The comparative ease of life disposes the English part of the population to athletic sports, which are pursued with almost as much avidity as in Australia. Even one who thinks that in England the passion for them has gone beyond all reasonable limits, and has become a serious injury to education and to the taste for intellectual pleasures, may find in the character of the climate a justification for the devotion to cricket, in particular, which strikes him in South Africa. Now that the wild animals have become scarce, hunting cannot be pursued as it once was, and young people would have little incitement to physical exertion in the open air did not the English love of cricket flourish in the schools and colleges. Long may it flourish!
The social conditions I have been describing are evidently unfavourable to the development of literature or science or art. Art has scarcely begun to exist. Science is represented only by a few naturalists in Government employment, and by some intelligent amateur observers. Researches in electricity or chemistry or biology require nowadays a somewhat elaborate apparatus, with which few private persons could provide themselves, and which are here possessed only by one or two public institutions. English and American writers have hitherto supplied the intellectual needs of the people, and the established reputation of writers in those countries makes competition difficult to a new colonial author. The towns are too small, and their inhabitants too much occupied in commerce to create groups of highly educated people, capable of polishing, whetting, and stimulating one another's intellects. There are few large libraries, and no fully equipped university to train young men in history or philosophy or economics or theology. Accordingly, few books are composed or published, and, so far as I know, only three South African writers have caught the ear of the European public. One of these was Robert Pringle, a Scotchman, whose poems, written sixty or seventy years ago, possess considerable merit, and one of which, beginning with the line,
remains the most striking picture of South African nature in those early days when the wilderness was still filled with wild creatures. Another, Miss Olive Schreiner (now Mrs. Cronwright-Schreiner), has attained deserved fame. A third, Mr. Scully, is less known in England, but his little volume of Kafir Tales is marked by much graphic power and shows insight into native character.
These three writers, and indeed all the writers of merit, belong to the English or Anglified section of the population. The Dutch section is practically disqualified by its language (which, be it remembered, is not the language of Holland, but a debased dialect) from literary composition, even were it otherwise disposed to authorship. Literature will always, I think, remain English in character, bearing few or no traces of the Dutch element in the people. But otherwise things are likely to change in a few years. The conditions which have been described as unfavourable to intellectual production are not necessarily permanent, and the time will probably come when the Europeans of South Africa will emulate their kinsfolk at home or in North America in literary and artistic fertility. The materials for imaginative work, whether in poetry or in prose, lie ready to their hand. The scenery deserves some great native landscape-painter, and such a genius will, no doubt, one day arise.
Journalism has now everywhere become, in point of quantity, the most important part of literature. The South African newspapers impress a visitor favourably. Several of them are written with great ability, and they were in 1895 comparatively free from that violence of invective, that tawdriness of rhetoric, and that proneness to fill their columns with criminal intelligence which are apt to be charged against the press in some other new countries. No journal seems to exert so great a political power as is wielded by several of the Australian dailies. As might be expected, the Press is chiefly English, that language having sixty-one papers, against seventeen printed in Dutch and twenty-three in both languages.
Although the dispersion of the small European population over an exceedingly wide area makes it difficult to provide elementary schools everywhere,[72] education is, among the whites, well cared for, and in some regions, such as the Orange Free State, the Boer element is just as eager for it as is the English. Neither are efficient secondary schools wanting. That which is wanting, that which is urgently needed to crown the educational edifice, is a properly equipped teaching university. There are several colleges which provide lectures,[73] and the Cape University holds examinations and confers degrees; but to erect over these colleges a true university with an adequate teaching staff seems to be as difficult an enterprise at the Cape as it has proved to be in London, where thirteen years had to be spent in efforts, not successful till 1898, to establish a teaching university. It is strange to find that in a new country, where the different religious bodies live on good terms with one another, one of the chief obstacles in the way is the reluctance of two of the existing colleges, which have a denominational character, to have an institution superior to them set up by the State. The other obstacles are the rivalry of the eastern province with the western, in which, at Cape Town, the natural seat of a university would be found, and the apathy or aversion of the Dutch section of the people. Some of them do not care to spend public money for a purpose whose value they cannot be made to understand. Others, knowing that a university would necessarily be mainly in English hands and give instruction of an English type, fear to establish what would become another Anglifying influence. Thus several small colleges go on, each with inadequate resources, and the Cape youth who desires to obtain a first-rate education is obliged to go to Europe for it. He cannot even get a full course of legal instruction, for there is no complete law school. It is no doubt well that a certain number of young men should go to Europe and there acquire a first-hand knowledge of the ideas and habits of the Old World; but many who cannot afford the luxury of a European journey and residence remain without the kind of instruction to which their natural gifts entitle them, and the intellectual progress of the country suffers. Were Cape Colony somewhere in the United States, a millionaire would forthwith step in, build a new university, and endow it with a few millions of dollars. But South Africa is only just beginning to produce great fortunes; so the best hope is that some enlightened and tactful statesman may, by disarming the suspicions and allaying the jealousies I have described, succeed in uniting the existing colleges, and add to their scanty revenues an adequate Government grant. This may possibly be effected. But the jealousies and ambitions which those who control an institution feel for it are often quite as tenacious as is the selfishness of men where their own pockets are concerned; and since these jealousies disguise themselves under a cloak of disinterestedness, it is all the more hard to overcome them by the pressure of public opinion.
One other intellectual force remains to be mentioned—that of the churches. In the two British Colonies no religious body receives special State recognition or any grants from the State.[74] All are on an equal footing, just as in Australia and in North America. In the two Boer Republics the Dutch Reformed Church is in a certain sense the State church. In the Transvaal it is recognized as such by the Grondwet ("Fundamental Law"), and receives a Government subvention. In that Republic members of other churches were at one time excluded from the suffrage and from all public offices, and even now Roman Catholics are under some disability. In the Orange Free State the Dutch Reformed Church receives public aid, but I think this is given, to a smaller extent, to some other denominations also, and no legal inequalities based on religion exist. In these two Republics nearly the whole of the Boer population, and in the Free State a part even of the English population, belong to the Dutch Reformed communion, which is Presbyterian in government and Calvinistic in theology. In the British Colonies the Protestant Episcopal Church (Church of England) comes next after the Dutch Reformed, which is much the strongest denomination; but the Wesleyans are also an important body; and there are, of course, also Congregational and Baptist churches. The Presbyterians seem to be less numerous (in proportion to the population) than in Canada or Australia, not merely because the Scottish element is less numerous, but also because many of the Scottish settlers joined the Dutch Reformed Church as being akin to their own in polity and doctrine. The comparative paucity of Roman Catholics is due to the paucity of Irish immigrants.[75] These bodies live in perfect harmony and good feeling one with another, all frankly accepting the principle of equality, none claiming any social pre-eminence, and none, so far as I could learn, attempting to interfere in politics. Both the bishops and the clergy of the Church of England (among whom there are many gifted men) are, with few exceptions, of marked High-church proclivities, which, however, do not appear to prevail equally among the laity. The Dutch Reformed Church has been troubled by doubts as to the orthodoxy of many of its younger pastors who have been educated at Leyden or Utrecht, and for a time it preferred to send candidates for the ministry to be trained at Edinburgh, whose theological schools inspired less distrust. It is itself in its turn distrusted, apparently without reason, by the still more rigid Calvinists of the Transvaal.
