“ The government of the Transvaal being once more in the hands of the Boers, the country rapidly drifted towards that state of national bankruptcy from which it had only been saved by annexation in 1877. In 1886, the year in which the Rand mines were discovered, President Kruger was by no means a popular man even among his own followers; as an administrator of internal affairs he had shown himself grossly incompetent, and it was only the specious success of his negotiations with the British government which had retained him any measure of support. ”

“ In 1889, the very year following President Brand’s death, he was able to make a treaty with President Reitz, his successor, which bound each of the Boer republics to assist the other in case its independence was menaced, unless the quarrel could be shown to be an unjust one on the part of the state so menaced. In effect it bound the Free State to share all the hazardous risk of the reckless anti-British Transvaal policy, without the Free State itself receiving anything in return. Kruger thus achieved one of the objects of his life. ”

“ Those who do not like to obey my laws can leave my country.” This rejection of the advances of the Uitlanders—by whose aid he could have built up a free and stable republic—led to his downfall, though the failure of the Jameson Raid in the first days of 1896 gave him a signal opportunity to secure the safety of his country by the grant of real reforms. But the Raid taught him no lesson of this kind, and despite the intervention of the British government the Uitlanders’ grievances were not remedied.
In 1898 Kruger was elected president of the Transvaal for the fourth and last time. ”

“ The action taken by President Kruger at this election, and his previous actions in ousting President Burgers and in absolutely excluding the Uitlanders from the franchise, all show that at any cost, in his opinion, the government must remain a close corporation, and that while he lived he must remain at the head of it. ”