Anthony Trollope

“ If the gold-diggers themselves have not been rich they have enriched the bankers and the wine-merchants and the grocers and the butchers and the inn-keepers who have waited upon them. While one gold-digger starves or lives upon his little capital, another drinks champagne. Even the first contributes something to the building up of a country, but the champagne-drinker contributes a great deal. There is no better customer to the tradesman, no more potent consumer, than the man who is finding gold from day to day. Gold becomes common to him, and silver contemptible. ”

“ I have always felt that my sense of justice could not be satisfied as to any purchase of territory by civilized from uncivilized people,—first because the idea of the value of the land is essentially different in the minds of the two contracting parties; and secondly because whatever may be the tribal customs of a people as to land I cannot acknowledge the right of a Chieftain to alienate the property of his tribe,—and the less so when the price given takes the form of an annuity for life to one or two individuals. ”

“ Among ourselves, with all that we have done and all that we are doing, we do not yet know whether it is our intention to limit or to extend our colonial empire; we do not yet know whether we purpose to occupy other lands or to protect in their occupation those who now hold them; we do not yet know whether as a nation we wish our colonial dependants to remain always loyal to the British Crown or whether we desire to see them start for themselves as independent realms. ”

“ South Africa is a country of black men,—and not of white men. It has been so; it is so; and it will continue to be so. In this respect it is altogether unlike Australia, unlike the Canadas, and unlike New Zealand. And, as it is unlike them, so should it be to us a matter of much purer gratification than are those successful Colonies. There we have gone with our ploughs and with our brandy, with all the good and with all the evil which our civilization has produced, and throughout the lands the native races have perished by their contact with us. ”

“ A sensitiveness to the greatness and glory of England,—what we may perhaps call the Rule Britannia feeling,—which cannot endure the idea that the British foot should ever go back one inch! Is it not national ardour such as this which recommends our Statesmen to our love? And then there has been that well-weighed economy which has been acquired in the closet and used in the House of Commons, without which no minister can really be true to his country. To levy what taxes be needed, but to take care that no more is spent than is needed;—is not that the first duty of a Cabinet Minister? ”

“ Throughout the British Colonies of South Africa the number of the Natives exceeds that of the Europeans by about eight to one. In the Republic the Europeans exceed the Natives by two to one. And the coloured people who remain there,—or who have emigrated thither, which has been more generally the case,—are the servants employed in the towns and by the farmers. And yet, in spite of this, a separate nation of 15,000 persons lives quietly and, I must say, upon the whole prosperously within the Free State borders, altogether hemmed in, but in no way oppressed. ”

“ The Kafirs are not only most willing but most astute thieves, feeling a glory in their theft and thinking that every stone stolen from a white man is a duty done to their Chief and their tribe. I think it may be taken as certain that no Kafir would feel the slightest pang of conscience at stealing a diamond, or that any disgrace would be held to attach to him among other Kafirs for such a performance. They come to the Fields instructed by their Chiefs to steal diamonds and they obey the orders like loyal subjects. ”

“ All that the inhabitant of Pretoria will get in this respect will cost him very much less than in Europe, very much less indeed than in England, infinitely less than in London. With us at home the cost of domestic service has become out of proportion to our expenditure in other respects, partly because it has become to be thought derogatory to do anything for ourselves, and partly because our servants have been taught by their masters and mistresses to live in idle luxury. ”

“ No coloured person can vote for a Member of Parliament. However expedient it may be thought by Englishmen to exclude Kafirs or Zulus from voting till such changes shall have been made in their habits as to make them fit for the privilege, the restrictions made for that purpose must with us be common both to the coloured and to the white population. We all feel that no class legislation as to the privilege of voting should be adopted and that in giving or withholding qualification no allusion should be made to race or colour. But the Dutch of the Free State have no such scruple. ”

“ It creates a sanguine confidence which teaches the gold-dreamer to believe that he will succeed where hundreds have failed. It despises climate, and reconciles the harshness of manual labour to those who have been soft of hand and luxurious of habit. I am not now intending to warn the covetous against the Gold Fields of South Africa;—but am simply expressing an opinion that though these gold regions have hitherto created no wealth, though henceforth they should not be the source of fortune to the speculators, they will certainly serve to bring white inhabitants into the country. ”

“ The Boer has become solitary, self-dependent, some would say half savage in his habits. The self-dependent man is almost as injurious to the world at large as the idle man. The good and useful citizen is he who works for the comfort of others and requires the work of others for his own comfort. The Boer feels a pride in his acres, though his acres may do nothing for him. He desires no neighbours though neighbours would buy his produce. He declares he cannot plough his fields because he cannot get labour, but he will allow no Kafirs to make their kraals on his land. ”

