Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care, I hope my party will not forget that here I express my feelings and I trust the feelings of those who have accompanied me in our fancy trip round Ireland; and before I say good-bye, let me from poetry come to the more practical things of life, and ask the tourist in Ireland to note this: that I trust those who visit Ireland will, if they have cause of complaint, not write to the Public Press. The Irish Tourist Association will take notice of complaints, and they will be remedied as far as possible. A letter to the Secretary of the Irish Tourist Association, Leinster House, Dublin, will be acknowledged and dealt with at the next Council Meeting by the before-mentioned gentlemen. F. W. Crossley, Esq., 24 Nassau Street, Dublin, can also be communicated with. Letters to the press I feel and know are a great means of letting off steam when one has been badly treated at an inn either in respect of high prices, bad attendance, or dirty apartments; but as a rule these letters do not have the desired effect. The Irish Tourist Association will put the matter before the Irish Hotel and Restaurant Keepers Association, and it will then be remedied. Both these bodies are respected and carry weight in Ireland. Being myself a VicePresident of the Tourist Association and very often presiding at our Council Meetings during the winter, such complaints would have my earnest consideration. Farewell, and safe home to you all. MAYO. Р VOL. XLII-No. 246 FROM INSIDE JOHANNESBURG A NARRATIVE OF FACTS MORE than eighteen months have now elapsed since the memorable 29th of December, 1895, when Dr. Jameson crossed the Rubicon with his little band; and although quantities of books and an immense number of articles have been written, as well as masses of evidence adduced upon what is generally known as the 'Jameson Raid,' it is questionable whether the majority of persons have a clear conception of what actually took place. The object of this article is to put in as concise a form as possible the causes which rendered such an event possible, and the considerations which led the various persons connected with this political tragedy to act as they did. In the last number of this Review, a contributor who took an active part has given expression to his conception of the facts, which makes it imperative for me, as Chairman of the Reform Committee, to present the Johannesburg view thereof. It is of paramount importance to appreciate that the Jameson Raid' was merely an episode, and a very unfortunate one, in a large question. In August 1881, after a war disastrous to the British arms, the Pretoria Convention was signed, subsequently amended, and modified by the London Convention of 1884. The object of these instruments was briefly to safeguard the interests of Her Majesty's subjects and those of natives in the Transvaal, leaving the internal administration of the country in the hands of the Boers, who constituted at that time the bulk of the white inhabitants. The discovery of gold gave the first impetus to European immigration, and the development of the mining industry caused an enormous influx of foreigners as well as the investment of a large amount of European capital. In 1895, the Uitlander population had grown much larger than that of the Boers; and the State revenue, to which they contributed nine-tenths, was twenty times as large as it had been prior to their advent. They were, however, denied the smallest direct representation in the councils of the State or in the expenditure of the funds which they were called upon to provide. A constitutional agitation had for some years been carried on with a view to securing political rights, but without practical or prospective result. Indeed, the whole tendency of legislation was to debar them for ever from the common rights of citizenship. The most important representative Uitlander institution was the Chamber of Mines. It comprised delegates from all the principal mining companies and mine-owners, and the writer presided over its deliberations for four years. Apart from being a statistical bureau, the Chamber of Mines formed a link between the mining population and the Government, and interested itself particularly in opposing new monopolies which fortune-hunters sought to obtain, and investigating the manner in which the then existing concessions were being carried out. As the head of that institution, I was in frequent touch with President Kruger and his Executive, and accompanied numbers of deputations to Pretoria upon matters of business. I learnt in the course of those interviews that in the first place the Government was incapable, and in the second place that it evinced a spirit of hostility towards the newcomers. To sum up the situation, the Government saw that the increasing prosperity of the gold-mining industry meant the attraction of more foreigners and the greatest danger to exclusive Boer rule. I cannot pretend to deal exhaustively with the sentimental and the commercial grievances within the narrow limits of this article; but in order to appreciate the problem it is necessary to realise that about fifteen years ago the Transvaal was only a pastoral country, in the hands of probably the most ignorant white population in the world. There were of course a few exceptions to whom this sweeping assertion does not apply. In 1886 I remember crossing the Witwatersrandt on my road to Barberton, whither I had been directed to look at the then budding mining district. The famous Rand of to-day comprised a bleak and almost uninhabited stretch of plains, upon which at intervals of ten or twelve miles the Boer lived in a wretched hovel, sustaining life by means of a few head of cattle and some sheep, which had to be removed to the more genial low country during the boisterous and inclement winter. The average value of a farm of 6,000 acres was about 2001. I describe this to show that it is neither surprising nor to the discredit of the Boers that, living as they did