“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 1898, and one of the members called attention to the fact that for several years past advances to the amount of L2,400,000 had been made to various officials, and were unaccounted for.  That is a specimen of what the Boer regime has become in this school of opulence."[36] 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.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 30:  Parliamentary Blue Book, 4194, 42.]

[Footnote 31:  Austral Africa, Chap. 4, pages 235-250.]

[Footnote 32:  Austral Africa, p. 233 and on.]

[Footnote 33:  Natives under the Transvaal Flag.  Revd.  John H. Bovill.]

[Footnote 34:  It is stated on the authority of The Sentinel (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.]

[Footnote 35:  Natives under the Transvaal Flag, by Rev. J. Bovill.]

[Footnote 36:  La question du Transvaal, by Professor Ed. Naville, of Geneva.]

VIII.

     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 NATIVE 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.