One curious feature of South African society remains to be mentioned, which impressed me the more the longer I remained in the country. The upper stratum of that society, consisting of the well-to-do and best educated people, is naturally small, because the whole white population of the towns is small, there being only four towns that have more than ten thousand white residents. But this little society is virtually one society, though dispersed in spots hundreds of miles from one another. Natal stands rather apart, and has very little to do either socially or in the way of business with Cape Colony, and not a great deal even with the Transvaal. So too the four or five towns of the eastern province of Cape Colony form a group somewhat detached, and though the "best people" in each of them know all about the "best people" in Cape Town, they are not in close touch with the latter. But Cape Town, Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, and Pretoria, the five most important places (excluding the Natal towns), are for social purposes almost one city, though it is six hundred and fifty miles from Cape Town to Kimberley, and one thousand miles from Cape Town to Johannesburg. All the persons of consequence in these places know one another and follow one another's doings. All mix frequently, because the Cape Town people are apt to be called by business to the inland cities, and the residents of the inland cities come to Cape Town for sea air in the summer, or to embark thence for Europe. Where distances are great, men think little of long journeys, and the fact that Cape Town is practically the one port of entrance and departure for the interior, so far as passengers are concerned, keeps it in constant relations with the leading men of the interior, and gives a sort of unity to the upper society of the whole country, which finds few parallels in any other part of the world. Johannesburg and Cape Town in particular are, for social purposes, in closer touch with each other than Liverpool is with Manchester or New York with Philadelphia. When one turns to the map it looks a long way from the Cape to the Witwatersrand; but between these places most of the country is a desert, and there is only one spot, Bloemfontein, that deserves to be called a town. So I will once more beg the reader to remember that though South Africa is more than half as large as Europe, it is, measured by population, a very small country.
The circumstances of the two South African Colonies are so dissimilar from those of the British Colonies in North America and in Australasia as to have impressed upon their politics a very different character. I do not propose to describe the present political situation, for it may change at any moment. It is only of the permanent causes which give their colour to the questions and the movements of the country that I shall speak, and that concisely.
The frame of government is, in Cape Colony as well as in Natal, essentially the same as in the other self-governing British Colonies. There is a Governor, appointed by the home Government, and responsible to it only, who plays the part which belongs to the Crown in Great Britain. He is the nominal head of the executive, summoning and proroguing the Legislature, appointing and dismissing ministers, and exercising, upon the advice of his ministers, the prerogative of pardon. There is a cabinet of five persons, including the heads of the chief administrative departments, who are the practical executive of the Colony, and are responsible to the Legislature, in which they sit, and at whose pleasure they hold their offices. There is a Legislature consisting of two houses—an Assembly, whose membership was raised in December, 1898, from seventy-nine to ninety-five, and a Legislative Council, with twenty-three members, besides the Chief Justice, who is ex officio President. In Cape Colony (for of the arrangements in Natal I have spoken in a previous chapter) both houses are elected on the same franchise—a low one; but the districts for the election of members of the Council are much larger, and therefore fewer, than the Assembly districts, so the former body is a small and the latter a comparatively numerous one.[76] The rights and powers of both houses are theoretically the same, save that money bills originate in the Assembly; but the Assembly is far more powerful, for the ministry holds office only so long as it has the support of a majority in that body, whereas it need not regard a hostile vote in the Council. Either the English or the Dutch language may be used in debate. Ministers have the right of speaking in both houses, but can, of course, vote only in the one of which they are members by popular election. If it happens that there is no minister who has a seat in the Council (as was the case in 1896), it is usual for the cabinet to allot one to be present in and look after that chamber for the day.
This cabinet system, as it is called, works pretty smoothly, on lines similar to that English original whence it is copied. The most interesting peculiarity is the Cape method of forming the smaller House. In England the Upper House is composed of hereditary members; in the Canadian confederation, of members nominated for life—both of them methods which are quite indefensible in theory. Here, however, we find the same plan as that which prevails in the States of the North American Union, all of which have senates elected on the same franchise, and for the same term, as the larger house, but in more extensive districts, so as to make the number of members of the senate or second chamber smaller. Regarding the merits of the Cape scheme, I heard different views expressed. Nobody seemed opposed in principle to the division of the Legislature into two houses, but many condemned the existing Council as being usually composed of second-rate men, and apt to be obstructive in its tendencies. Some thought the Council was a useful part of the scheme of government, because it interposed delay in legislation and gave time for reflection and further debate. One point came out pretty clearly. No difficulty is deemed to arise from the fact that there exist two popularly elected houses equally entitled to control the administration,[77] for custom has settled that the Assembly or larger house is that whose vote determines the life of a ministry. But it follows from this circumstance that the most able and ambitious men desire a seat in the more powerful chamber, leaving the smaller house to those of less mark. This is the exact reverse of what has happened in the United States; where a seat in the Senate is more desired than one in the House; but it is a natural result of the diverse arrangements of the two countries, for in the Federal Government the Senate has some powers which the House of Representatives does not enjoy, while in each of the several States of the Union, although the powers of the two houses are almost the same, the smaller number of each Senate secures for a senator somewhat greater importance than a member of the larger body enjoys. The Cape Colony plan of letting a minister speak in both houses works very well, and may deserve to be imitated in England, where the fact that the head of a department can explain his policy only to his own House has sometimes caused inconvenience.
So much for the machinery. Now let us note the chief points in which the circumstances of Cape Colony and of Natal (for in these respects both Colonies are alike) differ from those of the other self-governing Colonies of Britain.
The population is not homogeneous as regards race, but consists of two stocks, English and Dutch. These stocks are not, as in Canada, locally separate, but dwell intermixed, though the Dutch element predominates in the western province and in the interior generally, the English in the eastern province and at the Kimberley diamond-fields.
The population is homogeneous as regards religion, for nearly all are Protestants, and Protestants of much the same type. Race difference has fortunately not been complicated, as in Canada, by ecclesiastical antagonisms.
