Astounding Inequality of Taxation. G'^ 



adjoining coal-fields.^ Millions of tons of macliinerv, 

 of coal, of j^rovisions, of all necessaries of life, liaAc 

 had to be dragged over liimdreds of miles of 

 lii'ound in o-roanino; overladen waa'ii'ons bv ex- 

 liausted, half-starved oxen. In snch a condition 

 of things, one might have thought that the most 

 simj^le and inexjDerienced Government could, at 

 least, have maintained decent highway communi- 

 cation. Yet the ti'acks ai'e the worst in the 

 world, in many places almost im|)assable at the 

 best jDeriod of the year, totally imjjassaljle in the 

 Avet season. A comparatively small expenditure 

 Avould suffice to render traffic possible, and even 

 easy. The loss of life among oxen, the ^vqiw and 

 tear and damage suffered l^y and done to "wheeled 

 AX'hicles on account of these aAvftil and even 

 perilous tracks, the loss sustained by a system of 

 transit too dilatory and tedious for description, 

 must Iju incalculable, and certainly vastly exceeds 

 the amount requisite for the maintenance of 

 proper highways. It is, I believe, the fact that 

 repeated applications lia\'e been made to the 

 President for money to be spent on improving or 

 repairing the roads, but all such a})plications arc 

 vain. The President replies that he has no mone}' 

 to spend on such things as roads, that the 

 tracks which are in existence Avere made by and 

 were jxood enouuli for the forefathers of the Boers, 



Since this was written a railway convention has been con- 

 cluded betAveeu Cape Colany and the Transvaal, under Avhich 

 the railway will be extended to Johannesburg before the close 

 of 1892. 



