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HomeMy WebLinkAboutExeter Advocate, 1899-11-2, Page 7BIIITAINtS GRENDS. The Boers. Have Broken a Great Keay Promises. And Showed Re Appreciation of Favours Rendered Them.. The dispute which Great Britain now has with the Trautsvaal will probably furnish the historian with ample scope for melancholyroilections on the abuse of the fine art of diplo- znsaoy. Time passes so quickly that the younger generation are not in touch with the peculiar chain of events which has marked the checker- ed fortune of the South African Re- public, and hence it is not always possible for all to rightly interpret causes at issue whose origin is very involved and, indeed, often obscure. Only a few facts before 1880 need be noted by those who would study the fountain head of our grievances—the Boer exodus from British ruled terri- tory at the Cape in 1835—the estab- lishment, after muoh fighting with the natives, of a Volksraad, or peo- ple's parliament,. "across the Vaal" iii 1849—the recognition by Britain of Boer self-government under certain deigned conditions expressed in the Said River Convention of 1852, Twenty-four years later the young republic was bauln'upt in everything, owing, principally, to internal strife, t to political znismauageznent and to national poverty, or, ratherreluotance to pay taxes, nal independence above mentionea, stipulated for all inhabitants of the Transvaal full liberty to reside in the State, to possess houses, etc,. and to carry on, commerce, etc., and further guaranteed that they should be unfet- tered by special taxation and exempt from legislation hostile to the conven- tion. It was during the discussion prelim- inary to the signing of this conven- tion that M. Kruger promised "equal privileges" to new comers, adding that there might be some slight differ- ence in the case of a "young" person (N. B., in residence, not in age) just coming into the country. Scarcely had the convention been signed when opposition to its terms was manifested. This grew in mag- nitude, and in 1884 Mr. Kruger suc- ceeded in inducing Mr. Gladstone's government to modify the original terms. 011anges were wade in the articles of the convention of 1881, and an explanatory preamble was em- bodied in the new convention, but the original preamble "conferring com- plete self-government, subject to Brit ish suzerainty," was not repealed, obviously because, had this been the case with respeot to the suzerainty, it would otherwise have been. the same with respeot to the self-government.. Still the Boers obtained much; the British, resident became merely au agent or consul; we relinquished power to regulate the affairs of the natives; we acoepted a veto on trea- ties, instead of directly conducting the Transvaal's negotiations with for- eign powers; we abandoned the dight 1 o•;.E..reofGr, tipoymowposa , _ %� v.„4:,., -,..,..7,,e,_ . , Ther ( e,...., viiit4 los *k �, r . (\� a �. 1 tars'` VaE T \ ..1 jINC.4.w t� l air C 41,eros \Tit nuts P,s ��t tI°sarina • hiss. 1 eic ,11,02°eSers 'eel vs — wilt*a V �l an f1 fl � %. A, fillet f,. e c >" h : • •'. ! �`".�r- s // •. ;t e r• tt 1. tE Z4 anCli A'� Cuudyr . .h.lils 1 • RIS I i > ;[fine�re � b, i' -%"v\ 'rah Css 1 1,lwo 1. ~`� Sca rt z Ela Woe �•:-- LADY i£ tatcse `•� `� --mc:- J/ .- . dee /, an ,'efPin �iIi, till+ • L : • flak, r . i'H ti ail fly•• • orrhroy . , Fflii,�Ak erw,e dfiat e�11ar '. : 28 Q p .0 40 40 , SO,N,Ie; One year later the Transvaal began hostilities against the Kaffirs under Bekukuni, and so utterly were the campaigns mismanaged and so bar- barous were the methods employed, that Great Britain seeing her neigh- boring Natal interests menaced, pro- • tested, and sent Sir Theophilus Shop - stone on a mission of inquiry to Pre- •toria. This visit now characterized among Boer sympathizers by the delight- 3fully mendacious appellation of "the :Shepstone raid," really came as a pro - Sound relief to a people in utter col- lapse, and when the commissioner de- cided on annexation, only Mr. Paul Kruger, elected vice-president in 1876, was found among the officers of the late republic to oppose the new order •of things. KRUGERS'S FIRST PROTESTS. The country was annexed in April, ,1877 ; then came -protests by Mr. Kru- ger and his sympathizers to the Brit- eish government, as well as two depu- tations to England. They met with {no success, but owing to the advent of the Liberal Ministry to power in Eng- land Mr. Kruger took heart and start- ed a propaganda against the rule of 'the British, who were in the mean- time fighting the battles of the coun- try against the natives—Zulu and Kaffir—whom the inhabitants them- selves dared not subdue. - The move- ment