The population is homogeneous as respects material interests, for it is wholly agricultural and pastoral, except a few merchants and artisans in the seaports, and a few miners at Kimberley and in Namaqualand. Four-fifths of it are practically rural, for the interests of the small towns are identical with those of the surrounding country.
The population is not only rural, but scattered more thinly over a vast area than in any other British Colony, except north-western Canada, and parts of Australasia. In Natal there are only two white men to the square mile, and in Cape Colony less than two. Nor is this sparseness incidental, as in North America, to the early days of settlement. It is due to a physical condition—the condition of the soil—which is likely to continue.
Below the white citizens, who are the ruling race, there lies a thick stratum of coloured population numerically larger, and likely to remain so, because it performs all the unskilled labour of the country. Here is a condition which, though present in some of the Southern States of America, is fortunately absent from all the self-governing Colonies of Britain, and indeed caused Jamaica to be, some time ago, withdrawn from that category.
The conjunction of these circumstances marks off South Africa as a very peculiar country, where we may expect to find a correspondingly peculiar political situation. Comparing it to other Colonies, we may say that the Cape and Natal resemble Canada in the fact that there are two European races present, and resemble the Southern States of America in having a large mass of coloured people beneath the whites. But South Africa is in other respects unlike both; and although situated in the southern hemisphere, it bears little resemblance to Australia.
Now let us see how the circumstances above described have determined the political issues that have arisen in Cape Colony.
Certain issues are absent which exist, not only in Europe and the United States, but also in Australia and in Canada. There is no antagonism of rich and poor, because there are very few poor and still fewer rich. There is no working-man's or labour party, because so few white men are employed in handicrafts. There is no Socialist movement, nor is any likely soon to arise, because the mass of workers, to whom elsewhere Socialism addresses itself, is mainly composed of black people, and no white would dream of collectivism for the benefit of blacks. Thus the whole group of labour questions, which bulks so largely in modern industrial States, is practically absent, and replaced by a different set of class questions, to be presently mentioned.
There is no regularly organized Protectionist party, nor is the protection of native industry a "live issue" of the first magnitude.
The farmers and ranchmen of Cape Colony no doubt desire to have custom duties on food-stuffs that will help them to keep up prices, and they have got such duties. But the scale is not very high, and as direct taxation is difficult to raise in a new country with a scattered population, the existing tariff, which averages twelve and a half per cent, ad valorem (but is further raised by special rates on certain articles), may be defended as needed, at least to a large extent, for the purposes of revenue. Natal had a lower tariff, and has been more favourable in principle to free trade doctrine, but she has very recently (1898) entered the S. African Customs Union, therewith adopting a higher tariff. Manufactures have been so sparingly developed in both Colonies that neither employers nor workmen have begun to call for high duties against foreign goods. Here, therefore, is another field of policy, important in North America and Australia, which has given rise to comparatively little controversy in South Africa.
As there is no established church, and nearly all the people are Protestants, there are no ecclesiastical questions, nor is the progress of education let and hindered by the claims of sects to have their respective creeds taught at the expense of the State.
Neither are there any land questions, such as those which have arisen in Australia, for there has been land enough for those who want to have it, while few agricultural immigrants arrive to increase the demand. Moreover, though the landed estates are large, their owners are not rich, and excite no envy by their possession of a profitable monopoly. If any controversy regarding natural resources arises, it will probably turn on the taxation of minerals. Some have suggested that the State should appropriate to itself a substantial share of the profits made out of the diamond and other mines, and the fact that most of those profits are sent home to shareholders in Europe might be expected to make the suggestion popular. Nevertheless, the idea has not, so far, "caught on," to use a familiar expression, partly, perhaps, because Cape Colony, drawing sufficent income from its tariff and its railways, has not found it necessary to hunt for other sources of revenue.
Lastly, there are no constitutional questions. The suffrage is so wide as to admit nearly all the whites, and there is, of course, no desire to go lower and admit more blacks. The machinery of government is deemed satisfactory; at any rate, one hears of no proposals to change it, and, as will be seen presently, there is not in either Colony a wish to alter the relations now subsisting between it and the mother country.
The reader may suppose that if all these grounds of controversy, familiar to Europe, and some of them now unhappily familiar to the new democracies also, are absent, South Africa enjoys the political tranquillity of a country where there are no factions, and the only question is how to find the men best able to promote that economic development which all unite in desiring. This is by no means the case. In South Africa the part filled elsewhere by constitutional questions, and industrial questions and ecclesiastical questions, and currency questions, is filled by race questions and colour questions. Colour questions have been discussed in a previous chapter. They turn not, as in the Southern States of America, upon the political rights of the black man (for on this subject the ruling whites are in both Colonies unanimous), but upon land rights and the regulation of native labour. They are not at this moment actual and pungent issues, but they are in the background of every one's mind, and the attitude of each man to them goes far to determine his political sympathies. One cannot say that there exist pro-native or anti-native parties, but the Dutch are by tradition more disposed than the English to treat the native severely, and, as they express it, keep him in his place. Many Englishmen share the Dutch feeling, yet it is always by Englishmen that the advocacy of the native case is undertaken. In Natal both races are equally anti-Indian.
The race question among the whites, that is to say the rivalry of Dutch and English, would raise no practical issue were Cape Colony an island in the ocean, for there is complete political and social equality between the two stocks, and the material interests of the Dutch farmer are the same as those of his English neighbour. It is the existence of a contiguous foreign State, the South African Republic, that sharpens Dutch feeling. The Boers who remained in Cape Colony and in Natal have always retained their sentiment of kinship with those who went out in the Great Trek of 1836, or who moved northward from Natal into the Transvaal after the annexation of Natal in 1842. Many of them are connected by family ties with the inhabitants of the two Republics, and are proud of the achievements of their kinsfolk against Dingaan and Mosilikatze, and of the courage displayed at Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill against the British. They resent keenly any attempt to trench upon the independence of the Transvaal, while most of the English do not conceal their wish to bring that State into a South African Confederation, if possible under the British flag. The ministries and legislatures of the two British Colonies, it need hardly be said, have no official relations with the two Dutch Republics, because, according to the constitution of the British empire, such relations, like all other foreign relations, belong to the Crown, and the Crown is advised by the British Cabinet at home. In South Africa the Crown is represented for the purpose of these relations by the High Commissioner, who is not responsible in any way to the colonial legislatures, and is not even bound to consult the colonial cabinet, for his functions as High Commissioner for South Africa are deemed to be distinct from those which he has as Governor of Cape Colony. Matters relating to the two Republics and their relation to the Colonies are, accordingly, outside the sphere of action of the colonial legislatures, which have, in strict theory, no right to pass resolutions regarding them. In point of fact, however, the Cape Assembly frequently does debate, and pass resolutions on, these matters; nor is this practice disapproved, for, as the sentiments of the Colony are, or ought to be, an important factor in determining the action of the home Government, it is well that the British Cabinet and the High Commissioner should possess such a means of gauging those sentiments. The same thing happens with regard to any other question between Britain and a foreign Power which may affect the two Colonies. Questions with Germany or Portugal, questions as to the acquisition of territory in South Central Africa, would also be discussed in the colonial Legislatures, just as those of Australia some years ago complained warmly of the action of France in the New Hebrides. And thus it comes to pass that though the Governments and Legislatures of the Colonies have in strictness nothing to do with foreign policy, foreign policy has had much to do with the formation of parties at the Cape.
