CHAPTER 2.
THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.
There might almost seem to be some subtle connection between the
barrenness and worthlessness of a surface and the value of the
minerals which lie beneath it. The craggy mountains of Western
America, the arid plains of West Australia, the ice-bound gorges of
the Klondyke, and the bare slopes of the Witwatersrand veld--these
are the lids which cover the great treasure chests of the world.
Gold had been known to exist in the Transvaal before, but it was
only in 1886 that it was realised that the deposits which lie some
thirty miles south of the capital are of a very extraordinary and
valuable nature. The proportion of gold in the quartz is not
particularly high, nor are the veins of a remarkable thickness, but
the peculiarity of the Rand mines lies in the fact that throughout
this 'banket' formation the metal is so uniformly distributed that
the enterprise can claim a certainty which is not usually
associated with the industry. It is quarrying rather than mining.
Add to this that the reefs which were originally worked as outcrops
have now been traced to enormous depths, and present the same
features as those at the surface. A conservative estimate of the
value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of
pounds.
Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very
much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept
away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly
opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the
individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which
gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed
the forty-niners in California for all their travels and their
toils. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be
provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical
experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them, these
were the Uitlanders, drawn from all the races under the sun, but
with the Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best engineers were
American, the best miners were Cornish, the best managers were
English, the money to run the mines was largely subscribed in
England. As time went on, however, the German and French interests
became more extensive, until their joint holdings are now probably
as heavy as those of the British. Soon the population of the mining
centres became greater than that of the whole Boer community, and
consisted mainly of men in the prime of life--men, too, of
exceptional intelligence and energy.
The situation was an extraordinary one. I have already attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the Dutch
of New York had trekked west and founded an anti-American and
highly unprogressive State. To carry out the analogy we will now
suppose that that State was California, that the gold of that State
attracted a large inrush of American citizens, who came to
outnumber the original inhabitants, that these citizens were
heavily taxed and badly used, and that they deafened Washington
with their outcry about their injuries. That would be a fair
parallel to the relations between the Transvaal, the Uitlanders,
and the British Government.
That these Uitlanders had very real and pressing grievances no one
could possibly deny. To recount them all would be a formidable
task, for their whole lives were darkened by injustice. There was
not a wrong which had driven the Boer from Cape Colony which he did
not now practise himself upon others--and a wrong may be excusable
in 1885 which is monstrous in 1895. The primitive virtue which had
characterised the farmers broke down in the face of temptation. The
country Boers were little affected, some of them not at all, but
the Pretoria Government became a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and
incompetent to the last degree. Officials and imported Hollanders
handled the stream of gold which came in from the mines, while the
unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the taxation was
fleeced at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts when he
endeavoured to win the franchise by which he might peaceably set
right the wrongs from which he suffered. He was not an unreasonable
person. On the contrary, he was patient to the verge of meekness,
as capital is likely to be when it is surrounded by rifles. But his
situation was intolerable, and after successive attempts at
peaceful agitation, and numerous humble petitions to the Volksraad,
he began at last to realise that he would never obtain redress
unless he could find some way of winning it for himself.
Without attempting to enumerate all the wrongs which embittered the
Uitlanders, the more serious of them may be summed up in this way.
1. That they were heavily taxed and provided about seven-eighths of
the revenue of the country. The revenue of the South African
Republic--which had been 154,000 pounds in 1886, when the gold
fields were opened--had grown in 1899 to four million pounds, and
the country through the industry of the newcomers had changed from
one of the poorest to the richest in the whole world (per head of
population).
2. That in spite of this prosperity which they had brought, they,
the majority of the inhabitants of the country, were left without a
vote, and could by no means influence the disposal of the great
sums which they were providing. Such a case of taxation without
representation has never been known.
3. That they had no voice in the choice or payment of officials.
Men of the worst private character might be placed with complete
authority over valuable interests. Upon one occasion the Minister
of Mines attempted himself to jump a mine, having officially
learned some flaw in its title. The total official salaries had
risen in 1899 to a sum sufficient to pay 40 pounds per head to the
entire male Boer population.