was only too successful; the plotters rose in revolt, and on Decem- ber 16, 1880, seized Heidelberg and proclaimed a government of their sown, under the presidency of Paul Kruger. Small bodies of British troops were everywhere attacked and •a series of small reverses closed with the defeat and death of Sir George !Volley at Majuba Hill in February, 4881. This scared the British government Into hastily signing an armistice, and then a convention, under which, amongother things, complete Boer self-government was ensured under British suzerainty with a British resi- -dent at Pretoria, control over rela- ' tions with foreign powers was reserved, provision was made for the protection hf native interests and the right to owe British troops through the Transvaal time in tr a of war as 8tipnlat- ped for, while, on the other hand, i Great Britain actually ceded territory independent before we annexed the re- publics and conquered the native tribes t.urirg the period of occupation, and, addition over and above the inter - of moving troops through the coun- try. Already the Boers had begun to VIOLATE THE CONVENTION of 1881 by enlarging the time for an alien to become enfranchised from two to five years, but it was not until the gold rush of 1886 that the latter convention began to be exploited for all it was worth—and more. The franchise was gradually made more difficult of acquisition, till at length a new comer was obliged to wait fourteen years—and then he was lucky if he could get a vote, so intri- cate and exacting were the conditions. The gold industry was taxed—or, rather, bled—till mine profits, in mann cases, reached vanishing point. Enormous duties on food stuffs, im- posed to benefit the agricultural Boer, made the cost of living on the Rand swallow up the entire wages of the average white worker ; the liquor law was administered solely in the inter- ests of the sellers of drink, who de- moralized the natives. A monopoly was created in explosives for mining purposes, whereby prices were so swollen as to create a. scandal that even the less fossilized Boers could not support; utter police inefficiency and corruption fostered crime of all kinds and made the place almost more dangerous for the law abider than the criminal. The natives, when once they came under the power of . the Boers, were treated with a barbarity which recalls the worst days of the slave trader, while the Cape boys— mostly half castes—and Indians, both classes British subjects—were har- rassed with a persistence and relent- lessness which were not only utterly condemnable in themselves, but abso- lutely illegal from the point of view of the conventions wherein the word "native"• did not boar the broader construction now placed on it. Monopolies in goods not produced in the country were showered on suppor- ters of the Pretoria ring, and it is common knowledge that most of the Boer legislators have accepted in one form or another enormous bribes. The Uitlander has been taxed, virtu- ally, without any representation and without the least heed of his pro- tests; he was "commandeered" for the native wars which the Boers utterly mismanaged, until the British government put zts foot down, where- upon the Transvaal calmly remarked, "Equal privileges for all; no war, no vete.'!,, IL war tan 'wasthen levied on his property until his government intervened. Dutch was the language of the court, in which 499 out of 500 fre- quenters were English; Dutch was the language of the Volksraad, not English or Dutoh, as at the Cape ; Dutch was the language of the sohools, where nearly every child spoke English, as little time as pos- sible being given to the study of the latter language. Municipal privil- eges at the Rand have been made 1 FARCICAL QUANTITY by adroitly engineering very limited local government. Outrages on persons and property attained positively terrifying propor- tions, and yet nothing was done; the right of public meeting was practi- cally denied; the press was intermit- tenly muzzled; the hygienic condi- tions on the Rand became, in Boer hands, a scandal; the foreigner was oppressed in every possible way, and the more offensive this was the hap- pier was the Boer. Added to all which the Transvaal began to question the convention of 1884, deny the suzerainty, intrigue with foreign powers aria to the teeth, spread unrest 'throughout South Africa and stand alone in the midst of a half hemisphere of progress as an utterly fossilized, reactionary and semi-oivil- ized people. In recent years the movement for redress of grievances grew rapidly,. Somctinies the Transvaal played a bolder game than at others, Four times since 1886 have we been on the brink of war with the Boers. In 1896 