Now as to the parties themselves. Hitherto I have spoken of Natal and the Cape together, because their conditions are generally similar, though the Dutch element is far stronger in the latter than in the former. In what follows I speak of the Cape only, for political parties have not had time to grow up in Natal, where responsible government dates from 1893. In the earlier days of the Cape Legislature parties were not strongly marked, though they tended to coincide with the race distinction between Dutch and English, because the western province was chiefly Dutch, and the eastern chiefly English, and there was a certain rivalry or antagonism between these two main divisions of the country. The Dutch element was, moreover, wholly agricultural and pastoral, the English party mercantile; so when an issue arose between these two interests, it generally corresponded with the division of races. Political organization was chiefly in English hands, because the colonial Dutch had not possessed representative government, whereas the English brought their home habits with them. However, down till 1880 parties remained in an amorphous or fluid condition, being largely affected by the influence of individual leaders; and the Dutch section of the electorate was hardly conscious of its strength. In the end of that year, the rising in the Transvaal, and the War of Independence which followed, powerfully stimulated Dutch feeling, and led to the formation of the Africander Bond, a league or association appealing nominally to African, but practically to African-Dutch patriotism. It was not anti-English in the sense of hostility to the British connection, any more than was the French party in Lower Canada at the same time, but it was based not only on the solidarity of the Dutch race over all South Africa, but also on the doctrine that Africanders must think of Africa first, and see that the country was governed in accordance with local sentiment, rather than on British lines or with a view to British interests. Being Dutch, the Bond became naturally the rural or agricultural and pastoral party, and therewith inclined to a protective tariff and to stringent legislation in native matters. Such anti-English tint as this association originally wore tended to fade when the Transvaal troubles receded into the distance, and when it was perceived that the British Government became more and more disposed to leave the Colony to manage its own affairs. And this was still more the case after the rise to power of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who, while receiving the support of the Bond and the Dutch party generally, was known to be also a strong Imperialist, eager to extend the range of British power over the continent. At the same time, the attachment of the colonial Dutch to the Transvaal cooled down under the unfriendly policy of that Republic, whose government imposed heavy import duties on their food-stuffs, and denied to their youth the opportunities of obtaining posts in the public service of the Republic, preferring to fetch Dutch-speaking men from Holland, when it could have had plenty of capable people from the Cape who spoke the tongue and knew the ways of the country. Thus the embers of Dutch and English antagonism seemed to be growing cold when they were suddenly fanned again into a flame by the fresh Transvaal troubles of December, 1895, which caused the resignation of Mr. Rhodes, and the severance from him of his Dutch supporters. Too little time has elapsed since those events to make it possible to predict how parties may reshape themselves, nor is it any part of my plan to deal with current politics. In 1897 feeling still ran high, but it had not destroyed the previously friendly social relations of the races, and there was then reason to hope that within a few months or years mutual confidence would be restored.
So far as I could ascertain, both local government and central government are in the two Colonies, as well as in the Orange Free State, pure and honest. The judiciary is above all suspicion, and includes several distinguished men. The civil service is managed on English principles, there being no elective offices; and nothing resembling what is called the "caucus system" seems to have grown up. There are in the Cape Legislature some few members supposed to be "low-toned" and open to influence by the prospect of material gain, but, though I heard of occasional jobbing, I heard of little or nothing amounting to corruption. Elections were said to be free from bribery, but as they had seldom excited keen interest, this point of superiority to most countries need not be ascribed to moral causes.
Reviewing the course of Cape politics during the thirty years of responsible government, that course appears smooth when compared with the parallel current of events in the Australian Colonies. There have been few constitutional crises, and no exciting struggles over purely domestic issues. This is due not merely to the absence of certain causes of strife, but also to the temper of the people, and their thin dispersion over a vast territory. In large town populations excitement grows by the sympathy of numbers, but South Africa has only five or six towns in which a public meeting of even three hundred citizens could be gathered. The Dutch are tardy, cautious and reserved. The doggedness of their ancestors who resisted Philip II. of Spain lives in them still. They have a slow tenacious intensity, like that of a forest fire, which smoulders long among the prostrate trunks before it bursts into flame. But they are, except when deeply stirred, conservative and slow to move. They dislike change so much as to be unwilling to change their representatives or their ministers. A Cape statesman told me that the Dutch members of the Assembly would often say to him: "We think you wrong in this instance, and we are going to vote against you, but we don't want to turn you out; stay on in office as before." So President Kruger observed to me, in commenting on the frequent changes of government in England: "When we have found an ox who makes a good leader of the team, we keep him there, instead of shifting the cattle about in the hope of finding a better one;" and in saying this he expressed the feelings and habits of his race. To an Englishman the Dutch seem to want that interest in politics for the sake of politics which marks not only the English (and still more the Irish) at home but also the English stock in North America and Australia. But this very fact makes them all the more fierce and stubborn when some issue arises which stirs their inmost mind, and it is a fact to be remembered by those who have to govern them. The things they care most about are their religion, their race ascendency over the blacks, and their Dutch-African nationality as represented by their kinsfolk in the two Republics. The first of these has never been tampered with; the two latter have been at the bottom of all the serious difficulties that have arisen between them and the English. That which was in 1897 exciting them and forming the crucial issue in Cape politics was the strained condition of things which existed in the Transvaal. I propose in the following chapter to explain how that condition came about, and to sketch its salient features.
The agitation at Johannesburg, which Dr. Jameson's expedition turned into a rising, took place in December, 1895. I spent some time in Pretoria and Johannesburg in the preceding month, and had good opportunities of observing the symptoms of political excitement and gauging the tendencies at work which were so soon to break out and fix the eyes of the world upon the Witwatersrand. The situation was a singular one, without parallel in history; and though I did not know that the catastrophe was so near at hand, it was easy to see that a conflict must come and would prove momentous to South Africa. Of this situation as it presented itself to a spectator who had no personal interest involved, and had the advantage of hearing both sides, I propose to speak in the present chapter.
