CHAPTER IX

THE GROWTH OF DISCONTENT

To a dispassionate observer, indeed, there was every reason why April 12th, 1877, should have been the beginning of a new and prosperous era for the Transvaal, as a portion of the English dominion at the Cape. The troubles of the Outlanders would then have had no existence, and the history of the gold-fields of the Kaap and the Rand would have been at least as peaceful as that of the diamond mines of Griqualand West. But it was not to be. The hereditary distaste of the descendants of the emigrant Boers for any settled government, and especially for English government, afforded a hot-bed for the seeds of discontent which were artfully sown, from the earliest days of the annexation, by the demagogues who have always thronged the Transvaal. But the chief credit of the brief and tragic end of the English attempt to control the destinies of

the Transvaal must, unfortunately, be laid at the door of the English authorities themselves.

Of the presence of mischievous demagogues in the Transvaal there can be no doubt. All the authorities, from whose conflicting stories one has painfully to disentangle history, agree upon this, though they do not all agree in the motives that they assign to them. A Boer historian declares that the annexation had been "invited by an active discontented party, chiefly foreigners, dwellers in towns, non-producers, place-hunters, deserters, refugees, land speculators, 'developmentmen,' and pests of Transvaal society generally, who openly preached resistance to the law, refusal to pay taxes, and contempt of the natural and guaranteed owners of the country in which they lived, in the distinctly and often expressed hope that foreign intervention would fill the country with British gold and conduce to their own material prosperity." It is amusing to remember that, according to President Burgers, the leader of this "party of discontent" was Mr. Krüger, that modern embodiment of pious respect for the law and constitution.

Thus there can be little doubt that the Boers in

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1878, led away in part by their dislike of "foreigners," in part by their rooted prejudice, as country folk, against people who lived, like most of the English, in towns, took as low a view of the English party as they profess to take of the leaders of the Outlanders in Johannesburg to-day. Mr. Burgers, amongst his other projects, had imported a number of foreigners to aid in the executive work of the Government, some of whom were really excellent men, whilst others were of as low a type as the Amsterdam bookseller to whom reference has already been made. Thus, when the Republic collapsed, there was not a single man in high office who was a native or a genuine Boer of the Transvaal. The true Boers had resented this so strongly that they were doubly opposed to the rule of "outlanders" of any kind.

On the other hand, the English attributed equally bad motives to many of the leaders in the Boer struggle for independence. Amongst the genuine Boers there was a section of "hotheaded, violent fellows, who used every endeavour to excite the people to deeds of violence against the British... Krüger, Joubert, Pretorius, and

the moderate men required all the authority they possessed to counteract the influence of this section, which was composed of the most bumptious, bragging, swaggering, bullying crew that could be found in the Transvaal." It is to the Boers of this class that almost all the ill-feeling that has existed for twenty years between England and the Transvaal State is to be attributed. They furnished the expeditions of the filibusters, of whom we shall soon hear; they shot the wounded "redcoats"; they did their best to bring discredit on the Boer name.

But the Outlanders were not all on the side of the English. The Boer writer who has been already quoted, Mr. Aylward, was a firebrand of dubious nationality. If Sir Bartle Frere and the authorities of Scotland Yard are to be believed, he was an Irish Fenian who had turned Queen's Evidence, and so been forced to expatriate himself. Major Le Caron, whose statement may be taken for what it is worth, stated before the Parnell Commission that money was sent by the Irish Secret Societies to help to foster the Transvaal "rebellion." There is nothing unlikely in the story, from what we know of the ways and means

of Irish Secret Societies. Sir Bartle Frere was always convinced of its truth.

That High Commissioner's statement as to the leaders of the Transvaal struggle for independence is worth quoting in this connection.

"The leaders are, with few exceptions," said Sir Bartle Frere in 1879, when he had had many opportunities of making their acquaintance and gauging their character, "men who deserve respect and regard for many valuable and amiable qualities as citizens and subjects. . . The few exceptions are mostly foreign adventurers of various sorts and nations, English, Irish, and Scotch, Jews, Americans, Hollanders, Germans, Belgians, and Portuguese, who, though often well educated and naturally able, are rarely men of high character or disinterested aims. They acquire great influence among the less educated Boers, but foster the tendency to suspicion, which, mixed with extraordinary credulity in many things, is a marked feature in the Boer character, and makes them very difficult to manage by any one who does not possess their entire confidence. They are extremely sensitive to ridicule, and to opprobrious or slanderous imputations, feeling most keenly