the Jameson raid ---a most ill-advised movement on behalf of e thorouguhly righteous cause --cast down the hopes of the oppressed Uitlanders in the Transvaal; the present crisis came to a bead with the brutal murder of the emu Edgn. by the Rand police in December, 1898. Since then the British government h has warmly intervened,mid thong the Boers have retreated more or less hastily, particularly on the franchise question, which now steids at seven years with a pyramid of inevitable "conditions" there is not one single grievance of the above which has been drastically remedied. Some, but not all, arise out of the convention; QSe oh wdo those hi not are likely to find settlement on the broad ground of the protection of British citizens from oppression and wrong. Witco Plain Girls. A lady who had seen much of the world was asked on one occasion why plain girls often get married sooner than handsome girls; to which she re- plied that it was mainly owing to the tact of the plain girls and the vanity and want of tact on the part of the men. "How do you make that out?" asked a gentlman. "The plain girls flatter the men, and so please their vanity, while the handsome ones wait to be flattered by the men, who haven't the tact to do it." It is always safe to risk a little flat- tery. Happy is the wooing That is not long a -doing, says the old couplet, but a modern counselor thinks it necessary to quali- fy the adage by the advice, "Never marry a girl unless you have known her three days and at a pie-nie." In this as in ,other matters it is al- ways desirable to hit the happy me- dium. Marrying in haste is certainly worse than too protracted courtship, though the latter has its dangers, too, for something may occur at any time to break off the affair altogether and prevent what might have been a happy union. A friend of Robert Hall, the famous English preacher, once asked him re- garding a lady of their acquaintance, "Will she make a good wife for me?" "Well," replied Mr. Hall, "I can hardly say. I never lived with her." Here Mr. Hall touched the real test of happiness in married life. It is one thing to see ladies on "dress" occasions, when every effort is being made to please them; it is quite an- other thing to see them amid the varied and often conflicting circum- stances of household life. How Families Die Out. According to the British Genealog- ical Magazine, there appears to be a remarkable tendency on the part of aristocratic families to become ex- tinct. The almost universal rule ap- pears to be that families rise, inter- marry with patrician blood, and in a few generations become extinct or end in au heiress only. For instance, there is no legitimate male descendant of any British Ring who sat on the throne before the reign of George L Of the twenty-five barons who set their hands to Magna Charta, not a single male descendant remains. There is not a single barony by writ now held by a male of the family in which it was originally created. There are only about 300 noble or gentle families now holding the same land in male succession which their male ancestors held even so recently as the reign of King Henry VII. CAS] AGAINST BOIIS� English Preacher -Historian on the • Transvaal Situation. Ills Views Are Heartily Applauded by Great l,ritaiu—Has Nothing Good to Say of Dutch A'rlcans. W. J. Knox Little in his recent work on South Africa shows that the present contention is not a new mat- ter, or one whish has arisen since the discovery of told in the Witwaters- rand. So far from suzerainty being now asserted for the first time, it has never been laid down, end, there is .IV time in the hitsory of the Transvaal that the overlordship of the British crown has not been put forward as the fundamental consideration. The Boers themselves do not date the existence of the Transvaal government from the date of their wholesale immigra- tion in 1836, and the fact remains that President Kruger and all those sur- viving from the older stock were born British subjects and have never bad their allegiance surrendered back to them. In 1838, two years after the grand, trek, the Boers beyond the Vaal were in trouble with the fierce and war- loving Zulus. Sir George Napier, governor of the Cape Colony at that time, assumed that the Boers were British subjects as a matter of course, and sent British troops to bring about a peace, which was soon after affect- ed, At that time the trekkers were in some straits, and had England left them to their fate there would have been no Boer government to -day to toll the tale. The right division of the immigrants under Peter Retief had been mercilessly slaughtered by the great native chief Dingaan at Umkingioo, or the Place of