To comprehend the position of the Transvaal Boers one must know something of their history. From the brief sketch of it given in earlier chapters (Chapters XI and XII) the reader will have gathered how unlike they are to any European people or to the people of the United States. Severed from Europe and its influences two hundred years ago, they have, in some of the elements of modern civilisation, gone back rather than forward. They were in 1885, when the Rand goldfields were discovered, and many of them are to-day, a half-nomad race, pasturing their flocks and herds over the vast spaces of what is still a wilderness, and migrating in their waggons from the higher to the lower pastures according to the season of the year—
Living in the open air, and mostly in the saddle, they are strangely ignorant and old fashioned in all their ideas. They have no literature and very few newspapers. Their religion is the Dutch and Huguenot Calvinism of the seventeenth century, rigid and stern, hostile to all new light, imbued with the spirit of the Old Testament rather than of the New. They dislike and despise the Kafirs, whom they have regarded as Israel may have regarded Amalek, and whom they have treated with equal severity. They hate the English also,[78] who are to them the hereditary enemies that conquered them at the Cape; that drove them out into the wilderness in 1836; that annexed their Republic in 1877, and thereafter broke the promises of self-government made at the time of the annexation; that stopped their expansion on the west by occupying Bechuanaland, and on the north by occupying Matabililand and Mashonaland; and that were still, as they believed, plotting to find some pretext for overthrowing their independence.[79] This hatred is mingled with a contempt for those whom they defeated at Laing's Nek and Majuba Hill, and with a fear born of the sense that the English are their superiors in knowledge, in activity, and in statecraft. It is always hard for a nation to see the good qualities of its rivals and the strong points of its opponents' case; but with the Boers the difficulty is all the greater because they know little or nothing of the modern world and of international politics. Two centuries of solitary pastoral life have not only given them an aversion for commerce, for industrial pursuits, and for finance, but an absolute incapacity for such occupations, so that when gold was discovered in their country, they did not even attempt to work it,[80] but were content to sell, usually for a price far below its value, the land where the gold-reefs lay, and move off with the proceeds to resume elsewhere their pastoral life. They have the virtues appropriate to a simple society. They are brave, good-natured, hospitable, faithful to one another, generally pure in their domestic life, seldom touched by avarice or ambition. But the corruption of their Legislature shows that it is rather to the absence of temptation than to any superior strength of moral principle that these merits have been due. For politics they have little taste or gift. Politics can flourish only where people are massed together, and the Boer is a solitary being who meets his fellows solely for the purposes of religion or some festive gathering. Yet ignorant and slow-witted as they are, inborn ability and resolution are not wanting. They have indeed a double measure of wariness and wiliness in their intercourse with strangers, because their habitual suspicion makes them seek in craft the defence for their ignorance of affairs; while their native doggedness is confirmed by their belief in the continued guidance and protection of that Providence whose hand led them through the wilderness and gave them the victory over all their enemies.
This was the people into whose territory there came, after 1884, a sudden swarm of gold-seekers. The Uitlanders, as these strangers are called (the word is not really Dutch, one is told, but an adaptation from the German), who by 1890 had come to equal and soon thereafter exceeded the whole number of the Boers, belonged to many stocks. The natives of England, the Cape, and Natal were the most numerous, but there were also many English-speaking men from other regions, including Australians and Americans, as well as a smaller number of Germans and Scandinavians, some Russians (mostly Jews) and a few Italians and Frenchmen. Unlike as these newcomers were to one another, they were all still more unlike the rude hunting and pastoral people among whom they came. They were miners, traders, financiers, engineers, keen, nimble-minded men, all more or less skilled in their respective crafts, all bent on gain, and most of them with that sense of irresponsibility and fondness for temporary pleasure which a chanceful and uncertain life, far from home, and relieved from the fear of public opinion, tends to produce. Except some of the men from the two Colonies, they could not speak the Boer Taal, and had no means of communication, any more than they had social or moral affinities, with the folk of the land. There were therefore no beginnings of any assimilation between them and the latter. They did not affect the Boers, except with a sense of repulsion, and still less did the Boers affect them. Moreover, there were few occasions for social intercourse. The Uitlanders settled only along the Witwatersrand, and were aggregated chiefly in Johannesburg. The Boers who had lived on the Rand, except a few who came daily into the towns with their waggons to sell milk and vegetables, retired from it. It was only in Pretoria and in a few of the villages that there was any direct social contact between the two elements.
Although less than half of the immigrants came from England, probably five-sixths spoke English and felt themselves drawn together not only by language, but by community of ideas and habits. The Australians, the Americans, and the men from Cape Colony and Natal considered themselves for all practical—I do not say for all political—purposes to be English, and English became the general spoken tongue not only of Johannesburg, but of the mining districts generally. Hearing nothing but English spoken, seeing nothing all round them that was not far more English than Dutch, though English with a half-colonial, half-American tinge, it was natural that the bulk of the Uitlanders should deem themselves to be in a country which had become virtually English, and should see something unreasonable or even grotesque in the control of a small body of persons whom they deemed in every way their inferiors. However, before I describe their sentiments and their schemes, some account must be given of the government under which they lived.
As was explained in a previous chapter (Chapter XII) the South African Republic was formed by the union, between 1858 and 1862, of several small and theretofore practically independent republican communities. Its constitution was set forth in a document called the Grondwet,[81] or "Fundamental Law," enacted in 1858 and partly based on a prior draft of 1855. It is a very crude, and indeed rude, instrument, occasionally obscure, and containing much matter not fit for a constitution. It breathes, however, a thoroughly free spirit, save as regards Kafirs and Roman Catholics, recognizing the people as a source of power, laying down the old distinction between the three departments of government,—legislative, executive, and judicial,—and guaranteeing some of the primordial rights of the citizen. By it the government was vested in a President, head of the executive, and elected for five years, an Executive Council of five members (three elected and two ex officio), and a Legislature called the Volksraad, elected by the citizens on a very extended suffrage, and declared to be the supreme power in the State. The Volksraad consists of one chamber, in which there are at present twenty-four members. The President has the right of speaking, though not of voting, in it, but has no veto on its action. Though there are few constitutions anywhere which give such unlimited power to the Legislature, the course of events—oft-recurring troubles of all sorts, native wars, internal dissensions, financial pressure, questions with the British Government—have made the President practically more important than the Legislature, and, in fact, the main force in the Republic. The Executive Council has exerted little power and commanded little deference, while the Volksraad has usually been guided by the President and has never taken the direction of affairs out of his hands. Both legislation and administration have been carried on in a rough-and-ready fashion, sometimes in violation of the strict letter of the law. In particular the provision of the Grondwet, that no statute should be enacted without being submitted for a period of three months to the people, has been practically ignored by the enactment as laws of a large number of resolutions on matters not really urgent, although the Grondwet permits this to be done only in cases which do not admit of delay. This has, however, been rectified by a law passed subsequently to 1895, altering the provision of the Grondwet.
