[29] “We put it to all generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, which wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems, where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path—­and whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it should be in that large impartial, truth-seeking spirit in which humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and questions?”

“It is sometimes said that when one stands looking down from the edge of this hill at the great mining camp of Johannesburg stretching beneath, with its heaps of white sand and debris mountain high, its mining chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand Kaffirs and its eighty thousand men and women, white or coloured, of all nationalities, gathered here in the space of a few years on the spot where, fifteen years ago, the Boer’s son guided his sheep to the water and the Boer’s wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles on earth.  And it is wonderful; but as we look at it the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet—­the marvellous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavoured to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded.  Nothing but that curious and wonderful instinct for statecraft and the organisation and arrangement of new social conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the north-east of the Continent of Europe where the English and Dutch peoples alike took their rise could have made it possible.  We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus, but it has to-day, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice.  And we do again repeat that the strong sympathy of all earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England, should be with them.”

If one compares the gold fields of the Witwatersrand with those of other countries, it is certain that the former can claim to be the best governed mining area in the world.  This is the almost unanimous verdict of people who have had a lengthy experience of the gold fields of California, Australia, and Klondyke.

As far as South Africa is concerned, it is only necessary to instance the diamond fields of Griqualand West when they were directly administered by the British Government.  They then afforded a continual spectacle of rebellion, rioting, and indescribable uncertainty of, and danger to, life and property.