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tion of a tax to which they are opposed, and that the Chartered Company wants to get all the commercial benefit of their 50 per cent. mining claim while it shifts its deficits, which may some day take the form of a kind of national funded debt, upon the shoulders of the taxpayers. Further, it is said, the Chartered Company is largely responsible for the expenses to Rhodesia arising directly and indirectly out of the crime of the Jameson raid, and shareholders, not Rhodesian taxpayers, ought to pay them; though a bystander might inquire whether taxpayers do not usually pay for the mistakes of governments, and why innocent shareholders should be preferred as victims to innocent taxpayers. There is no need to express an opinion on the merits of the question, which is quite an internal one. To impugn the system of administration by a chartered company is intelligible, but it would probably be found that administration by imperial government was the more expensive of the two. Possibly the

TAXATION PROBLEMS

109

Transvaal war may hasten the time when the Chartered Company, like the Royal Niger Company, is bought out, and there will then be much good work to be valued, as the worth of Rhodesia becomes better understood.

CHAPTER VII.

THE FUTURE

N the day hostilities commenced and

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the Boers overstepped the British frontier, President Kruger telegraphed to sympathisers with the Transvaal in New York (of whom he had not many) to say "that the republics are determined, if they must belong to Great Britain, that the price to be paid will be such as to stagger humanity." Such was the announcement in Reuter's telegrams. It could not but cause a shudder. To think that this came from the head of a government which boasted itself to be civilized! It was the

boast of a savage. Who but a savage

could have made such a remark? Who but a Boer could have shown such obstinacy? The message creates another ground why

STAGGERING HUMANITY

III

such a ruler should be speedily removed. And yet this very ruler is the man who always quotes Scripture to serve political exigency.*

The more Sir Alfred Milner's statesmanship as High Commissioner through the very difficult negotiations which preceded the war is examined, the more does it come out how clearly he foresaw the impossibility of a peaceful solution, either so long as Great Britain demanded the same rights for uitlanders as Dutchmen enjoyed in Cape Colony, or so long as President Kruger and his advisers held the reins of government in the Transvaal.

* A good example of this occurred at the Bloemfontein Conference (May 31st, 1899). In reply to Sir Alfred Milner President Kruger said, "One point which I think His Excellency is not acquainted with is this, that I have put all the interests of the strangers into the Second Volksraad. I do not want to have any discussion on it; I only say that is the point. They can vote for the Second Raad after two years and after naturalization, while after two years more they can themselves be elected to that body. Moreover, it is wholly against God's Word to let strangers carry on the administration, seeing that they cannot serve two masters at the same time." (Blue Book Bloemfontein Conference. C.—9404, p. 40.)

Mr. Chamberlain, like Sir Alfred, became reluctantly aware that circumstances were forcing on but one conclusion in the interests of the country and our fellowcitizens, and neither Mr. Chamberlain nor Sir Alfred Milner shrank from it. The war is a just war, to compel Dutch burghers to give others the common rights of justice which they have always claimed for themselves, and the equable independence of English colonies throughout the world is the most hopeful omen for the future of South Africa. The large measures of self-government which our colonies possess are the secret of the spirit of life and reality which breathes through our Empire-which makes it so prosperous; and it is with no thought of hostility or revenge that the wish may be expressed that the population of the Boer republics may some day share and appreciate the blessings which Greater Britain enjoys.

It is most significant that all our independent colonies, with the sole ex

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