In 1881, when the Republic recovered its independence, there were neither roads, railways, nor telegraphs in the country. Its towns were rough hamlets planted round a little church. Its people had only the bare necessaries of life. The taxes produced scarcely any revenue. The treasury was empty, and the Government continued to be hard-pressed for money and unable to construct public works or otherwise improve the country till 1885, when the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand began to turn a stream of gold into its coffers. Riches brought new difficulties and new temptations. Immigrants rushed in,—capitalists, miners, and traders. As the produce of the gold-field increased, it became plain that they would come in ever increasing numbers. The old Boers took alarm. The rush could hardly have been stopped, and to stop it would have involved a check in the expansion of the revenue. It was accordingly determined to maintain the political status quo by excluding these newcomers from political rights. The Grondwet declares (Article VI.) that "the territory is open for every foreigner who obeys the laws of the Republic," and as late as 1881 an immigrant could acquire the electoral franchise after a residence of two years. In 1882, however, this period was raised to five years, and in 1887 to fifteen. In 1890, by which time the unenfranchised strangers had begun to agitate for the right to be represented, a nominal concession was made by the creation of a new chamber, called the Second Volksraad, for membership in which a newcomer might be eligible after taking an oath of allegiance followed by four years' residence, the right to vote at elections to this chamber being attainable after the oath and two years' residence. This Second Raad, however, is limited to the consideration of certain specified subjects, not including taxation, and its acts can be overruled by the First Volksraad, while its assent is not required to the acts of that body. It has therefore turned out little better than a sham, having, in fact, been created only as a tub to throw to the Uitlander whale. The effect of the legislation of 1890 and subsequent years down to 1894 (legislation too intricate and confused to be set forth in detail here) has been to debar any immigrant from acquiring the right to vote for the First Volksraad until he has passed the age of forty and resided for at least twelve years in the country after taking the oath and being placed on the local government lists, lists on which the local authorities are said to be nowise careful to place him. Nor does birth in the Republic confer citizenship, unless the father has taken the oath of allegiance. President Kruger, who has held office since 1881, was chiefly instrumental in passing these laws, for his force of character, long experience of affairs, and services in the crisis of 1877-81 gave him immense power over the Raad, in which he constantly spoke, threatening the members with the loss of national independence unless they took steps to stem the rising tide of foreign influence. As a patriot, he feared the English; as a Boer Puritan of the old stubborn stock, he hated all foreigners and foreign ways, seeing in them the ruin of the ancient customs of his people. He carried this antagonism so far that, being unable to find among his citizens men sufficiently educated to deal with the growing mass of administrative work which the increase of wealth, industry, and commerce brought, he refused to appoint Dutch-speaking men from the Cape or Natal, because they were natives of British Colonies, and recruited his civil service from Holland. The Hollanders he imported were far more strange to the country than Cape Dutchmen would have been, and the Boers did not, and do not now, take kindly to them. But they were, by the necessity of their position, anti-English, and that was enough.
Meanwhile the old Boer virtues were giving way under new temptations. The Volksraad (as is believed all over South Africa) became corrupt, though of course there have always been pure and upright men among its members. The civil service was not above suspicion. Rich men and powerful corporations surrounded those who had concessions to give or the means of influencing legislation, whether directly or indirectly. The very inexperience of the Boer ranchman who came up as a member of the Volksraad made him an easy prey. All sorts of abuses sprang up, while the primary duties of a government were very imperfectly performed. Hardly any administration was needed while the Transvaal had a population of wandering stock-farmers. But when one hundred thousand white immigrants were congregated along the Witwatersrand, and were employing some fifty thousand native workpeople, an efficient police, an abundant water-supply, good sanitary regulations, and laws to keep liquor from the natives became urgently needed; and none of these things was provided, although taxation continued to rise and the treasury was overflowing. Accordingly, the discontent of the Uitlanders increased. It was no longer a mere question of obtaining political rights for their own sake, it was also a question of winning political power in order to reform the administration, and so secure those practical benefits which the President and the Volksraad and the Hollander officials were either unable or unwilling to give. In 1892 an association, called the National Union, was formed by a number of Uitlanders, "to obtain, by all constitutional means, equal rights for all citizens of the Republic, and the redress of all grievances." Although nearly all those who formed it were natives either of England or of the British Colonies, it did not seek to bring the country under British control, but included among its aims "the maintenance of the independence of the Republic." Nevertheless, it incurred the hostility of the President and his friends, and its petitions were unceremoniously repulsed. This tended to accentuate the anti-Boer feeling of the Uitlanders, so that when Sir H. Loch, the High Commissioner, came up from the Cape in 1894 to negotiate regarding Swaziland and other pending questions, he was made the object of a vehement demonstration at Pretoria. The English took the horses out of his carriage and drew it through the streets, waving the British flag even over the head of President Kruger himself, and shouting "Reform! reform!" This incident redoubled Mr. Kruger's apprehensions, but did not shake his purpose. It suggested new plans to the Uitlanders, who had (shortly before) been further incensed by the demand of the Government that they should, although debarred from the suffrage, serve in a military commando sent against the Kafir chief Malaboch. Despairing of constitutional agitation, they began to provide themselves with arms and to talk of a general rising. Another cause, which I have not yet mentioned, had recently sharpened their eagerness for reforms. About 1892 the theory was propounded that the gold-bearing reefs might be worked not only near the surface, but also at much greater depths, and that, owing to the diminution of the angle of the dip as the beds descend into the earth, a much greater mass of gold-bearing rock might be reached than had been formerly deemed possible. This view, soon confirmed by experimental borings, promised a far longer life to the mines than had been previously expected. Those who had come to the Rand thinking they might probably leave it after a few years now conceived the idea of permanent residence, while the directors of the great mining companies, perceiving how much their industry might be developed, smarted more than ever under the maladministration and exactions from which the industry suffered.
