Law No. 3 of 1894 purports to supersede all other laws.  Therein it is laid down that all persons born in the State, or who may have established their domicile therein before May 29, 1876, are entitled to full political privileges.  Those who have settled in the country since then can become naturalized after two years’ residence dating from the time at which their names were registered in the Field-cornet’s books.  This naturalization confers the privilege of voting for local officials, Field-cornets, landdrosts,{11} and for members of the Second Raad.  It is however stipulated that children born in the country shall take the status of their fathers.  The naturalized subject after having been qualified to vote in this manner for two years becomes eligible for a seat in the Second Volksraad—­i.e., four years after the registration of his name in the Field-cornet’s books.  After he shall have been qualified to sit in the Second Volksraad for ten years (one of the conditions for which is that he must be thirty years of age) he may obtain the full burgher rights or political privileges, provided the majority of burghers in his Ward will signify in writing their desire that he should obtain them and provided the President and Executive shall see no objection to granting the same.  It is thus clear that, assuming the Field-cornet’s records to be honestly and properly compiled and to be available for reference (which they are not), the immigrant, after fourteen years’ probation during which he shall have given up his own country and have been politically emasculated, privilege of obtaining burgher rights should he be willing and able to induce the majority of a hostile clique to petition in writing on his behalf and should he then escape the veto of the President and Executive.

This was the coping-stone to Mr. Kruger’s Chinese wall.  The Uitlanders and their children were disfranchised for ever, and as far as legislation could make it sure the country was preserved by entail to the families of the Voortrekkers.  The measure was only carried because of the strenuous support given by the President both within the Raad and at those private meetings which practically decide the important business of the country.  The President threw off all disguise when it came to proposing this measure of protection.  For many years he had been posing as the one progressive factor in the State and had induced the great majority of people to believe that while he personally was willing and even anxious to accede to the reasonable requests of the new population his burghers were restraining him.  He had for a time succeeded in quelling all agitation by representing that demonstrations made by the tax-bearing section only embarrassed him in his endeavour to relieve them and aggravated the position by raising the suspicions and opposition of his Conservative faction.