“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 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:—­

“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 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, non-resident in the country,