118 



CAPE COLONY AND SOUTH AFRICA. 



to the franchise, the Government's proposals 

 were referred to representative Uitlanders, who 

 reported that it would be useless to lay them 

 before the Uitlamler population in their present 

 form, for the reasons that they gave no consid- 

 eration to residence already completed; they still 

 required the approval of the application for citi- 

 zenship by two thirds of the burghers of the 

 ward; they demanded that the applicant must 

 forswear his former allegiance; they left him 

 for seven years a citizen of no country, and in 

 danger of having the promised citizenship re- 

 voked by the Volksraad before the time of pro- 

 bation expired: and they made no provision for 

 additional representation of the Rand in the 

 Volksraad. While discussion with the leaders 

 of the mining industry was still proceeding Presi- 

 dent Kriiger voluntarily announced his intention 

 to expropriate the dynamite company, appoint 

 a state financier, sell the bewaarplaatsen, or Gov- 

 ernment mining claims, to owners of adjoining 

 mines, and introduce a bill reducing the period 

 of residence necessary to obtain full burgher 

 rights from fourteen 'to nine years. This pro- 

 posal regarding the franchise was at once char- 

 acterized by Air. Chamberlain in England as 

 being not o'f the slightest value, the rest of the 

 promises as illusory, and President Kriiger was 

 charged with having broken his word before. 

 The President denied having made promises that 

 he had not kept; he had offered to forgive and 

 forget the Jameson affair, but enemies from with- 

 out did their utmost to create fresh unrest w r hen 

 the people on the Rand were satisfied. The Gov- 

 einment had established an English school at 

 Johannesburg, but the British Uitlanders were 

 not satisfied, and subscribed 100,000 to build 

 schools of their own. 



Negotiations between the capitalists and the 

 Boer Government were interrupted when the 

 prospect of conciliation seemed best by a new 

 manoeuvre of the South African League, which 

 circulated a petition addressed to Queen Victoria, 

 to which over 21,000 signatures were obtained. 

 The Boers believed that three quarters of them 

 were spurious, the papers having been signed by 

 visitors at a sporting tournament, by women, 

 children, and Kaffirs, even supplemented with 

 pages of names from old petitions to the Volks- 

 raad. Over 24,000 Uitlanders of Afrikander sym- 

 pathies, including some of the British and Ameri- 

 cans, as well as Dutch, French, and Germans, 

 signed a counter-declaration, expressing satis- 

 faction with the administration of the Transvaal 

 Government, and ascribing the political unrest 

 to the machinations of speculative capitalists. 

 To counteract the effect of this the British party 

 obtained additional signatures to the petition to 

 the Queen, which was handed on March 24 to 

 Conyngham Greene, the British agent in Pre- 

 toria, forwarded by him to Sir Alfred Milner, the 

 High Commissioner, and by him accepted and laid 

 before the British Government, with a covering 

 dispatch in which he described the existing crisis 

 as a popular movement like that of 1895, arising 

 out of the Edgar incident, which inflamed the 

 public rnind against the police and forced the 

 South African League to take action. The po- 

 lice had proved incompetent to deal with the 

 illicit liquor traffic, but were harsh to people 

 whom they dislike, as was evident from their 

 ill treatment of colored people, and their con- 

 duct was a grievance rankling in the breasts of 

 the Uitlanders. None of the grievances com- 

 plained of in 1895 had been remedied, but others 

 had lieon added, notably the lowering of the 

 status of the High Court by the new draft of the 



Cnmdwct, which laid down the principle that 

 any resolution of the Volksraad is equivalent 

 to a law. The political turmoil in the Transvaal 

 would never cease unless the Uitlander popula- 

 tion were admitted to a share in the govern- 

 ment, and while that turmoil lasts no tranquillity 

 or adequate progress is possible in South Africa. 

 The spectacle of thousands of British subjects 

 kept permanently in the position of helots, con- 

 stantly chafing under undoubted grievances, and 

 calling vainly to the British Government for re- 

 dress was undermining the influence and repu- 

 tation of the British Government even in British 

 colonies, where a section of the press preaches 

 openly the doctrine of a republic embracing all 

 South Africa, supporting it by menacing refer- 

 ences to the armaments of the Transvaal, its al- 

 liance w T ith the Orange Free State, and the active 

 sympathy it w r ould receive in case of war from 

 a section of the colonists. Language is fre- 

 quently used which seems to imply that the 

 Dutch have some superior right to their fellow- 

 citizens of British birth. Sir Alfred Milner drew 

 the conclusion that a striking proof of the in- 

 tention of the British Government not to be 

 ousted from its position in South Africa was 

 necessary to put a stop to this propaganda, and 

 that intervention in the Transvaal, though tem- 

 porarily it might aggravate, ultimately would 

 extinguish the race feud. The petition of the 

 21,000 British subjects in the Transvaal set forth 

 that for many years discontent has existed among 

 the Uitlanders, who are mostly British subjects. 

 The Uitlanders possess most of the wealth and 

 intelligence in the country, and they have no 

 voice in its government. In spite of the prom- 

 ises of the Transvaal Government and the peti- 

 tions addressed to the President, there have been 

 no practical reforms. The discontent culminated 

 in the insurrection of 1895. The people then 

 placed themselves in the hands of the High Com- 

 missioner, and President Kriiger promised re- 

 forms. Since then their position has been worse. 

 Legislation has been unfriendly. The petition 

 cites as examples the aliens' immigration act, 

 withdrawn at the instance of the British Gov- 

 ernment; the press law, giving the President 

 arbitrary powers; the aliens' expulsion law, per- 

 mitting the expulsion of British subjects at the 

 will of the President without appeal to the High 

 Court, while burghers can not be expelled, this 

 being contrary to the convention. The munici- 

 pality granted to Johannesburg is ineffective. 

 Half of the councilors are necessarily burghers, 

 though the burghers and Uitlanders number 1,000 

 and 23,000 respectively. The Government re- 

 jected the report of the industrial commission, 

 which was composed of its own officials. The 

 High Court has been reduced to a condition of 

 subservience, the revenues of the country have 

 been diverted for the purpose of building forts 

 at Pretoria and Johannesburg, in order to ter- 

 rorize British subjects; the police are exclusively 

 burghers, ignorant and prejudiced, and are a 

 danger to the community; jurors are necessarily 

 . burghers, and justice is impossible in cases where 

 a racial issue may be involved. 



Mr. Chamberlain's dispatch of May 10, in refer- 

 ence to the Uitlanders' petition, contained a se- 

 vere arraignment of the Transvaal Government, 

 which collected a revenue of 4,000,000, mainly 

 from Uitlanders, to administer a country having 

 a quarter of a million white inhabitants; which, 

 in addition to the dynamite concession, was 

 granting practical monopolies of matches, paper, 

 mineral waters, soap, oil, chocolate, and starch; 

 which in its state system of education endeav- 



