It is not suggested that if the Government in the Transvaal were influenced by the vote of the white British subjects, or if it were entirely dominated by such vote, any encouragement would be given to the Indian hawkers and traders, or that there would be any disposition whatever to give voting rights to coloured people of any kind, but it is suggested that a more enlightened and a more just system of treatment would be adopted; and in any case it is to be presumed that there would be no appeals to the British Government, involving exhibitions of impotency on the part of the Empire to protect its subjects, followed by the deliberate repetition of treatment which might become the subject of remonstrance.  The untutored mind is not given to subtleties and sophistries; direct cause and effect are as much as it can grasp.  These it does grasp and firmly hold, and the simple inferences are not to be removed by any amount of argument or explanation, however plausible.  There is scarcely an Uitlander in the Transvaal who would not view with dismay the raising of the big question upon such grounds as the treatment of the natives, the Cape boys, or the Indians; and the fact that the Transvaal Government know this may account for much of the provocation on these questions.  It is nevertheless undeniable that white British subjects in the Transvaal do suffer fresh humiliation and are substantially lowered in the eyes of the coloured races, because appeals are made on their behalf to the British Government, and those appeals are useless.  The condition of affairs should be that such appeals would be unnecessary, and would therefore become—­in practice—­impossible.  Such a condition of affairs would obtain under a friendly and more enlightened government, and the only security for the voluntary continuance of such conditions is the enfranchisement of the Uitlander population.

In the midst of all that was gloomy unfavourable and unpromising there came to the Uitlanders one bright ray of sunshine.  Dr. Leyds who had been re-elected State Secretary on the understanding that he would resign immediately in order to take up the post of plenipotentiary in Europe, and whom the Boers with a growing anti-Hollander and pro-Afrikander feeling would no longer tolerate, relinquished his office.  In his stead was appointed Mr. F.W.  Reitz formerly President of the Free State, a kindly, honourable, and cultured gentleman, whose individual sympathies were naturally and strongly progressive but who, unfortunately, has not proved himself to be sufficiently strong to cope with President Kruger or to rise above division upon race lines in critical times.  Shortly afterwards Mr. Christiaan Joubert, the Minister of Mines, a man totally unfit from any point of view to hold any office of responsibility or dignity, was compelled by resolution of the Second Volksraad to hand in his resignation.  His place was filled by a Hollander official in the Mining Department who commanded and still commands