CHAPTER VII. 

 THE SIEGE OF MARABASTADT. 



THE Boers of the Transvaal had sent two deputations to 

 England representing the grievance under which they 

 suffered by the violation of the Sand River treaty and 

 the annexation of their country. Our rule had conferred 

 numerous benefits upon them. Land had gone up in 

 value. Security prevailed. Capital was coming into 

 the country. The insubordinate native tribes within 

 the Transvaal territory had been reduced to subjection, 

 and the power of the Zulu country had been for ever 

 broken. 



Notwithstanding all these benefits, the Boers of the 

 Transvaal, with a reprehensible perversity of spirit in- 

 herited from their Calvinistic ancestors, actually preferred 

 freedom with its drawbacks, to the blessings of our rule 

 with its advantages ; and they had the audacity to inform 

 us that unless their representations were listened to they 

 would positively make war upon us, and strive to incul- 

 cate by the use of carnal weapons those views which 

 they had failed to successfully communicate to us by an 

 appeal to intelligence and sense of fairplay. 



They went further. They held that the great mass of 

 the people of England were more honest than those who 

 governed them, and that, whether defeated or successful, 

 the spectacle of a people sacrificing their all in the 

 defence of their liberties would arouse in England such a 



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