The burghers are thus fund-holders in receipt, per head, of a yearly income of L133 from the Uitlanders.  Never has there been an oligarchy so favoured.  It is true that all do not profit in the same proportion.  “The Transvaal Republic” says a Dutchman, Mr. C. Hutten, “is administered in the interests of a clique of some three dozen families."[15]

[Footnote 15:  The Doom of the Boer Oligarchies. (North American Review, March, 1900.)]

3.—­Salaries of Boer Officials.

The salaries of the Transvaal officials amounted, in 1886, to L51,831; in 1898, to L1,080,382; and in 1899, they were estimated at L1,216,394.  Salaries amounting to L1,216,394 for 30,000 electors!  Such are the figures of the Transvaal Budget.

Here we find undoubtedly a great superiority over other countries; and the officials in receipt of such salaries would look down with profoundest contempt on the much more modest pay of their European colleagues if they knew anything about them.  Each elector represents more than L40 of official salaries.  At the same rate the pay of the French Government officials would amount annually to about four hundred and thirty-two millions pounds sterling (L432,000,000)!  This is not all.  In 1897, a member of the Volksraad asked what had become of some L2,400,000 which had been paid over to Transvaal officials, in the form of advances of salary.  He received no reply.

4.—­The Debit Side of the Boer Budget.

In a pamphlet, by M. Edouard Naville, La Question du Transvaal, and also in the Revue Sud-Africaine of October 22nd, 1899, we find a list showing the expenditure of the Pretoria Government, from which may be gathered the extraordinarily rapid rate of increase:  In the fourteen years—­1886-99—­the budget expenditure amounted to L37,031,000, of which nine-tenths have been defrayed by the gold industry.  From information supplied by the Government of Pretoria itself, we find that five sources have absorbed more than half:—­

Salaries, &c.  L7,003,898
Military expenditure 2,236,942
Special expenditure 2,287,559
Sundry services 1,581,042
Public works 5,809,996
                           -----------
                           L18,919,437
                           -----------
Leaving a surplus of L18,111,601
                           ===========

Under the headings of “special,” and “sundry services,” are concealed the secret service expenditure, remuneration to influential electors, and the various political expedients by which Mr. Krueger has proved “his intellectual and moral” superiority.

The official salaries of 1899, estimated at L1,216,000, included a sum of L326,640 for the police.  We have seen what kind of police it is.

The legislature is composed of two Volksraads, each consisting of twenty-nine members; or fifty-eight in all.  Now the estimate of salaries for the legislature is L43,960, or about L758 each, more than double the allowances of the French senators and deputies.