The following are instances of a different kind of corruption in the Transvaal administration. The country is fortunate in possessing a good system of land transfer by means of registration in official books. Fees have, of course, to be paid; but it is the commonest practice to pay £5 or more to the official clerks, so as to get the registration without paying the fees. A similar occurrence took place when a gentleman took titledeeds for registration to Pretoria, and, on presenting them, was told by the officials that their length would prevent their immediate registration, probably for six months. The matter was to him urgent, and, after slipping a bank-note into the leaves of the documents, he asked the officials to do him the favour to peruse them again. This resort to the custom of the country settled the matter promptly. A smart new policeman, who had not been "squared," endeavoured to put the drink law (which forbids the sale of intoxicating liquors to natives) into opera

tion against an offending favourite of the powers that be. According to the wellknown method of detection, he sent a native with marked coins to buy a bottle of whiskey at the misdemeanant's store, and duly found that the coins were in his drawer, and examined and roughly sealed the bottle of whiskey which had been sold to the native. On the summons being heard the magistrate asked for the coins, which were produced, and for the bottle of whiskey, and an identical sealed whiskey bottle was handed to him. When, however, he required the bottle to be opened, it was found to contain only ginger-beer. Of course there was no proof that the court officials had been bribed to change it, or that the native had not been sold ginger-beer in a whiskey bottle.

I can only pretend that pretend that I have tried to ascertain the accuracy of these rumours and allegations as fully as circumstances allow. Not to have recorded them would have been to ignore the un

CORRUPTION IS TENACIOUS

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questionable truth that they are samples of very many of their kind which exist. Politicians used to argue that the Transvaal Government, with its incompetence and degeneracy, would come to a natural end in favour of a cleaner administration, as any government based on ignorance and prejudice must do; but this fallacy cannot be maintained. Nowadays rebellions are out of the question; barricades can be put up, but the government has all the armed means of suppressing insurrection: the uitlanders were unarmed. Some philanthropic howls were to be heard in England that magnanimity enough was not being shown to the Boers, but it is hard to see what magnanimity is to be shown to a bull which is charging you, unless it consists in letting yourself be tossed.

E

CHAPTER IV.

TRANSVAAL ASPIRATIONS

HREE main roads towards a peace

TH

ful South African federation have been referred to :* customs union, railway development, and equal political rights; and the charge has been made that the Pretorian Government had always proved the standing obstacle to their realization. Any statesman could see that the introduction of these reforms would tend to promote better understanding, and allay the restlessness of South Africa. Yet England might put them forward with the most seductive smile, and in the most winning guise, and she was always met by the reply of non possumus from the Transvaal and non possumus always carried

* Page 17, end of Chapter I.

NOT A CUSTOMS UNION

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the Transvaal through. "England," said President Kruger to me, as he grimly laughed at his own joke, "is like a man who has been wooing the Transvaal for years, and then when she refuses him he threatens to murder her." It is now Mr. Kruger who has turned round and made the threat by declaring war, and England has, for the present, been obliged to forego further attempts at conciliation and progress.

Certainly there was nothing intrinsically impossible in a customs union between a British colony and a republic, for the customs union between the Cape Colony and the Orange Free State was established in 1889, and was worked with such harmony and success as to cause Natal to join in 1898. The Transvaal, however, always kept studiously aloof. It wished to be the leader of the chain, not merely a link in its composition. It wanted to be the Prussia of the German Empire. Even assuming that the Transvaal admitted the value of a customs union, if it