“ To imagine that Kimberley with all its wealth would have allowed itself to be ruled by a Dutch Volksraad at the little town of Bloemfontein, is to suppose that the tail can permanently wag the dog, instead of the dog wagging the tail. Diamond diggers are by no means people of a kind to submit quietly to such a condition of things. It was bitter enough for the Volksraad to abandon the idea of making laws for so rich and strong a population,—bitter perhaps for Mr. Brand to abandon the idea of governing them. ”

“ It would be thought that a colonizing nation like Great Britain,—now the only colonizing nation in existence,—should have a policy of colonization. The Americans of the United States have such a policy, though they do not colonize in our sense. They will not colonize at all beyond their own continent, so that all the citizens of their Republic may be brought into one homogeneous whole. The Spaniards and Dutch who have been great Colonists have a colonial policy,—which has ever consisted in getting what can be got for the mother country. ”

“ We could certainly annex the Republic by force,—as we have done the Transvaal. If we were to send a High Commissioner to Bloemfontein with thirty policemen and an order that the country should be given up to us, I do not know that President Brand and the Volksraad could do better than comply,—with such loudest remonstrance as they might make. “The Republic cannot fight Great Britain,” President Brand might say, as President Burgers said when he apologised for the easy surrender of his Republic. But there are things which a nation can not do and hold up its head, and this would be one of them. ”

“ To all those we owe the duty of protection, and all of them before long will be British subjects. As in India or Ceylon, where the people are a coloured people, Asiatic and not European, it is our first duty to govern them so that they may prosper, to defend them from ill-usage, to teach them what we know ourselves, to make them free, so in South Africa it is our chief duty to do the same thing for the Natives there. The white man is the master, and the master can generally protect himself. ”

“ A man may have a lust for power as Alexander had, and Napoleon,—a lust to which many a British Minister has in former days been a prey; but, even though we might possibly have a Colonial Secretary at this time so opposed in his ideas to the existing theories and feelings of our statesmen as to be willing to increase his responsibilities by adding new Colonies to our long list of dependencies, I cannot conceive that his ambition should take the shape of annexing an additional digging population. ”

“ Langalibalele has a comfortable farm house on the Gape Flats where he has a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer allowed him a day,—and where he lives like a second Napoleon at a second St. Helena. I trust that nothing of the kind will be done with Kreli. There is an absurdity about it which is irritating. It is as though we were playing at Indian princes among the African black races. The man himself has not risen in life beyond the taste for squatting in his hut with a dozen black wives around him and a red blanket over his shoulders. ”

“ I have to acknowledge, with all my sympathies strongly opposed to what I call high-handed political operations, that I think Sir Theophilus was justified. A case of such a kind must in truth be governed by its own merits, and cannot be subjected to a fixed rule. To have annexed only a part of the Transvaal would have been not only useless, but absurd. Not only would the part which we had spared have been hostile to us, but the Dutch within our assumed borders would have envied the independence we had left to others. We shall have trouble enough now in settling our boundaries with the Natives. ”

“ It may even then,—when that day comes,—have to pay a percentage something higher than it would have to give under a British guarantee; but the money will be its own, brought into use on its own security, and will then be treated with respect and used with care. The Transvaal no doubt wants a railway sorely, but it has no right to expect that a railway shall be raised for it, as by a magician’s wand. Like other people, and other countries the Transvaal should struggle hard to get what it wants, and if it struggles honestly no doubt will have its railway and will enjoy it when it has it. ”

“ I say this for the purpose of showing that though the gold trade of the Transvaal has not as yet been remunerative,—though it may perhaps never be truly remunerative to the gold-seekers,—it may nevertheless help to bring a population to the country which will build it up, and make{91} it prosperous. It will do so in the teeth of the despair and ruin which unsuccessful speculations create. There is a charm and a power about gold which is so seductive and inebriating that judgment and calculation are ignored by its votaries. ”

“ The Dutch Boer, with all his roughness, is a gentleman in his manners from his head to his heels.
When a man has travelled through a country under beneficent auspices, and has had everything shewn to him and explained to him with frank courtesy, he seems to be almost guilty of a breach of hospitality if, on his coming away, he speaks otherwise than in glowing terms of the country where he has been so received. I know that I have left behind me friends in South Africa who, when they shall have read my book or shall hear how I have spoken of their Institutions, will be ill satisfied with me. ”

“ Because his cattle have been stolen once or twice he would subject the whole race to slavery,—unconscious that the slave’s work, if he could get it, would in the long run be very much less profitable to him than the free labour by which, in spite of all his assertions to the contrary, he does till his land, and herd his cattle, and shear his sheep and garner his wealth. ”

“ Let a man sleep where he may and eat what he will, he can go on. Let him sleep not at all and eat but little, he can have himself dragged to his destination. The will within him to reach a given place carries him safely through great hardships. But it is not so with your horse,—and is less so in the Transvaal than in any other country in which I have travelled. We soon learned that our chief care must be to provide proper food for our team, if we wished to reach Pretoria,—let alone those further towns, Kimberley and Bloemfontein. ”