or the welfare of the State in general.  The President, Executive and Volksraad, by neglect of their obvious duties, by their ignorance of ordinary public affairs, by their wilful disregard of the requirements of the Uitlanders, have given cohesion to a people about as heterogeneous as any community under the sun, and have trained them to act and to care for themselves.  The refusal year after year to give a charter of incorporation to the Chamber, on the grounds that it would be creating an imperium in imperio, and the comments of Volksraad members on the petition, have made it clear that the Government view the Chamber with no friendly eye.  The facts that in order to get a workable pass law at all the Chamber had to prepare it in every detail, together with plans for the creation and working of a Government department; and that in order to diminish the litigation under the gold law, and to make that fearful and wonderful agglomeration of erratic, experimental, crude, involved, contradictory and truly incomprehensible enactments at all understandable, the Chamber had to codify it at its own expense and on its own initiative, illustrate both the indispensable character of the organization, and the ignorance and ineptitude of the Government.

The records of the Volksraad for the last ten years may be searched in vain for any measure calculated constructively to advance the country, or to better the conditions of the workers in it, with the few—­very few—­exceptions of those proposed by the Chamber of Mines.  The country has, in fact, run the Government, and the Government has been unable to ruin it.

Shortly after the discovery of the Rand conglomerates, it became clear that a railway would have to be built between the coalfields and the mines—­some forty miles.  But it was a fixed principle of the Boers that no railways (with the exception of the Delagoa Bay line, which, as the means of diverting trade from British channels, was regarded as a necessary evil) should be built, since they could compete successfully with the ox-waggon, and thus deprive the ’poor burgher’ of his legitimate trade spoil; and great difficulty was experienced in getting the consent of the Raad.  As a matter of fact, the permission to build it was only obtained by subterfuge; for it was explained to the worthy law-makers that it was not a railway at all—­only a steam tram.  And the Rand Steam Tram it is called to this day.

The Delagoa Railway—­the darling scheme of Presidents Burgers and Kruger in turn—­was taken seriously in hand as soon as it was possible to raise money on almost any terms.  The concession for all railways in the State was granted on April 16, 1884, to a group of Hollander and German capitalists, and confirmed by the Volksraad on August 23 following.  The President’s excuse for granting and preserving this iniquitous bond on the prosperity of the State is, that when the country was poor and its credit bad, friends in Holland came forward and generously