the Skull, and again at Women, or Weeping. The reinforcement under Uys, Maritz and Potgieter were overthrown, soon after near the erossin; of the Buffalo river. There was no doubt about British sovereignty at that time, It was not long after that a British resident was sent to Bloemfontein as au. open expression of government. When, in 1848, the Boers made trouble for this official and shut him up in his own house, Sir Harry Smith acted immediately. With a small but sufficient force from Cape Town he met the trekkers at Booniplatz on August 29, and put them to rout, re- establishing the sovereignty of the Orange Free State. So wall attested are these facts that the Boers do not pretend to be in any way liberated from the allegiance owed to Great Britain until the Saud River Conven- tion in 1852, when Pretorius began the -administration of what ho called the Dutch African Republic, There' were perpetual bickeriugs between Potgieter and Pretorius, and it is hardly to be said even now that there is that maintenance of public order and administration of impartial jus- tice which are the essentials of settled rule. In 1857 the son of the old Pretorius, then acting as president of the repub- lio, invaded the Orange Free State. He retired without firing a shot, how- ever, and in the year 1859 the two countries were united under his lead- ership. From that time on for many years the force of the Boers was used alternately in fighting with Cetewayo, the Zulu king, and in wrangling over doctrinal religions questions at home. "when Pretorius proclaimed the bound- aries of the Transvaal to etxend as far as Lake Ngami he was forced to withdraw his proclamation by the British, but not until the great ex- plorer, Livingstone, whom the Boers hated, had been attacked by them at 1 olsberg, and all he owned in the world put to fire. The British found the country de- fenseless against a powerful foe, with- out money in its treasury or other proper means of preservation. It kept the descendants of the trekkers from the assegais of the Zulus, as it had kept their ancestors from them years before. From that time to this there has been no doubt of the British sov- ereignty, even though Gladstone was prevailed upon to permit them to es- tablish their own government. This is the British contention as set for- ward by Mr. Knox Little. Dr. Talmage Likes Turkey. "I am cosmopolitan in my likes," said the doctor, "because I have trav- elled so much. Therefore pardon me when I say that I want my turkey stuffed with little English oysters and trimmed with French fried potatoes. Each year there is a little wicket fence of the .brown potato strips plac- ed around the turkey, and when he is brought in he looks like a picture in a child's story book. "And can't the poor turkey get out of that fence?" asked my little granddaughter once." • Rhodesia, and British Central Africa. The center of interest in the present junoture is naturally the Transvaal, where there are 850,000 natives and 250,000 whites. The natives are mostly confined to the northern portions of the Republic, the Zoutpansberg, Spei-- euken, and LQtaba districts, and here they live and thrive in their thous- ands. The Witwatersrand Mine labor is largely supplied from these dis- tricts, and the Transvaal government has its. native Commissioners scatter- ed .throughout the country, There is not very muoh ohanoe of any serious danger to the Transvaal from the natives within its borders. Small sporadic. uprisings might take place among the late Magato's men, and the tribes under M'pefu, but, gen- erally speaking, the Transvaal natives are too down -trodden, bullied, and cowed to offer armed interference.. On the other hand, the Swazis eon- stituto A SERIOUS. MENACE, !2 NATIVES TO ONE WHITE. inasmuch as they bitterly resented the handing over of their country to Boer authorities, and have over and over again pleaded for direct British control, The Swazis are an offshot of the Zulus, and a valiant figbtingrace, If they attack the Boers or cone over the Transvaal border, it will be a ser- ious and not easily 'veiled affair. In the Cape of Colony there are 1,600,000 natives and 400,000 whites. Between these two, it must be re- membered, there are several thousands of Malays and "Cape Boys," the late ter of whom are practically half- castes and the former to all inteuts and purposes whites. The Malay`s form an integral, reliable, and consid- erable portion of the population of Cape Town and its suburbs. They are all Mahommedans, and have their II hadues r own mosq es and hdna o priests. Most law abiding, thrifty, andbanest, they snake excellent and desirable eft- ileus. They are, moreover, among the most legal. of Her Majesty's