4. That they had no control over education. Mr. John Robinson, the
Director General of the Johannesburg Educational Council, has
reckoned the sum spent on Uitlander schools as 650 pounds out of
63,000 pounds allotted for education, making one shilling and
tenpence per head per annum on Uitlander children, and eight pounds
six shillings per head on Boer children--the Uitlander, as always,
paying seven-eighths of the original sum.
5. No power of municipal government. Watercarts instead of pipes,
filthy buckets instead of drains, a corrupt and violent police, a
high death-rate in what should be a health resort--all this in a
city which they had built themselves.
6. Despotic government in the matter of the press and of the right
of public meeting.
7. Disability from service upon a jury.
8. Continual harassing of the mining interest by vexatious
legislation. Under this head came many grievances, some special to
the mines and some affecting all Uitlanders. The dynamite monopoly,
by which the miners had to pay 600,000 pounds extra per annum in
order to get a worse quality of dynamite; the liquor laws, by which
one-third of the Kaffirs were allowed to be habitually drunk; the
incompetence and extortions of the State-owned railway; the
granting of concessions for numerous articles of ordinary
consumption to individuals, by which high prices were maintained;
the surrounding of Johannesburg by tolls from which the town had no
profit--these were among the economical grievances, some large,
some petty, which ramified through every transaction of life.
And outside and beyond all these definite wrongs imagine to a free
born progressive man, an American or a Briton, the constant
irritation of being absolutely ruled by a body of twenty-five men,
twenty-one of whom had in the case of the Selati Railway Company
been publicly and circumstantially accused of bribery, with full
details of the bribes received, while to their corruption they
added such crass ignorance that they argue in the published reports
of the Volksraad debates that using dynamite bombs to bring down
rain was firing at God, that it is impious to destroy locusts, that
the word 'participate' should not be used because it is not in the
Bible, and that postal pillar boxes are extravagant and effeminate.
Such obiter dicta may be amusing at a distance, but they are less
entertaining when they come from an autocrat who has complete power
over the conditions of your life.
From the fact that they were a community extremely preoccupied by
their own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent
politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the
government of the State for the purpose of making the conditions of
their own industry and of their own daily lives more endurable. How
far there was need of such an interference may be judged by any
fair-minded man who reads the list of their complaints. A
superficial view may recognise the Boers as the champions of
liberty, but a deeper insight must see that they (as represented by
their elected rulers) have in truth stood for all that history has
shown to be odious in the form of exclusiveness and oppression.
Their conception of liberty has been a selfish one, and they have
consistently inflicted upon others far heavier wrongs than those
against which they had themselves rebelled.
As the mines increased in importance and the miners in numbers, it
was found that these political disabilities affected some of that
cosmopolitan crowd far more than others, in proportion to the
amount of freedom to which their home institutions had made them
accustomed. The continental Uitlanders were more patient of that
which was unendurable to the American and the Briton. The
Americans, however, were in so great a minority that it was upon
the British that the brunt of the struggle for freedom fell. Apart
from the fact that the British were more numerous than all the
other Uitlanders combined, there were special reasons why they
should feel their humiliating position more than the members of any
other race. In the first place, many of the British were British
South Africans, who knew that in the neighbouring countries which
gave them birth the most liberal possible institutions had been
given to the kinsmen of these very Boers who were refusing them the
management of their own drains and water supply. And again, every
Briton knew that Great Britain claimed to be the paramount power in
South Africa, and so he felt as if his own land, to which he might
have looked for protection, was conniving at and acquiescing in his
ill treatment. As citizens of the paramount power, it was
peculiarly galling that they should be held in political
subjection. The British, therefore, were the most persistent and
energetic of the agitators.
But it is a poor cause which cannot bear to fairly state and
honestly consider the case of its opponents. The Boers had made, as
has been briefly shown, great efforts to establish a country of
their own. They had travelled far, worked hard, and fought bravely.
