seem that the qualified Boer voter had an average of one wife and 4.3 children, a fair enough allowance in all conscience.  These figures should be borne in mind, for the present Boer population consists of what remains of these 35,000 souls and their natural increase during eighteen years.  There are other Dutch immigrants from the Cape Colony and Free State:  these are aliens, who have the invaluable qualification of hating England and her sons and her ways and her works; but, as will be made clear when the Franchise Law is explained, the present Boer electorate consists-or, without fraud or favouritism, should consist-of the ‘possible 8,000’ and their sons.

Many a champion of liberty has lived to earn the stigma of tyrant, and the Boers who in 1835 had trekked for liberty and freedom from oppressive rule, and who had fought for it in 1880, began now themselves to put in force the principles which they had so stoutly resisted.  In the Volksraad Session of 1882 the first of the measures of exclusion was passed.  The Franchise, which until then-in accordance with Law No. 1 of 1876-had been granted to anyone holding property or residing in the State, or, failing the property qualification, to anyone who had qualified by one year’s residence, was now altered, and Law No. 7 of 1882 was passed which provided that aliens could become naturalized and enfranchised after five years’ residence, thus attaining the status of the oldest Voortrekker.  The feeling was now very strong against the Annexation Party, as they had been called, that is to say, the men who had had the courage of their convictions, and had openly advocated annexation; and as usual the bitterest persecutors and vilifiers were found in the ranks of those who, having secretly supported them before, had become suspect, and had now need to prove their loyalty by their zeal.  The intention was avowed to keep the party pure and undiluted, as it was maintained by many of the Boers that former proselytes had used their newly-acquired privileges to vote away the independence of the country.  The view was not unnatural under the circumstances, and this measure, had it not been a violation of pledges, might have found defenders among impartial persons; but unfortunately it proved to be not so much a stringently defensive measure which time and circumstances might induce them to modify, as the first step in a policy of absolute and perpetual exclusion.  It was the first deliberate violation of the spirit of the settlement, and, although there is no clause in the Pretoria Convention which it can be said to contravene, it was, as Mr. Chamberlain has since styled it, ’a violation of the status quo as it was present to the minds of her Majesty’s Ministers at the time the Convention was negotiated.’  But the Gladstone Ministry, which had paid so heavily to get rid of the Transvaal question, was certainly not going to re-open it for the sake of holding the Boers to the spirit of the settlement.