On the 15th July, 1894, he wrote again to the same correspondent:—­[31] “Our trump card is a fund of L10—­15,000 to improve the Raad.  Unfortunately the companies have no secret service fund.  I must divine away.  We don’t want to shell out ourselves.”

Here we catch a glimpse behind the scenes, and we observe how the Capitalists in 1894 had already endeavoured to lower and vitiate our public life by methods which did not even recoil before the criminal law of the land, to say nothing of elementary morality.

And did they succeed?  Were the people and the Volksraad as corrupt as they thought, and as they still endeavour to make the world believe?  Their failure is the best and most complete answer to this calumny.

If corruption on a large scale, however, failed to ensure the triumph of Capitalism over the community, the other trump card of Jingoism still remained.  The pulse of the High Commissioner was felt by Mr. Lionel Phillips, and what was the answer of Sir Henry Loch, Her Majesty’s representative in South Africa?  We extract from the same secret letter book from which we have already quoted the following letter, dated 1st July, addressed to Wernher, a member of the influential firm of Wernher, Beit & Co.:—­

[Sidenote:  (Sir) Henry Loch’s indiscretion.]

[32] “Sir Henry Loch (with whom I had two long private interviews alone) asked me some very pointed questions, such as what arms we had in Johannesburg, whether the population could hold the place for six days until help could arrive, etc., etc., and stated plainly that if there had been three thousand rifles and ammunition here he would certainly have come over.”

And so on in the same strain.  Sir Henry Loch endorsed the truth of these statements two years later by boasting openly in the House of Lords about his plans for organising a raid into the South African Republic.

And all this happened while he (Sir Henry Loch) was the guest of our Government, and engaged in friendly negotiations about the interests of British subjects.  To what a depth had British Policy in South Africa already degenerated.  Within two years, however, a deeper abyss was to open.

[Sidenote:  The conspiracy.]

The secret conspiracy of the Capitalists and Jingoes to overthrow the South African Republic began now to gain ground with great rapidity, for just at this critical period Mr. Chamberlain became Secretary of State for the Colonies.  In the secret correspondence of the conspirators, reference is continually made to the Colonial Office in a manner which, taken in connection with later revelations and with a successful suppression of the truth, has deepened the impression over the whole world that the Colonial Office was privy to, if not an accomplice in, the villainous attack on the South African Republic.

[Sidenote:  The Jameson Raid]