These were the events and these the causes that had brought about the state of things which a visitor saw at Pretoria and Johannesburg in November, 1895. Revolution was already in the air, but few could guess what form it would take. The situation was a complicated one, because each of the two main sections of the population, Boers and Uitlanders, was itself subdivided into minor groups. The Uitlanders were of many nationalities; but those who spoke English were so much the most numerous that I shall speak of them only, dismissing the remainder with the remark that while many of them sympathized with the Reform movement, few of them gave it active support, while most of the Germans, moved by anti-British feeling, favoured President Kruger's Government.
The English section, including Cape and Natal men, Australians and Americans, consisted of three sets of persons: the middle classes, the capitalist mine-owners, and the working men. The middle class people, traders, professional men, engineers, and the like, either belonged to or were in sympathy with the National Union. It was they who had formed it. They had recently presented to the Volksraad a petition, signed by thirty-eight thousand non-enfranchised residents, asking for reforms, and this petition had been scornfully rejected, one member saying, with no disapproval from his colleagues, that if the strangers wanted to get what they called their rights they would have to fight for them. Their agitation had been conducted publicly and on constitutional lines, without threats of force. It was becoming plain, however, in 1895, that some at least of the leaders were now prepared to use force and would take arms whenever a prospect of success appeared. But under what flag would they fight? Would they adhere to their original idea, and maintain an independent South African Republic when they had ejected the dominant oligarchy and secured political power for all residents? Or would they hoist the Union Jack and carry the country back under the British Crown? No one could speak positively, but most thought that the former course would be taken. The Americans would be for it. Most of the Cape people who came of Dutch stock would be for it. Even among the pure English, some talked bitterly of Majuba Hill, and declared they would not fight to give the country back to Britain which had abandoned it in 1881.
The motives of these Reformers were simple and patent. Those of them who had been born and lived long in Africa thought it an intolerable wrong that, whereas everywhere else in South Africa they could acquire the suffrage and the means of influencing the government after two or three years' residence, they were in the Transvaal condemned to a long disability, and denied all voice in applying the taxes which they paid. Thinking of South Africa as practically one country, they complained that here, and here only, were they treated as aliens and inferiors. Both they and all the other Uitlanders had substantial grievances to redress. Food was inordinately dear, because a high tariff had been imposed on imports. Water-supply, police, sanitation, were all neglected. Not only was Dutch the official language, but in the public schools Dutch was then the only medium of instruction; and English children were compelled to learn arithmetic, geography, and history out of Dutch text-books. It was these abuses, rather than any wish to bring the Transvaal under the British flag, or even to establish a South African Confederation, that disposed them to revolt against a Government which they despised.
The mine-owning capitalists were a very small class, but powerful by their wealth, their intelligence, and their influence over those whom they employed. They had held aloof from the agitation which began in 1892, because they did not themselves care for the franchise, not meaning to spend their lives in the Transvaal, and because they knew that political disturbances would interfere with the mining industry. The leading man, and certainly one of the ablest men among them,[82] foresaw trouble as far back as June, 1894, when he wrote that the unrest of the country came "from the open hostility of the Government to the Uitlanders, and its hostility to all principles of sound Government; the end will be revolution;" and a few weeks later wrote again: "The mining companies ought to have arms. The courage of the Boers is exaggerated. If they knew there were in Johannesburg three thousand well-armed men, they would not talk so loud of destroying the town." Nevertheless, these capitalists, like capitalists all over the world, disliked force, and long refused to throw themselves into the movement. They raised a fund for the purpose of trying "to get a better Volksraad"—whether by influencing members or by supplying funds for election expenses has never been made clear. However, these efforts failed, and they became at last convinced that the loss of their industry from misgovernment was, and would continue, greater than any loss which temporary disturbances might involve. The vista of deep-level mining, which had now opened itself before them, made their grievances seem heavier. Before they entered on a new series of enterprises, which would at first be costly, they wished to relieve mining from the intolerable burdens of a dynamite monopoly, foolishly or corruptly granted to a firm which charged an extortionate price for this necessity; of a high tariff both on food-stuffs, involving large expenses in feeding the workpeople, and on mine machinery; of extravagantly heavy railway rates for coal; and of a system which, by making it easy for the Kafir workers to get drunk, reduced the available amount of native labour by one-third, and increased the number of accidents in the mines. These burdens made the difference of one or two or three per cent, on the dividend in the best mines, threatened the prospect of any dividend on the second best, and made it useless to persevere with the working of a third class, where the ore was of a still lower grade. Such were the considerations which at last determined several of the leading mine-owners to throw in their lot with the Reform party; and the fusion of the two streams gave a new force to the movement. This fusion took place in the middle of 1895, and had become known to many, though not to all, of the Johannesburgers in November of that year. It inspired them with fresh hopes, and made them think that the day of action was near. The object of these capitalists was to obtain better government, not the extinction of the Republic, or its addition to the territories of Britain. This, however, was not the main object of Mr. Rhodes (then prime minister of Cape Colony and managing director of the British South Africa Company), with whom they were (though the fact was known only to a very few of the leaders) by this time in communication. Although he was largely interested in some of the mines, his aim was, as even his opponents have now admitted, not a pecuniary one. It was (as is generally believed) to prevent the Transvaal from passing under anti-British influences, and to secure that it should ultimately become incorporated in a confederation of the several States and Colonies of South Africa under the British Crown. There were probably others among the leaders who shared this purpose; but some did not, and here was a question which would seem to have divided the chiefs as it divided the rank and file. A rising there was to be. But under what flag? This vital point was left unsettled, and at the last moment it caused a fatal delay.
The third class of Uitlanders consisted of the white workmen. It was the most numerous class, and its action would evidently be decisive. When the visitor who heard the situation discussed—for there was no secrecy observed—asked about the attitude of the working men, he received no very definite answer. The general belief was that they would respond to a call to arms; some from patriotism, because most of them were Englishmen and Australians; some because they meant to make the Transvaal their home, and had an interest in good government; some from sympathy with their employers; some from the love of a fight, because they were men of mettle. One or two of the Reform leaders were able speakers, and meant to rouse them by eloquence when the proper moment arrived. The result showed that a majority—that is, of the English-speaking workmen—were willing to fight. But when the day of battle seemed to be at hand, many, including most of the Cornish miners, proved to be indifferent, and departed by train amid the jeers of their comrades.
These three sections of Uitlanders constituted a numerical majority not merely of the dwellers on the Rand, but of the whole white population of the country.[83] There are about 65,000 Boers, all told, and about 24,000 male citizens over the age of sixteen. The English-speaking Uitlanders numbered nearly 100,000, of whom fully one-half were adult males. Seven-eighths of these were gathered on the Rand. Had they been armed and drilled and unanimous, they would have been irresistible. But they were not unanimous, and were, moreover, not only unarmed but also unorganized, being a crowd of persons suddenly gathered from the four winds of heaven.