After all their efforts they were fated to see an influx of
strangers into their country, some of them men of questionable
character, who outnumbered the original inhabitants. If the
franchise were granted to these, there could be no doubt that
though at first the Boers might control a majority of the votes, it
was only a question of time before the newcomers would dominate the
Raad and elect their own President, who might adopt a policy
abhorrent to the original owners of the land. Were the Boers to
lose by the ballot-box the victory which they had won by their
rifles? Was it fair to expect it? These newcomers came for gold.
They got their gold. Their companies paid a hundred per cent. Was
not that enough to satisfy them? If they did not like the country
why did they not leave it? No one compelled them to stay there. But
if they stayed, let them be thankful that they were tolerated at
all, and not presume to interfere with the laws of those by whose
courtesy they were allowed to enter the country.
That is a fair statement of the Boer position, and at first sight
an impartial man might say that there was a good deal to say for
it; but a closer examination would show that, though it might be
tenable in theory, it is unjust and impossible in practice.
In the present crowded state of the world a policy of Thibet may be
carried out in some obscure corner, but it cannot be done in a
great tract of country which lies right across the main line of
industrial progress. The position is too absolutely artificial. A
handful of people by the right of conquest take possession of an
enormous country over which they are dotted at such intervals that
it is their boast that one farmhouse cannot see the smoke of
another, and yet, though their numbers are so disproportionate to
the area which they cover, they refuse to admit any other people
upon equal terms, but claim to be a privileged class who shall
dominate the newcomers completely. They are outnumbered in their
own land by immigrants who are far more highly educated and
progressive, and yet they hold them down in a way which exists
nowhere else upon earth. What is their right? The right of
conquest. Then the same right may be justly invoked to reverse so
intolerable a situation. This they would themselves acknowledge.
'Come on and fight! Come on!' cried a member of the Volksraad when
the franchise petition of the Uitlanders was presented. 'Protest!
Protest! What is the good of protesting?' said Kruger to Mr. W. Y.
Campbell; 'you have not got the guns, I have.' There was always the
final court of appeal. Judge Creusot and Judge Mauser were always
behind the President.
Again, the argument of the Boers would be more valid had they
received no benefit from these immigrants. If they had ignored them
they might fairly have stated that they did not desire their
presence. But even while they protested they grew rich at the
Uitlander's expense. They could not have it both ways. It would be
consistent to discourage him and not profit by him, or to make him
comfortable and build the State upon his money; but to ill-treat
him and at the same time to grow strong by his taxation must surely
be an injustice.
And again, the whole argument is based upon the narrow racial
supposition that every naturalised citizen not of Boer extraction
must necessarily be unpatriotic. This is not borne out by the
examples of history. The newcomer soon becomes as proud of his
country and as jealous of her liberty as the old. Had President
Kruger given the franchise generously to the Uitlander, his pyramid
would have been firm upon its base and not balanced upon its apex.
It is true that the corrupt oligarchy would have vanished, and the
spirit of a broader more tolerant freedom influenced the counsels
of the State. But the republic would have become stronger and more
permanent, with a population who, if they differed in details, were
united in essentials. Whether such a solution would have been to
the advantage of British interests in South Africa is quite another
question. In more ways than one President Kruger has been a good
friend to the empire.
So much upon the general question of the reason why the Uitlander
should agitate and why the Boer was obdurate. The details of the
long struggle between the seekers for the franchise and the
refusers of it may be quickly sketched, but they cannot be entirely
ignored by any one who desires to understand the inception of that
great contest which was the outcome of the dispute.
At the time of the Convention of Pretoria (1881) the rights of
burghership might be obtained by one year's residence. In 1882 it
was raised to five years, the reasonable limit which obtains both
in Great Britain and in the United States. Had it remained so, it
is safe to say that there would never have been either an Uitlander
question or a great Boer war. Grievances would have been righted
from the inside without external interference.
