Public     Special   Sundry
Military.   Works.     Payments.  Services.   Total. 
L        L          L         L         L
1889     75,523    300,071    58,737   171,088    605,419
1890     42,999    507,579    58,160   133,701    742,439
1891    117,927    492,094    52,486    76,494    739,001
1892     29,739    361,670    40,276    93,410    528,095
1893     19,340    200,106   148,981   132,132    500,559
1894[1]  28,158    260,962    75,859   163,547    521,526
1895[2]  87,308    353,724   205,335   838,877  1,485,244
1896    495,618    701,022   682,008   128,724  2,007,372
1897    396,384  1,012,686   248,864   135,345  1,793,279
1898[3] 163,451    383,033   157,519   100,874    804,877

Of the Raid itself Mr. Reitz speaks as follows:—­

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.

Nor has the world forgotten how, at the urgent instance of the Africander party in the Cape Colony, an investigation into the causes of the conflict was held in Westminster; how that investigation degenerated into a low attack upon the Government of the deeply maligned and deeply injured South African Republic, and how at the last moment, when the truth was on the point of being revealed, and the conspiracy traced to its fountain head in the British Cabinet, the Commission decided all of a sudden not to make certain compromising documents public.

Here we see to what a depth the old great traditions of British Constitutionalism had sunk under the influence of the ever-increasing and all-absorbing lust of gold, and in the hands of a sharp-witted wholesale dealer, who, like Cleon of old, has constituted himself a statesman.

When Mr. Reitz wrote his book he did not know that immediately after the Raid the British Government began to accumulate information, and to prepare for the war with the Republic which is now in progress.  The reason why Mr. Reitz did not refer to this in A Century of Wrong was because documents proving its existence had not fallen into the hands of the Transvaal Government until after the retreat from Glencoe.  Major White and his brother officers who were concerned in the Raid were much chaffed for the incredible simplicity with which he allowed a private memorandum as to preparations for the Raid to fall into the hands of the Boers.  His indiscretion has been thrown entirely into the shade by the simplicity which allowed War Office documents of the most secret and compromising nature to fall into the hands of the Boers, showing that preparations for the present war began immediately after the defeat of the Raid.  The special correspondent of Reuter with the Boers telegraphed from Glencoe on October 28th as follows:—­