of Afrikanerdom.  His Excellency Dr. Leyds may deny all those too previous intentions with his placid effrontery of assumed innocent calm.  He may denounce Mr. Chamberlain, Rhodes, Jameson, and even the Prince of Wales, and he may use the old device of posing as innocent by accusing others.  The detected robber, however, does not always escape with his booty by running off himself, whilst shouting “Stop, thief!”

Something refreshingly analogous to such attempts of screening and exculpation has been extemporized in Cape journals of late.  There, in an ingeniously pretended dissertation, it is invented how ill founded the aspersions are against Mr. Premier Schreiner, and that the acts, upon which he was so wrongly suspected as an amphibious helmsman, are really attributable to another person—­by the way, to one at a safe distance, viz., to Mr. F.W.  Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary; whilst this gentleman again, when lecturing at Johannesburg in July last, naively deplored the confusion of people’s ideas who see anything wrong in the Afrikaner Bond, adding:  “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do or talk about.”

“The peace of South Africa is only possible under Boer supremacy,” is the Bond shibboleth.  The end justifies the means, even to sedition, to a war of conquest and the wholesale plunder of investors.

Many of the younger Boers in the Cape Colony and Natal had shown a singular ardour in joining the several volunteer corps.  They were equipped with uniforms and best weapons, were drilled into efficiency, received pay, and all went on well until the oath of allegiance was to be tendered.  This they refused, preferring to resign and to provide arms from other sources—­Mauser rifles by preference.  This happened some considerable time before the outbreak of the war.

Boer Arguments Denying Uitlanders’ Complaints

Many plausible arguments are proffered to prove that Uitlanders’ grievances and irritations are purely fictitious, but few, I venture to say, will bear examination.  Taxation, for example, is stoutly averred to fall alike upon burgher and Uitlander, but a glance at the long rubric of articles specially taxed will show that the selection is contrived to hit the latter and to spare, or even to protect and benefit, the burgher section.

The gold industry is not charged with a royalty as is customary in other gold-producing countries, but with 5 per cent. only upon the net profits; but here an intolerant and corrupt domination proves much more prejudicial than a heavy royalty would be.

Proper representation would be the remedy and afford contentment, even with higher taxation, but that is refused upon Bond principles.

The Anglo-Boer War is attributed to base motives on the part of the British Government, operating in collusion with capitalism—­to England’s passion for annexation, her rapacious greed for the Transvaal gold, her inordinate ambition to universal commercial supremacy, etc.  What a confusion of assertions and of self-refuting contradictions!