The Bond leaders are the next in guilt; with these the incentive is principally ambition, which, by degrees, became mis-shaped into a specious patriotism.  It is known how an ardently desired object pursued for a long period is apt to so monopolize and infatuate the mind as to totally vitiate and pervert the sense of discernment between right and wrong, both as to the legitimacy of the object and the means to be employed for its attainment.  As the realization remains deferred and the efforts are increased, the object from being considered legitimate is by degrees invested with merit, a halo of virtue is added to the aspect, its pursuit is viewed as a duty by fair or by questionable means, the end justifying the latter.  All, it is said, is fair in love and warfare.  This diagnosis appears particularly applicable to President Krueger and State Secretary F.W.  Reitz, both men of sincere piety (perhaps also to Mr. Schreiner), who would have abandoned their project and renounced and repudiated the Afrikaner Bond if ever they had doubted its legitimacy of principle.  So also with most of the other Boer leaders and their clergy too.  The agencies must have been exceedingly subtle, and the jugglery and artifice superhuman, to operate such processes of reasoning, such deception and aberration in honest-minded and even godly persons.

As to the bulk of the Boer people, they are simply led by their chiefs and superiors, in whom they repose unquestioning confidence.  They go unreasoningly with the stream of opinion under the firm belief that all is divinely sanctioned, including rebellion and violence, and blindly obey their call, considering their cause analogous to that of the Jews of old, who were enjoined to spoil the Egyptians and then to pass over and conquer their land of promise.  No papal bull of indulgence ever freed people’s consciences more than the Boer people now feel in regard to the warfare in which they are engaged.

RESUME

The Boers in the Cape Colonies have been prospering in a marked degree since the British accession in 1814, enjoying ideal liberty and good government upon perfect equality with the English colonists.

The people of the Orange Free State fared equally well under best relations with the British Government up to the outbreak of the present war.

In the Transvaal the Boers were more handicapped, being furthest removed from profitable Cape connections, and having to cope with powerful hostile tribes within their border.  The most redoubtable, under Secoecoenie, was subdued during the British occupation in 1878.  Then followed the short war of 1880, with the voluntary retrocession and peace of January, 1881.  All appeared to progress remarkably well for about ten years after, until the irrational treatment by the Boers of British subjects in the Transvaal furnished the first cause of friction, and engendered at last the Johannesburg crisis with the Jameson incursion, followed by four years’ vain attempts on the part of England to bring about satisfactory and peaceful relations.