and his friends' part in it cost Mr. Rhodes a quarter of a million, first to last; and a good part of the rest of his fortune is locked up in Rhodesia, the future of which, as a factor in Africa, will be the romance or the tragedy of one man's lifework. I demur to that Continental sneer about "unctuous rectitude," but I do sometimes wish that my countrymen, and especially my fellow Liberals, had a little more imagination.

F. EDMUND GARRETT.

LONDON, February, 1897.

The Prelude to a Crisis

AS TOLD BY MR. CHAMBERLAIN

(Extract from the Dispatch of Feb. 4, 1896)

AOR a proper apprehension of the events which have led up to the Crisis, I must go back to the period immediately succeeding the conclusion of the Convention of Pretoria in 1881.

At that period, and for some time afterwards, the population of the South African Republic was comparatively small, and composed almost entirely of burghers and their families. The British element in it was made up of traders, a handful of farmers or landowners, and a small, and not very thriving, body of gold-miners, living chiefly in the neighbourhood of Lydenburg. The revenue was meagre, and hardly sufficient for the barest needs of Government.

About ten years ago the discovery of gold deposits at the De Kaap Fields gave indications of a new state of things, and a little later came the discoveries of gold at the Witwatersrand, which worked a complete revolution in the situation of the Republic, both financial and political. The discovery of the Reefs at the Rand gave rise to the inevitable gold fever, followed by the usual reaction. From such reaction the industry was saved by the foresight and financial courage of certain of the capitalists most interested, and since 1890 the /progress has been uninterrupted and rapid/

Owing to peculiarities of temperament and circumstance, participation in the new industry had no attraction for the

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burgher population. It remained almost entirely in the hands of new-comers, commonly known as Uitlanders," and a sharp line of cleavage was thus created within the Republic-the Uitlanders being chiefly resident in the industrial and mining centres, whilst the burgher population remained absorbed in its pastoral avocations and dispersed widely through the country districts. It is very difficult to arrive at any exact idea of the numbers of these two classes of inhabitants. But I conceive that I am well within the mark in estimating the white population along the Rand at something like 110,000, and it may safely be said that the aliens (the large majority of whom are British subjects) at the present time outnumber the citizens of the Republic.

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The political situation resulting from these conditions is an anomalous one. The new-comers are men who were accustomed to the fullest exercise of political rights. In other communities, where immigration has played an important part in building up the population, it has been the policy of the Legislatures to make liberal provision for admitting all newcomers who are desirous of naturalization, after a comparatively brief period of probation, to the rights and duties of citizenship-a policy which, so far as national interests were concerned, has been fully justified by the event, for experience shows that the naturalized alien soon vies with-if he does not outstrip-the natural-born citizen in the fervour of his patriotism.

In the South African Republic, however, different counsels have prevailed with those who were the depositories of power. More than one law has been enacted, rendering more difficult the requirements imposed on those desiring naturalization, the effect being, so far as I can find, that whereas in 1882 an Uitlander could obtain full rights of citizenship after a residence of five years, he can now never hope to attain those rights in full; and their partial enjoyment is only conceded after a term of probation so prolonged as to amount, for most men, to a practical denial of the claim.

If he omits to obtain any kind of naturalization for himself, his children, though born on the soil, remain aliens like himself.

By this course of legislation the whole political direction of affairs and the whole right of taxation are made the monopoly of what is becoming a decreasing minority of the population, composed almost entirely of men engaged in pastoral and agricultural pursuits; whilst the great majority of all those engaged in the other avocations of civilization-the men, in fact, who have by their exertions in a few years raised the revenues of the country from some £75,000 to an amount which cannot now be less than £2,000,000, and who find eighteen or nineteen twentieths of the total revenue-are denied any voice in the conduct of the most important class of affairs, and have not succeeded in obtaining any redress for what seems a formidable array of grievances which, it is alleged, hamper and injure them at every step of their lives. The feelings of intense irritation which have been aroused by this state of things have not been lessened by the manner in which remonstrances have been met.

Whatever may be the truth as to the occurrences of the first few weeks of 1896, the Uitlander leaders had previously kept within the limits of constitutional agitation, but their success in this direction was not encouraging. It is true that hopes have been held out to them by persons of high position and influence in the South African Republic, and they have at times obtained what they regarded as promises, but these have not been practically fulfilled, and when they have remonstrated they have occasionally been met with jeers and insult—none the less irritating to strangers because, as I hope is a fact, they emanated only from a minority of the ruling class. Thus, in May, 1894, a petition for the extension of the franchise, signed by 13,000 inhabitants, is credibly reported to have been rejected by the Volksraad amid scornful laughter, and in April, 1895, a similar petition, signed by upwards of 32,500 inhabitants, is stated to have met a similar fate-one member