Outside the Transvaal Mr. Kruger has the reputation of being free from the taint of corruption from which so many of his colleagues suffer.  Yet within the Republic and among his own people one of the gravest of the charges levelled against him is that by his example and connivance he has made himself responsible for much of the plundering that goes on.  There are numbers of cases in which the President’s nearest relatives have been proved to be concerned in the most flagrant jobs, only to be screened by his influence; such cases, for instance, as that of the Vaal River Water Supply Concession, in which Mr. Kruger’s son-in-law ‘hawked’ about for the highest bid the vote of the Executive Council on a matter which had not yet come before it, and, moreover, sold and duly delivered the aforesaid vote.  There is the famous libel case in which Mr. Eugene Marais, the editor of the Dutch paper Land en Volk, successfully sustained his allegation that the President had defrauded the State by charging heavy travelling expenses for a certain trip on which he was actually the guest of the Cape Colonial Government.{12}

The party in opposition to President Kruger, with General Joubert at its head, might, for purposes of nomenclature, be called the Progressive Party.  It was really led by Mr. Ewald Esselen, a highly-educated South African, born in the Cape Colony of German parentage, educated in Edinburgh, and practising as a barrister at the Pretoria Bar.  Mr. Esselen was a medical student at the time of the Boer War of Independence, and having then as he still has enthusiastic Boer sympathies, volunteered for medical service during the war.  He subsequently became attached to the President’s staff, and finally, on completing his legal education, was appointed Judge of the High Court in the Transvaal.  Relinquishing his seat on the Bench after some years of honourable service he returned to the Bar, and became an active factor in politics.  Mr. Esselen, from being the closest personal adherent of Mr. Kruger, became for a time his most formidable opponent and his most dreaded critic.  A campaign was organized for the presidential election and feeling ran extremely high.  To such lengths, indeed, did the Boer partisans go that for some months the possibility of a resort to arms for the settlement of their differences was freely discussed by both parties.  The election took place in 1893, and at the same time elections of members for the First Volksraad were in progress.  Mr. Kruger made masterly use of his position in office and of his authority over the officials appointed during his regime, and for the time being he converted the Civil Service of the country into an election organization.  Not even the enemies of the President will deny that he is both a practised diplomat and a determined fighter.  By his energy, intrigue, personal influence, and intense determination, he not only compelled his party to the highest effort, but to a large extent broke the spirit of the opposition