but it must be remembered that the British people are
not wealthy. The number of rich men is small. Most of us, in fact, are very
poor. Even those who may be called well off depend on the continuance of
health and opportunity for their incomes. The vast majority of those who
believe that our cause is righteous are not exultant
___________________* This may also be true of the Boer
combatants sacrificed for the sins of their rulers, but I prefer only to
attest that of which I have full proof.
Page 146
These are noble words, because words of faith--worthy of the Roman,
Varro--to whom his fellow-citizens presented a public tribute
of gratitude because "he had not despaired of his country in a dark
and troubled time."
It can hardly be supposed that I underrate the horrors of war. I have
imagination enough and sympathy enough to follow almost as if I beheld it
with my eyes, the great tragedy which has been unfolded in South Africa.
The spirit of Jingoism is an epidemic of which I await the passing away
more earnestly than we do that of any other plague. I deprecate, as I have
always done, and as strongly as anyone can do, rowdyism in the form of
violent opposition to free speech and freedom of meeting. It is as wholly
unjustifiable, as it is unwise. Nothing tends more to the elucidation of
truth than evidence and freedom of speech from
___________________* "British
Weekly."
Page 147
I see frequent allusions to the "deplorable state of the public
mind," which is so fixed on this engrossing subject, the war, that
its attention cannot be gained for any other. I hear our soldiers called
"legalized murderers," and the war spoken of as a
"hellish panorama,"* which
it is a blight even to look upon.
But,--I am impelled to say it at the risk of sacrificing the
respect of certain friends,--there is to me another view of the
matter. It is this. In this present woe, as in all other earthly events,
God has something to say to us,--something which we cannot receive if
we wilfully turn away the eye from seeing and the ear from hearing.
It is as if,--in anticipation of the last great Judgment when
"the Books shall be opened,"--God, in his severity and yet
in mercy (for there is always mercy in the heart of His judgments) had set
before us at this day an open book, the pages of which are written in
letters of blood, and that He is waiting for us to read. There are some who
are reading, though with eyes dimmed with tears and hearts pierced with
sorrow,--whose attitude is, "Speak, Lord, for Thy servant
heareth."
You "deplore the state of the public mind." May not the
cloud of celestial witnesses deplore in a measure the state of
your
___________________* An Expression reported to have
been used by Mr. Morley.
Page 148
It is good and necessary to protest against War; but at the same time,
reason and experience teach that we must, with equal zeal, protest against
other great evils, the accumulation of which makes for war and not for
peace. War in another sense--moral and spiritual war--must be
doubled, trebled, quadrupled, in the future, in order that material war may
come to an end. We all wish for peace; every reasonable person desires it,
every anxious and bereaved family longs for it, every Christian prays for
it. But what Peace? It is the Peace of God which we pray for?
the Peace on Earth, which He alone can bring about? His hand alone, which
corrects, can also heal. We do not and cannot desire the peace which some
of those are calling for who dare not face the open book of present day
judgment, or who do not wish to read its lessons! Such a peace would be a
mere plastering over of an unhealed wound, which would break out again
before many years were over.
There seems to me a lack of imagination and of Christian sympathy in the
zeal which thrusts denunciatory literature into all hands and houses, as is
done just now. It would, I think, check such action and open the eyes of
some who
Page 149
No, we are not yet looking upon hell! It may be, it is, an
earthly purgatory which we are called to look upon; a place and an hour of
purging and of purifying, such as we must all, nations and individuals
alike, pass through, before we can see the face of God.
Mr. Fullerton, speaking in the Melbourne Hall, Leicester, on Jan. 7th of
this year, said:--"The Valley of Achor (Trouble), may be a
Door of Hope." "You say the Transvaal belongs to the Boers; I
say it belongs to God. If it belongs specially to any, it belongs to the
Zulus and Kaffirs, on whom, for 100 years, there have been inflicted wrongs
worthy of Arab slave dealers. What has the Boer done to lift these people?
Nothing. As a Missionary said the other day, 'A nation that lives
amongst a lower race of people, and does not try to lift them, inevitably
sinks.' The Boers needed to be chastised; only thus could they be
kept
Page 150
It would have been bad for us if we had won an early or an easy victory.
We should have been so lifted up with pride as to be an offence to high
Heaven. But we have gone and are going through deep waters, and the wounds
inflicted on many hearts and many homes are not quickly healed. In this we
recognise the hand of God, who is faithful in chastisement as in
blessing.
Many have, no doubt, read, and I hope some have laid to heart, the words
which Lord Rosebery recently addressed to the Press, but which are
applicable to us all at this juncture. They are wise and statesmanlike
words. Taking them as addressed to the Nation and not to the Press only,
they run thus: "At such a juncture we must be sincere, we must
divest ourselves of the mere catchwords and impulses of party .... We
must be prepared to discard obsolete shibboleths, to search out abuse, to
disregard persons, to be instant in pressing for necessary
reforms--social, educational, administrative, and if need be,
constitutional.
"Moreover, with regard to a sane appreciation of the destinies and
responsibilities of Empire, we stand at the parting of the ways. Will
Britain flinch or falter in her world-wide task? How is she best to
pursue it? What new forces and inspiration will it need? What changes does
it involve? These are questions which require clear sight, cool courage,
and freedom from formula."*
___________________* Daily News, June
4th, 1900.