sub- jects, In Basutoland, which lies on the borders of the Omega Free State, , there are 250,000 natives and barely 000 whites. The natives are excellent agriculturists, and, next to the Zulus, perhaps the best specimens of any of the black races of the subcontinent. The most recent portion 'an of South Africa to tonne under British sway is Rhodesia, which embraces the e0=1. - billed provinces of Matabeleland, Mashonaland, Manicaland, and a por- tion of what was formerly I,inchwe's country. Naturally, being as yet barely colonized, the disproportion of races is enormous. In Rhodesia there are over a million natives and less than 5,000 whites. At the same time it may safely be taken for grantedthat it is to this portion of the continent that the tide of emigration will get during the next few years. Li British Central Africa there are 850,000 natives and 500 whites. This huge tract of country, although under British influence, will take many years to colonize, and is, and bound to remain for a long while, a 'BLACK MANS' COUNTRY." Bechuanaland, which is now form- ally annexed to the Cape Colony, and includes the vast tract of land at one time known as Khama's Country, numbers 250,000 natives and 2;000 whites. The latter aro mainly farm- ers. transport -riders, storekeepers and that section of the police formally called the B. B. P., or Bechuanaland Border Police, a very fine body of men, to all intents and purposes a semi -military corps of mounted infan- try. Natal contains within its borders no fewer than 530,000 natives, almost all Zulus (Natal is reckoned as including Zululand proper), and 50,000 white folk. There are thus twelve natives to every white inhabitant. The Zulus are a fine, healthy up -standing race, and when not contaminated by Euro- pean influence, customs, and vices (for the Zulu is very imitative), they are reliable, trustworthy, honorable, and, in short, a tribe of Nature's noblemen. Unfortunately, they easily deteriorate, but when isolated in their own locations they keep up all the traditions of a fearless independence. They are loyal to England. By a curious concatenation of events which is not without its bearing upon the manner in which the Boers treat natives, according to their immemor- ial custom, the Orange Free State pre- sents the nearest approach to equality between the two races. Hero there are 200,000 natives and 80,000 whites, or about two and a half to one. There is a lesson in this which may bear evil fruit in the near future. The total white popalaiton of the whole of South Africa is approximate- ly 820, 000, of which 532,000 may be classed as Dutch and 388,000 as Eng- lish, in sympathy, at any rate, if not by birth. That Is the Proportion to be Found in South Africa. Very curious misconceptions are prevalent as to the relative propor tions of the black and white popula tion of Africa, South and Central. It is, of course, not possible to give with any accuracy the numbers of natives in those portions of the cen ter of the vast continent which have not come under British control, either direct or indirect. These provinces remain practically in the state in which Livingstone and other explor- ers found them. In South Africa, however, and in what is known as British Central Africa, figures are obtainable which. are approximately reliable, although it must always be borne in mind that the white population of a compara- tively young and more or less un- settled continent is necessarily ne- st able, e-stable, and inclined to shift from one center to another. I,l everycase throughout South: `,:erica the black population outnum lig the white to a greater or lesser eeteut; in Some instances the dispro- portion is stupendous, a5 in Nate -1, Sunshine in Europa. Statistics obtained by sunshine re- corders are interesting. Some curious facts have been recently published by the French Meteorological Bureau at Paris. Spain has 3,000 hours of sun- shine a year ; ' Italy, 2,700; France, 2,600; Germany has 1,700, while Eng- land has but 1,400. The average fall of rain in the latter country is greater than in eny other European country. In the northern part and on the high plateaus of Scotland about 351 inches of rain fall a year, and London is said to have an average of 178 rainy days in theyear and fully' ten times the quantity of rain that falls on Paris. BRITISH IYTERFEREN€K Kruger Forcing Bueol a Dutch .ideas. Ifnited Steles Would Interfere In ofilmilon Case—It is a Case of Six white Dion Arbt-. trarily Taxing Twenty Whitp.Dien• In an article headed "Let Us 14[in ! Our Own Business," the New York Journal says: The editor of the Journal has been. requested to sign a petition to Presi- dent McKinley urging him to -Mime- fere between England and the Boers, to use the indnence of the. United States to prevent England from inter- fering in Boer arrangements. The editor of the Journal declines. He believes that interference bee England is legitimate, that civilize tion and progress demand it. This be- lief is based on the following facts: The constitution and laws of the Transvaal, which really reflect the personal wishes and religious preja, dices of Paul Kruger and a few ether Dutchmen, forbid any Catholic to share in the law -retaking for the coun- try. England demands that this die- criiuizgatioii against Catholics cease. The Transvaal laws forbid Any Jew to share in the law.znalting power- Bngland demands that this discrim— ination against the Jews cease. There are 260,000 whites izz the so- called Boer Republic, but only 60,002 are Boors. The Boors declare that they are "merely asking the right to live." What they really ask is the right of six men to tyrannize over twouty, of 60,000 to rule 200,000 and rule thelia unjustly. The Boer attitude is not a demand for freedom, It is strictly an attitude of denying freedom to. others, The Boer bosses controlled by .Kruger maintain a government by aristocracy, an aristocracy basad on birth ---Butch birth. If the Dutch who settled this island had insisted on keeping the island strictly Dutch; if they had refused to any save Protestant Dutchmen all share in the law -making power; if they had forbidden children in the public eebiools to be taught anything. save Dutch and. miserable bastard. Dutch, they would have aoted in &merica precisely as the Boors are now acting in South Africa. Could they have hoped to maiutailk snob an attitude? Could civilization, morality, or any form of deeeney havli, justly upheld thein merely on the ground that a power greatly superior desired to compel the adoption of common sense methods? The appeal. is made and signed by eminent politi- clons "to save a little repubilo from. destruction at the hands of a ruthless empire." 8ruger's country is no re- public. Kruger has been an absolute ruler there for seventeen years. All power is in hits hands and that of n council of seven. They can and do ignore the laws and orders of even the Upper House of Repreaentetives. The land of the Boers is no republic. It is a mediaeval, bigotry -ridden Dutch settlement, as great as anachronism as any in existence. This is the ques- tion at issue in the Transvaal: Can six white men arbitrarily tax twenty white men? Can six white men arbitrarily govern twenty white men? Should a settlement of pro- foundly ignorant Dutch Boers be en- couraged in the disfranchisement of Jews and of Catholics and believers in all other religions than that which: they inherited with their other pre- judices? The Journal thinks not. Cuba has a population of fewer than two millions. Suppose eight million. Americans should ultimately settles there, remaining an independent na- tion. Suppose the eight million Americans should develop the coun- try, introduce manufactures, open mines, foster commerce, and suppose that nine -tenths of the wealth and nine hundred and ninety -nine -one - thousandths of the brains should be American. Suppose the Americana paid nine -tenths of the taxes, and yet were denied all place in the levying of the taxes and the passing of laws in the government of the country. Would the United States tolerate this treat- ment of citizens? Why should the United States demand that England. tolerate similar treatment of her citi- zens? It should not. The Englishmen, the Americans, the Irish, the Scotch, the Jews of various nationalities who have settled in the Transvaal found the Dutch Re- public a bankrupt institution. They have made it prosperous. They have made its ruler, Kruger, a multi -mil- lionaire, They are forbidden to shame in the government of the country- which ountrywhich they have created. President Kruger is trying to en- force upon 200,000 progressive, intelli- gent, liberty -loving men the primi- tive, bucolic Dutch ideas whicn mask the progress of the great trek of which he is a survival. The idea of liberty entertained by him and his as- sociate bosses is "liberty fox the Dutch and nobody else." His govern- ment is the incarnation of A.P.A.-ism on a working basis. President McKinley will not inter- fere to uphold the Dutch bosses in overriding the decisions of their own Supreme Court, in taxing those who are not represented, in oppressing Citi - sons for their religious beliefs. He will reject any petition to in- terfere that may be presented. Those politicians who have signed such a petition, acting in dense' ignorance of Transvaal matters, will do well to revise and withdraw their 'sotiou.