in a wild and cheerless country upon the outskirts of civilisation, in constant touch with savages, and with an occasional visit to a distant neighbour of the same calibre as the only form of society, they should be a primitive, rough, and ignorant people. They had many hardships and trials to overcome, and eked out a mere existence without any market for produce as an incentive to activity. In fighting savages and wild beasts, and in struggling through unknown territories, having to traverse swamps and rivers, with little but a waggon and a gun as appliances, these people learned patience, but at the same time were educated to a life of extreme idleness. A traveller at that time could always rely upon kindly treatment and hospitality, such as it was, at their hands. Imagine a crude and slothful population of this order as the sovereign people suddenly brought face to face with a bright cosmopolitan population such as that which flocked to the gold fields. In all old and civilised communities, events march very slowly: the reverse applies to new countries. From 1887 the gold-mining industry expanded by leaps and bounds. Those who are not witnesses of the almost magic growth cannot appreciate the feverish activity, the inventive capacity, and the habit of rapid decision which such a condition of life rears. The whole atmosphere is foreign to Boer traditions and manner of thought, which are obstinately opposed to progress. The ordinary omnivorous reader has a totally erroneous conception of the great gold-mining industry, and of the people who have built it. Thousands of otherwise not ill-informed people imagine that gold-mining is a species of satanic trade evolved for the purpose of robbing the unwary. I do not for one moment defend the many infamous projects that have been launched upon the world by unscrupulous persons, but I am not quite sure, from a moral standpoint, whether those who gamble in shares about which they know nothing, in the hope of planting them upon others who can be induced to give more, are not just as guilty as the wily promoter. It is only a question of degree, the voracious design being the same. Leaving this aspect aside, however, you have an enormous legitimate business in the production of gold, somewhat similar, but of course on a smaller scale, to that of coal-mining in Great Britain. A strong, capable, and honest government is required to cope with and resist many insidious temptations offered by schemers and adventurers seeking on all sides and in devious ways to fleece such an industry. This in a nutshell is the respect in which the Transvaal Government failed. One always looked with a tender eye as long as their errors could be attributed to slowness of thought and ignorance, but when it became obvious that the industry was being hampered by design, when, for instance, President Kruger stood up in the Raad and besought the members not to proclaim as a mining area the Pretoria townlands, on the ground that another population similar to that of Johannesburg might arise, and that a police force to manage them could not be found, the Uitlanders' patience became severely tried. The bolstering up of indefensible monopolies in favour of foreign concessionaires-principally German-at the cost of the mineowner, coupled with faulty administration and the absence of that assistance to which a staple industry is entitled at the hands of the Government, and moreover the contemptuous reception accorded to respectful petitions, filled the cup of the Uitlander. The dynamite monopoly is a striking example of Boer incapacity -to use a charitable term. A concession had been granted for the sole manufacture and sale of explosives, at a very high price, prior to the discovery of gold. When dynamite became an article of daily use, the consumers naturally resented the cost, which far exceeded that at which it could be procured by direct importation. Finally the then concessionaire. was proved to be importing dynamite under the title of guhr imprégné at an enormous profit to himself, but in direct violation of the terms of the concession, which was thereupon cancelled; the President himself declaring that the State was being defrauded. But the concession was revived under the euphemistic title of a State monopoly. The old concessionaire became the agent, and was allowed to form a company of which approximately half of the shares were presented to the former concessionaires for rights (sic) which they had been declared to have forfeited, and for a few tin shanties, styled the factory. This was all done in the teeth of the most violent opposition from the mine-owners; and, to make a long story short, the 200,000 cases of dynamite now consumed per annum cost at least 400,000l. more than they would if the trade were free and importation permitted under an import duty calculated to return to the Treasury quite as large an amount as it derives under the concession to-day. This is done, be it recorded, by a Government one of the members of which has been accused over and over again of receiving a royalty upon every case of dynamite sold-an accusation which has never been denied. The same strictures might be justly applied in regard to the Netherlands Railway Company, by whom coal (to take another glaring illustration) is carried over an average distance of less than twenty miles in a comparatively flat country at the monstrous tariff of threepence per ton per mile. The withholding of assistance in the matter of a native labour supply, bad administration of the Liquor Laws, improper legislation in some cases proposed and in others effected in regard to cyanide, education, bewaarplaatsen, and other questions, with which space does not permit me to deal, all contributed to spread disaffection. Until June 1894, when Sir Henry (now Lord) Loch came to Pretoria, I did not appreciate the extent of the seething discontent. Sir Henry was received with enormous enthusiasm. The crowd unharnessed the horses and dragged the carriage containing himself, |