Almost the first use made by the Transvaal Government of their recovered power was one which has wrought much mischief to the State.  The Triumvirate who ruled the country in 1882 granted numbers of concessions, ostensibly for the purpose of opening up industries or developing mining areas.  The real reasons are generally considered to have been personal, and the result was the crushing of budding activities, and the severe discouragement of those who were willing to expend capital and energies in legitimate work.  Favouritism pure and simple dictated these grants.  It is hardly too much to say that the system and spirit then introduced rule to this day, for although the Volksraad has taken definite resolution condemning the principle of monopolies and contracts conferring preferential rights of any sort, the spirit of this resolution is violated whenever the President and Executive deem it fit to do so—­witness, for instance, the monopoly granted in December, 1895, for the free importation of produce, which is disguised as a Government agency with a ‘commission’ to the agent; but it is really a monopoly and nothing else!

The Boers were not satisfied with the Convention of 1881.  They desired the removal of the Suzerainty, the cancellation of the clauses referring to natives, and the restoration of the title of the South African Republic in lieu of that of the Transvaal State.  They also desired (but did not expect to obtain) complete freedom in regard to their external relations, and they lost no time in trying how far they would be allowed to go in the direction of stretching the spirit of the Convention.  Nothing in that ineffectual and miserable document is clearer than the definition of certain boundaries, and the provision that no extension shall be allowed.  This hemming of them in—­or shutting them up in a kraal, as President Kruger has expressively put it—­was intensely repugnant to them.  It cut into one of the most deeply-rooted habits of the Boer.  His method of trek and expansion has been, to begin by making small hunting excursions into adjacent native territories, to follow up with grazing his cattle there until he created in his own mind a right by prescription, and then to establish it either by force or else by written agreement, too often imperfectly translated.  This was oftentimes varied or supplemented by helping the weaker of two rival chiefs, and so demolishing the power of a tribe.  The expulsion of the native followed as a natural result.

In the Transvaal itself there was, and still is, an immense quantity of unoccupied land, and the Boers were quite unable to properly control, utilize, and administer their own immense territory, but ‘land hunger’ is theirs as a birth curse.  The individual cannot bear to see the smoke of his neighbour’s chimney; he will not cultivate 50 acres, but wants 50,000; the ‘nation’ wants Africa—­no less.  They coveted Swaziland, Zululand, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and Tongaland, and set to work by devious methods to establish claims to these countries.