helped it, and this must not be forgotten to them.  As a matter of fact, friends accepted the concession when the State was poor and its credit bad, but did nothing until the State’s credit improved to such an extent as to be mortgageable. Then the friends granted certain favourable terms under their concession to other friends, who built the first section of the line at preposterous rates, and repaid themselves out of moneys raised on the State’s credit.

A well-known South African politician, distinguished alike for his ability and integrity, who visited the Transvaal during the progress of the reformers’ trial, and was anxious in the interests of all South Africa to find a solution of the differences, put the position thus to some of the leading men of the Rand:  ’You can see for yourselves that this is no time to ask for the franchise; for the time being, Jameson’s invasion has made such a suggestion impossible.  Now, tell me in a word, Is there any one thing that you require more than anything else, which we can help you to get?’ The answer was:  ’The one thing which we must have—­not for its own sake, but for the security it offers for obtaining and retaining other reforms—­is the franchise.  No promise of reform, no reform itself, will be worth an hour’s purchase unless we have the status of voters to make our influence felt.  But, if you want the chief economic grievances, they are:  the Netherlands Railway Concession, the dynamite monopoly, the liquor traffic, and native labour, which, together, constitute an unwarrantable burden of indirect taxation on the industry of over two and a half millions sterling annually.  We petitioned until we were jeered at; we agitated until we—­well—­came here [Pretoria Gaol]; and we know that we shall get no remedy until we have the vote to enforce it.  We are not a political but a working community, and if we were honestly and capably governed the majority of us would be content to wait for the franchise for a considerable time yet in recognition of the peculiar circumstances, and of the feelings of the older inhabitants.  That is the position in a nutshell.’

[Netherlands Railway Company.]

The Netherlands Railway Company is then a very important factor.  It is unnecessary to go very fully into its history and the details of its administration.  As the holder of an absolute monopoly, as the enterprise which has involved the State in its National Debt, and as the sole channel through which such money has been expended, the Company has gradually worked itself into the position of being the financial department of the State; and the functions which are elsewhere exercised by the heads of the Government belong here, in practice, entirely to this foreign corporation.  Petitions for the cancellation of this concession were presented in 1888, when the progressive element in the first Volksraad consisted of one man—­Mr. Loveday, one of the loyalists in the war.  The