Page 151
In the conscientious study which I have endeavoured to make of the
history of the past century of British rule in South Africa, nothing has
struck me more than the unfortunate effects in that Colony of our varying
policy inspired by political party spirit in the Mother Country; and
consequently I hail with thankfulness this good counsel to "divest
ourselves of mere catchwords and impulses of party, to discard obsolete
shibboleths, to free ourselves from formula, and to disregard
persons," even if these persons are or have been recognized leaders,
and to abide rather by principles. "What new forces and inspiration
do we need," Lord Rosebery asks, for the great task our nation has
before it? This is a deep and far-reaching question. The answer to
it should be sought and earnestly enquired after by every man and woman
among us, who is worthy of the name of a true citizen.
My last word must be on behalf of the Natives. When, thirty years ago, a
few among us were impelled to take up the cause of the victims of the
modern white slavery in Europe, we were told that in our pleadings for
principles of justice and for personal rights, we ought not to have
selected a subject in which are concerned persons who may deserve pity, but
who, in fact, are not so important a part of the human family as to merit
such active and passionate sympathy as that which moved our group. To this
our reply was: "We did not choose this question,
we did not ourselves deliberately elect to plead for these persons. The
question was imposed upon us, and once so imposed, we could
not escape from the claims of the oppressed class whose cause we had been
called to take up. And generally, (we replied,) the work of human progress
has not consisted in protecting and supporting any outward forms of
government, or the noble or privileged classes, but in undertaking the
defence of the weak, the humble,
Page 152
It is the same now. My father was one of the energetic promoters of the
Abolition of Slavery in the years before 1834, a friend of Clarkson and
Wilberforce. The horror of slavery in every form, and under whatever name,
which I have probably partly inherited, has been intensified as life went
on. It is my deep conviction that Great Britain will in future be judged,
condemned or justified, according to her treatment of those innumerable
coloured races, heathen or partly Christianized, over whom her rule
extends, or who, beyond the sphere of her rule, claim her sympathy and help
as a Christian and civilizing power to whom a great thrust has been
committed.
It grieves me to observe that (so far as I am able to judge) our
politicians, public men, and editors, (with the exception of the editors of
the "religious press,") appear to a great extent unaware of the
immense importance of this subject, even for the future peace and stability
of our Empire, apart from higher interests. It will be
"imposed upon them," I do not doubt, sooner or later, as it has
been imposed upon certain missionaries and others who regard the Divine
command as practical and sensible men should do: "Go ye and
teach all nations." All cannot go to the
ends of the earth; but all might cease to hinder by the dead weight of
their indifference, and their contempt of all men of colour. Dr.
Livingstone rebuked the Boers for contemptuously calling all coloured men
Kaffirs, to whatever race they belonged. Englishmen deserve still more such
a rebuke for their habit of including all the inhabitants of India, East
and West, and of Africa, who have not European complexions, under the
contemptuous title of "niggers." Race prejudice is a poison
which will have t be cast out if the world is ever to be
Page 153
"It may be that the Kaffir is sometimes cruel," says one who
has seen and known him,--"he certainly requires supervision. But
he was bred in cruelty and reared in oppression--the child of
injustice and hate. As the springbok is to the lion, as the locust is to
the hen, so is the Kaffir to the Boer; a subject of plunder and leaven of
greed. But the Kaffir is capable of courage and also of the most enduring
affection. He has been known to risk his life for the welfare of his
master's family. He has worked without hope of reward. He has
laboured in the expectation of pain. He has toiled in the snare of the
fowler. Yet shy a brickbat at him!--for he is only a Kaffir!"
However much the Native may excel in certain qualities of the heart, still,
until purged of the poison of racial contempt, that will be the expression
of the practical conclusion of the white man regarding him; "Shy a
brickbat at him. He is only a nigger."
A merely theoretical acknowledgment of the vital nature of this
question,--of the future of the Native races and of Missionary work
will not suffice. The Father of the great human family demands more than
this.
"Is not this the fast that I have
chosen?
To loose the bands of
wickedness,
To undo the heavy
burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that
ye break every yoke?"ISAIAH lviii. 6.
Page 154
I HAVE spoken, in this little book, as an
Abolitionist,--being a member of the "International Federation
for the Abolition of the State regulation of vice." But I beg my
readers to understand that I have here spoken for myself alone, and that my
views must not be understood to be shared by members of the Federation to
which I refer. My Abolitionist friends on the Continent of Europe, with
very few exceptions, hold an opinion absolutely opposed to mine on the
general question here treated. It is not far otherwise in England itself,
where many of our Abolitionists, including some of my oldest and most
valued fellow-workers, stand on a very different ground from mine in
this matter. I value friendship, and I love my old friends. But I love
truth more. I have very earnestly sought to know the truth in the matter
here treated. I have not rejected evidence from any side, having read the
most extreme as well as the more moderate writings on different sides,
including those which have reached me from Holland, France, Switzerland,
Germany, and the Transvaal, as well as those published in England. Having
conscientiously arrived at certain conclusions, based on facts, and on
life-long convictions in regard to some grave matters of principle,
I have thought it worth while to put those conclusions on record.
J.E.B.
PRINTED BY MAWSON, SWAN, AND MORGAN,
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.