In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the
franchise was raised so as to be only attainable by those who had
lived fourteen years in the country. The Uitlanders, who were
increasing rapidly in numbers and were suffering from the
formidable list of grievances already enumerated, perceived that
their wrongs were so numerous that it was hopeless to have them set
right seriatim, and that only by obtaining the leverage of the
franchise could they hope to move the heavy burden which weighed
them down. In 1893 a petition of 13,000 Uitlanders, couched in most
respectful terms, was submitted to the Raad, but met with
contemptuous neglect. Undeterred, however, by this failure, the
National Reform Union, an association which organised the
agitation, came back to the attack in 1894. They drew up a petition
which was signed by 35,000 adult male Uitlanders, a greater number
than the total Boer male population of the country. A small liberal
body in the Raad supported this memorial and endeavoured in vain to
obtain some justice for the newcomers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece
of this select band. 'They own half the soil, they pay at least
three quarters of the taxes,' said he. 'They are men who in
capital, energy, and education are at least our equals.
What will become of us or our children on that day when we may find
ourselves in a minority of one in twenty without a single friend
among the other nineteen, among those who will then tell us that
they wished to be brothers, but that we by our own act have made
them strangers to the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal
sentiments were combated by members who asserted that the
signatures could not belong to law-abiding citizens, since they
were actually agitating against the law of the franchise, and
others whose intolerance was expressed by the defiance of the
member already quoted, who challenged the Uitlanders to come out
and fight. The champions of exclusiveness and racial hatred won the
day. The memorial was rejected by sixteen votes to eight, and the
franchise law was, on the initiative of the President, actually
made more stringent than ever, being framed in such a way that
during the fourteen years of probation the applicant should give up
his previous nationality, so that for that period he would really
belong to no country at all. No hopes were held out that any
possible attitude upon the part of the Uitlanders would soften the
determination of the President and his burghers. One who
remonstrated was led outside the State buildings by the President,
who pointed up at the national flag. 'You see that flag?' said he.
'If I grant the franchise, I may as well pull it down.' His
animosity against the immigrants was bitter. 'Burghers, friends,
thieves, murderers, newcomers, and others,' is the conciliatory
opening of one of his public addresses. Though Johannesburg is only
thirty-two miles from Pretoria, and though the State of which he
was the head depended for its revenue upon the gold fields, he paid
it only three visits in nine years.
This settled animosity was deplorable, but not unnatural. A man
imbued with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book
save the one which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected
to have learned the historical lessons of the advantages which a
State reaps from a liberal policy. To him it was as if the
Ammonites and Moabites had demanded admission into the twelve
tribes. He mistook an agitation against the exclusive policy of the
State for one against the existence of the State itself. A wide
franchise would have made his republic firm-based and permanent. It
was a small minority of the Uitlanders who had any desire to come
into the British system. They were a cosmopolitan crowd, only
united by the bond of a common injustice. But when every other
method had failed, and their petition for the rights of freemen had
been flung back at them, it was natural that their eyes should turn
to that flag which waved to the north, the west, and the south of
them--the flag which means purity of government with equal rights
and equal duties for all men. Constitutional agitation was laid
aside, arms were smuggled in, and everything prepared for an
organised rising.
The events which followed at the beginning of 1896 have been so
thrashed out that there is, perhaps, nothing left to tell--except
the truth. So far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their
action was most natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to
exculpate themselves for rising against such oppression as no men
of our race have ever been submitted to. Had they trusted only to
themselves and the justice of their cause, their moral and even
their material position would have been infinitely stronger. But
unfortunately there were forces behind them which were more
questionable, the nature and extent of which have never yet, in
spite of two commissions of investigation, been properly revealed.
That there should have been any attempt at misleading inquiry, or
suppressing documents in order to shelter individuals, is
deplorable, for the impression left--I believe an entirely false
one--must be that the British Government connived at an expedition
which was as immoral as it was disastrous.
It had been arranged that the town was to rise upon a certain
night, that Pretoria should be attacked, the fort seized, and the
rifles and ammunition used to arm the Uitlanders. It was a feasible
device, though it must seem to us, who have had such an experience
of the military virtues of the burghers, a very desperate one. But
it is conceivable that the rebels might have held Johannesburg
until the universal sympathy which their cause excited throughout
South Africa would have caused Great Britain to intervene.