Over against the Uitlanders stood the native Boer population, among whom we must distinguish two classes. The majority, consisting of the old "true blues," who hated the British Government and clung to their national ways, supported the Boer Government in its stubborn refusal to grant reforms. The President in particular had repeatedly declared himself against any concession, insisting that no concessions would satisfy the disaffected. He looked upon the whole movement as a scheme to destroy the independence of the country and hand it over to England. Exercising by his constant harangues in the Volksraad, what has been called a "dictatorship of persuasion", he warned the people that their customs, their freedom, their religion, were at stake, and could be saved only by keeping the newcomers out of power. He was confirmed in this policy of resistance by the advice of his Hollander officials, and especially of the State Secretary, an able and resolute man.
But the President, though powerful, was not omnipotent. There existed a considerable party opposed to him, which had nearly overthrown him at the last preceding presidential election. There was in the Volksraad a liberal minority, which advocated reforms. There were among the country Boers a number of moderate men who disliked the Hollander influence and the maladministration of the Government, and one was told (though with what truth I could not ascertain) that the trekking which went on out of the Transvaal into Mashonaland and to the far north-west was partly due to this discontent. There was also much opposition among the legal profession, Dutch as well as English, for attacks had been made upon the independence of the judiciary, and the reckless conduct of legislation gave displeasure. So far back as 1894 the Chief Justice, a man greatly respected for his abilities and his services to the State, had delivered a public address warning the people against the dangers which threatened them from neglect of the provisions of the constitution. Whether this party of opposition among the enfranchised citizens would have aided the Reform movement was doubtful. They would certainly not have done so had the British flag been raised. But if the movement had sought only the destruction of Hollander influence and the redress of grievances, they would at any rate have refused to join in resisting it.
"Why," it may be asked—"why, under these circumstances, with so many open enemies, and so many wavering supporters, did not President Kruger bow to the storm and avert revolt by reasonable concessions?" He had not a friend in the world except Germany, which had gone out of her way to offer him sympathy. But Germany was distant, and he had no seaport. The people of the Orange Free State had been ready to help the Transvaal in 1881, and from among the Boers of Cape Colony there might in the crisis of that year have come substantial succour. But both the Free State and the Cape Boers had been alienated by the unfriendly attitude of the President in commercial matters and by his refusal to employ Cape Dutchmen in the Transvaal service. The annoyance of these kindred communities had been very recently accentuated by a dispute about the drifts (i.e., fords where waggons cross) on the Orange River. It was therefore improbable that any help could be obtained from outside against a purely internal movement, which aimed solely at reform, and did not threaten the life of the Republic.
The answer to the question just put is to be found not so much in the material interests as in the sentiments of the old Boer party. They extended their hatred of the English, or rather perhaps of the British Government, to the English-speaking Uitlanders generally, and saw in the whole movement nothing but an English plot. If the President had cared to distinguish, he might have perceived that the capitalists cared, not for the franchise, but for the success of their mines; and he might, by abolishing the wasteful concessions,—which did not even enrich the State, but only the objects of its ill-directed bounty,—by reducing the tariff, and by keeping drink from the blacks, have disarmed the hostility of the mine owners, and have had only the National Union to deal with. Even the National Union would have lost most of its support if he had reformed the administration and allowed English to be used in the schools. He might have taken a hint from the Romans, who, when they admitted a large body of new citizens, managed to restrict their voting power, and might, in granting the suffrage to those who had resided for a certain period on the Rand, have kept the representation of the Rand district so small that it could not turn the balance against the old Boer party in the Volksraad. Had he gone further, and extended the franchise to all immigrants after, say, five years' residence, he might not only have disarmed opposition, but have made the South African Republic a powerful State, no considerable section of whose inhabitants would thereafter have thought of putting themselves under the British Crown. To have gone this length would no doubt have been to take the risk that a Republic of Boers might become before long a Republic of Englishmen, with an English President; and from this he naturally recoiled, not merely out of personal ambition, but out of honest national feeling. But short of this, he might, by dividing his enemies, have averted a grave peril, from which he was in the end delivered, not by his own strength, but by the mistakes of his antagonists. However, he kept the ship steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool, dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and strong because he is in sympathy with them; adding to his trust in Providence no small measure of worldly craft; uneducated, but able to foil the statesmen of Europe at their own weapons, and perhaps all the more capable because his training has been wholly that of an eventful life and not of books.
This was how things stood in the Transvaal in November, 1895. People have talked of a conspiracy, but never before was there, except on the stage,[84] so open a conspiracy. Two-thirds of the action—there was another third, which has only subsequently become known—went on before the public. The visitor had hardly installed himself in an hotel at Pretoria before people began to tell him that an insurrection was imminent, that arms were being imported, that Maxim guns were hidden, and would be shown to him if he cared to see them, an invitation which he did not feel called on to accept. In Johannesburg little else was talked of, not in dark corners, but at the club where everybody lunches, and between the acts at the play. There was something humorous in hearing the English who dominate in so many other places, talking of themselves as a downtrodden nationality, and the Boers as their oppressors, declaring that misgovernment could not be endured for ever, and that those who would be free themselves must strike the blow. The effect was increased by the delightful unconsciousness of the English that similar language is used in Ireland to denounce Saxon tyranny. The knowledge that an insurrection was impending was not confined to the Transvaal. All over South Africa one heard the same story; all over South Africa men waited for news from Johannesburg, though few expected the explosion to come so soon. One thing alone was not even guessed at. In November it did not seem to have crossed any one's mind that the British South Africa Company would have any hand in the matter. Had it been supposed that it was concerned, much of the sympathy which the movement received would have vanished.
As I am not writing a history of the revolution, but merely describing the Johannesburg aspects of its initial stage, I need not attempt the task—for which, indeed, no sufficient materials have as yet been given to the world—of explaining by what steps and on what terms the Company's managing director and its administrator and its police came into the plan. But it seems probable that the Johannesburg leaders did not begin to count upon help from the Company's force before the middle of 1895 at earliest, and that they did not regard that force as anything more than an ultimate resource in case of extreme need. Knowing that the great body of the Uitlanders, on whose support they counted, would be unorganised and leaderless, they desired, as the moment for action approached, to have a military nucleus round which their raw levies might gather, in case the Boers seemed likely to press them hard. But this was an afterthought. When the movement began it was a purely Johannesburg movement, and it was intended to bear that character to the end, and to avoid all appearance of being an English irruption.[85]