II.

PLEDGES GIVEN BY MR. GLADSTONE'S GOVERNMENT AS TO THE RETENTION

OF THE

TRANSVAAL AS A BRITISH COLONY.

THE following extracts from the speeches, despatches, and telegrams of members of the present Government, with reference to the proposed retrocession of the Transvaal, are not without interest:—

During the month of May 1880, Lord Kimberley despatched a telegram to Sir Bartle Frere, in which the following words occur: "Under no circumstances can the Queen's authority in the Transvaal be relinquished."

In a despatch dated 20th May, and addressed to Sir Bartle Frere, Lord Kimberley says, "That the sovereignty of the Queen in the Transvaal could not be relinquished."

In a speech in the House of Lords on the 24th May 1880, Lord Kimberley said:

"There was a still stronger reason than that for not receding; it was impossible to say what calamities such a step as receding might not cause. We had, at the cost of much blood and treasure, restored peace, and the effect of our now reversing our policy would be to leave the province in a state of anarchy, and possibly to cause an internecine war. such a risk, he could not make himself responsible. The number of the natives in the Transvaal was estimated at about 800,000, and that of the whites less than 50,000. Diffi

For

culties with the Zulus and frontier tribes would again arise, and, looking as they must to South Africa as a whole, the Government, after a careful consideration of the question, came to the conclusion that we could not relinquish the Transvaal. Nothing could be more unfortunate than uncertainty in respect to such a matter."

On the 8th June 1880, Mr. Gladstone, in reply to a Boer memorial, wrote as follows:

"It is undoubtedly a matter for much regret that it should, since the Annexation, have appeared that so large a number of the population of Dutch origin in the Transvaal are opposed to the annexation of that territory, but it is impossible now to consider that question as if it were presented for the first time. We have to do with a state of things which has existed for a considerable period, during which obligations have been contracted, especially, though not exclusively, towards the native population, which cannot be set aside. Looking to all the circumstances, both of the Transvaal and the rest of South Africa, and to the necessity of preventing a renewal of disorders, which might lead to disastrous consequences, not only to the Transvaal but to the whole of South Africa, our judgment is that the Queen cannot be advised to relinquish the Transvaal."

Her Majesty's Speech, delivered in Parliament on the 6th January 1881, contains the following words: "A rising in the Transvaal has recently imposed upon me the duty of vindicating my authority."

These extracts are rather curious reading in face of the policy adopted by the Government, after our troops had been defeated.

I

III.

A BOER ON BOER DESIGNS.

REPRINT here a letter published in The Times of 14th October 1899, together with a prefatory note added by the editor of that journal. This epistle seems to me worthy of the study of thinking men. Much of it, most of it indeed, is mere brutal vapouring, false in its facts, false in its deductions; remarkable only for the livid hues of hate with which it is coloured. Yet in this vile concoction, the work evidently of a half-educated member of the Cape Dutch party, or perhaps of an Afrikander Irishman of the stamp of the late notorious Fenian Aylward, appear statements built upon a basis of truth which we should do well to lay to heart. I allude principally to the question of our food supply and to the possible behaviour of the electorate in the event of a great war under pressure of want and high prices. (See paragraph 3 of the letter of "P. S.") In a very different work, "A Farmer's Year," pages 179 and 380, I have attempted to treat of this great matter which elsewhere has been dealt with also by others more able and perhaps better qualified. Until it is reasonably certain that under any circumstances which we can conceive the price of food stuffs will not be raised to a prohibitive point, it can never be said that the future of Great Britain is

assured beyond all probable doubt. When will this prob

lem receive the attention it deserves at the hands of our Governments and of those over whom they rule?

We have received the following letter, appropriately headed "Boer Ignorance." The writer bears a well-known Dutch name, and gives as his late address the name of a well-known town in a Dutch district of Cape Colony: :

Q

To the Editor of the "Times.”

SIR,-In your paper you have often commented on what you are pleased to call the ignorance of my countrymen, the Boers. We are not so ignorant as the British statesmen and newspaper writers, nor are we such fools as you British are. We know our policy, and we do not change

it. We have no opposition party to fear nor to truckle to. Your boasted Conservative majority has been the obedient tool of the Radical minority, and the Radical minority. has been the blind tool of our farseeing and intelligent President. We have desired delay, and we have had it, and we are now practically masters of Africa from the Zambezi to the Cape. All the Afrikanders in Cape Colony have been working for years for this end, for they and we know the facts.

1. The actual value of gold in the Transvaal is at least 200,000 millions of pounds, and this fact is as well known to the Emperors of Germany and Russia as it is to us. You estimate the value of the gold at only 700 millions of pounds, or, at least, that is what you pretend to estimate it at. But Germany, Russia, and France do not desire you to get possession of this vast mass of gold, and so, after encouraging you to believe that they will not interfere in South Africa they will certainly do so, and very easily find a casus belli, and they will assist us directly and indirectly to drive you out of Africa.

2. We know that you dare not take any precautions in advance to prevent the onslaught of the Great Powers, as the Opposition, the great peace party, will raise the question of expense, and this will win over your lazy, dirty, drunken working classes, who will never again permit themselves to be taxed to support your Empire, or even to preserve your existence as a nation.

3. We know from all the military authorities of the European and American continents that you exist as an independent Power merely on sufferance, and that at any moment the great Emperor William can arrange with France or Russia to wipe you off the face of the earth.

You

They can at any time starve you into surrender. must yield in all things to the United States also, or your supply of corn will be so reduced by the Americans that your working classes would be compelled to pay high prices for their food, and rather than do that they would have civil war, and invite any foreign Power to assist them by invasion, for there is no patriotism in the working classes of England, Wales, or Ireland.

4. We know that your country has been more prosperous than any other country during the last fifty years (you have had no civil war like the Americans and French to tone up your nerves and strengthen your manliness), and consequently your able-bodied men will not enlist in your so-called voluntary army. Therefore you have to hire the dregs of your population to do your fighting, and they are deficient in physique, in moral and mental ability, and in all the qualities that make good fighting men.

5. Your military officers we know to be merely pedantic scholars or frivolous society men, without any capacity for practical warfare with white men. The Afridis were more than a match for you, and your victory over the Sudanese was achieved because those poor people had not a rifle amongst them.

6. We know that your men, being the dregs of your people, are naturally feeble, and that they are also saturated with the most horrible sexual diseases, as all your Government returns plainly show, and that they cannot endure the hardships of

war.

7. We know that the entire British race is rapidly decaying, your birth-rate is rapidly falling, your children are born weak, diseased, and deformed, and that the major part of your population consists of females, cripples, epileptics, consumptives, cancerous people, invalids, and lunatics of all kinds whom you carefully nourish and preserve.

8. We know that nine-tenths of your statesmen and higher officials, military and naval, are suffering from kidney diseases, which weaken their courage and willpower and makes them shirk all responsibility as far as possible.

9. We know that your Navy is big, but we know that it