Unfortunately they had complicated matters by asking for outside
help. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was Premier of the Cape, a man of immense
energy, and one who had rendered great services to the empire. The
motives of his action are obscure--certainly, we may say that they
were not sordid, for he has always been a man whose thoughts were
large and whose habits were simple. But whatever they may have
been--whether an ill-regulated desire to consolidate South Africa
under British rule, or a burning sympathy with the Uitlanders in
their fight against injustice--it is certain that he allowed his
lieutenant, Dr. Jameson, to assemble the mounted police of the
Chartered Company, of which Rhodes was founder and director, for
the purpose of co-operating with the rebels at Johannesburg.
Moreover, when the revolt at Johannesburg was postponed, on account
of a disagreement as to which flag they were to rise under, it
appears that Jameson (with or without the orders of Rhodes) forced
the hand of the conspirators by invading the country with a force
absurdly inadequate to the work which he had taken in hand. Five
hundred policemen and three field guns made up the forlorn hope who
started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal border upon
December 29th, 1895. On January 2nd they were surrounded by the
Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many
of their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent
horses, they were compelled to lay down their arms. Six burghers
lost their lives in the skirmish.
The Uitlanders have been severely criticised for not having sent
out a force to help Jameson in his difficulties, but it is
impossible to see how they could have acted in any other manner.
They had done all they could to prevent Jameson coming to their
relief, and now it was rather unreasonable to suppose that they
should relieve their reliever. Indeed, they had an entirely
exaggerated idea of the strength of the force which he was
bringing, and received the news of his capture with incredulity.
When it became confirmed they rose, but in a halfhearted fashion
which was not due to want of courage, but to the difficulties of
their position. On the one hand, the British Government disowned
Jameson entirely, and did all it could to discourage the rising; on
the other, the President had the raiders in his keeping at
Pretoria, and let it be understood that their fate depended upon
the behaviour of the Uitlanders. They were led to believe that
Jameson would be shot unless they laid down their arms, though, as
a matter of fact, Jameson and his people had surrendered upon a
promise of quarter. So skillfully did Kruger use his hostages that
he succeeded, with the help of the British Commissioner, in getting
the thousands of excited Johannesburgers to lay down their arms
without bloodshed. Completely out-manoeuvred by the astute old
President, the leaders of the reform movement used all their
influence in the direction of peace, thinking that a general
amnesty would follow; but the moment that they and their people
were helpless the detectives and armed burghers occupied the town,
and sixty of their number were hurried to Pretoria Gaol.
To the raiders themselves the President behaved with great
generosity. Perhaps he could not find it in his heart to be harsh
to the men who had managed to put him in the right and won for him
the sympathy of the world. His own illiberal and oppressive
treatment of the newcomers was forgotten in the face of this
illegal inroad of filibusters. The true issues were so obscured by
this intrusion that it has taken years to clear them, and perhaps
they will never be wholly cleared. It was forgotten that it was the
bad government of the country which was the real cause of the
unfortunate raid. From then onwards the government might grow worse
and worse, but it was always possible to point to the raid as
justifying everything. Were the Uitlanders to have the franchise?
How could they expect it after the raid? Would Britain object to
the enormous importation of arms and obvious preparations for war?
They were only precautions against a second raid. For years the
raid stood in the way, not only of all progress, but of all
remonstrance. Through an action over which they had no control, and
which they had done their best to prevent, the British Government
was left with a bad case and a weakened moral authority.
The raiders were sent home, where the rank and file were very
properly released, and the chief officers were condemned to terms
of imprisonment which certainly did not err upon the side of
severity. Cecil Rhodes was left unpunished, he retained his place
in the Privy Council, and his Chartered Company continued to have a
corporate existence. This was illogical and inconclusive. As Kruger
said, 'It is not the dog which should be beaten, but the man who
set him on to me.' Public opinion--in spite of, or on account of, a
crowd of witnesses--was ill informed upon the exact bearings of the
question, and it was obvious that as Dutch sentiment at the Cape
appeared already to be thoroughly hostile to us, it would be
dangerous to alienate the British Africanders also by making a
martyr of their favourite leader. But whatever arguments may be
founded upon expediency, it is clear that the Boers bitterly
resented, and with justice, the immunity of Rhodes.
