to other parts, he has refused to their people (his own flesh and blood, among whom he was born) the most elementary rights when they settle in his country!  And yet in his need he calls upon them, and they come!  His treatment of the Orange Free State has been exactly the same.  Their grievance against him is incomparably worse, because of their liability to become involved in the consequences of a policy which they are not allowed to influence.  But President Kruger is, above all things, practical.  Everything is gauged by the measure of the advantage which it can bring to him; and his treatment of the Free State is determined by their utility to him and his power over them, and is not influenced by their moral claims upon his good will.  Natal and Portugal have their experience of broken agreements and strained interpretations, of intrigues with native subjects and neighbours for the extension of rights or boundaries, all designed to benefit the Transvaal and to undermine them.  All, all with the same result!  Something for nothing!  Within the borders of the Transvaal the policy is the same.  Moral rights and the claims of justice are unrecognized.  For services rendered there may be some return; a privilege, a contract, an appointment.  But this cannot be properly regarded as a neglect of principle upon Mr. Kruger’s part, for after all the reward is at the expense of the Uitlanders.  It is usually the least price at which the service could be secured; and it is generally in such form as to give the recipient a profit in which the members of the Government party largely share, but it never confers a power to which the President himself is not superior; indeed, it is almost invariably hedged about by such conditions as to make its continuance dependent upon the President’s good will.  If any one should think this description of conditions in the Transvaal and of the President’s policy to be unduly harsh, let him satisfy himself by an investigation of those matters which appear on merely superficial examination to support opinions contrary to those expressed by the writer.  Let him examine the terms of the closer union with the Free State, the circumstances leading to the closing of the Vaal River drifts, the condition of the Dutch subjects of Cape Colony and of the Orange Free State in the Transvaal, the Netherlands Railway tariffs as they operate against Cape Colony and the Free State, the Railway Agreement with Natal, the disputes with Portugal, the attempts to acquire native territory on the East Coast, the terms of the Netherlands Railway Concession, Selati Railway Concession, Dynamite Concession—­in fact, all other concessions, monopolies, contracts, privileges, appointments, and rights, made, granted, or entered into by President Kruger to or with his friends.  Let him recall the treatment and the fate of some of those to whom ampler reference will be made later on; for instance, Chief Justice Kotze and Judge Ameshof, who in the dealings with the Reformers