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 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.”

“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 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 or 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