In the meantime, both President Kruger and his burghers had shown a
greater severity to the political prisoners from Johannesburg than
to the armed followers of Jameson. The nationality of these
prisoners is interesting and suggestive. There were twenty-three
Englishmen, sixteen South Africans, nine Scotchmen, six Americans,
two Welshmen, one Irishman, one Australian, one Hollander, one
Bavarian, one Canadian, one Swiss, and one Turk. The prisoners were
arrested in January, but the trial did not take place until the end
of April. All were found guilty of high treason. Mr. Lionel
Phillips, Colonel Rhodes (brother of Mr. Cecil Rhodes), George
Farrar, and Mr. Hammond, the American engineer, were condemned to
death, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to the payment of
an enormous fine. The other prisoners were condemned to two years'
imprisonment, with a fine of 2000 pounds each. The imprisonment was
of the most arduous and trying sort, and was embittered by the
harshness of the gaoler, Du Plessis. One of the unfortunate men cut
his throat, and several fell seriously ill, the diet and the
sanitary conditions being equally unhealthy. At last at the end of
May all the prisoners but six were released. Four of the six soon
followed, two stalwarts, Sampson and Davies, refusing to sign any
petition and remaining in prison until they were set free in 1897.
Altogether the Transvaal Government received in fines from the
reform prisoners the enormous sum of 212,000 pounds. A certain
comic relief was immediately afterwards given to so grave an
episode by the presentation of a bill to Great Britain for 1,677,
938 pounds 3 shillings and 3 pence--the greater part of which was
under the heading of moral and intellectual damage.
The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes
which produced them both remained. It is hardly conceivable that a
statesman who loved his country would have refrained from making
some effort to remove a state of things which had already caused
such grave dangers, and which must obviously become more serious
with every year that passed. But Paul Kruger had hardened his
heart, and was not to be moved. The grievances of the Uitlanders
became heavier than ever. The one power in the land to which they
had been able to appeal for some sort of redress amid their
grievances was the law courts. Now it was decreed that the courts
should be dependent on the Volksraad. The Chief Justice protested
against such a degradation of his high office, and he was dismissed
in consequence without a pension. The judge who had condemned the
reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the protection of a
fixed law was withdrawn from the Uitlanders.
A commission appointed by the State was sent to examine into the
condition of the mining industry and the grievances from which the
newcomers suffered. The chairman was Mr. Schalk Burger, one of the
most liberal of the Boers, and the proceedings were thorough and
impartial. The result was a report which amply vindicated the
reformers, and suggested remedies which would have gone a long way
towards satisfying the Uitlanders. With such enlightened
legislation their motives for seeking the franchise would have been
less pressing. But the President and his Raad would have none of
the recommendations of the commission. The rugged old autocrat
declared that Schalk Burger was a traitor to his country for having
signed such a document, and a new reactionary committee was chosen
to report upon the report. Words and papers were the only outcome
of the affair. No amelioration came to the newcomers. But at least
they had again put their case publicly upon record, and it had been
endorsed by the most respected of the burghers. Gradually in the
press of the English-speaking countries the raid was ceasing to
obscure the issue. More and more clearly it was coming out that no
permanent settlement was possible where the majority of the
population was oppressed by the minority. They had tried peaceful
means and failed. They had tried warlike means and failed. What was
there left for them to do? Their own country, the paramount power
of South Africa, had never helped them. Perhaps if it were directly
appealed to it might do so. It could not, if only for the sake of
its own imperial prestige, leave its children for ever in a state
of subjection. The Uitlanders determined upon a petition to the
Queen, and in doing so they brought their grievances out of the
limits of a local controversy into the broader field of
international politics. Great Britain must either protect them or
acknowledge that their protection was beyond her power. A direct
petition to the Queen praying for protection was signed in April
1899 by twenty-one thousand Uitlanders. From that time events moved
inevitably towards the one end. Sometimes the surface was troubled
and sometimes smooth, but the stream always ran swiftly and the
roar of the fall sounded ever louder in the ears.
