Boer Republic of the Free State

“ Rid the Transvaal of the incubus of its corrupt and incapable government, give it a well-considered constitution and supervision, and the Boer, though he can never rise very high among white races, will in the next generation be a very different man from what his circumstances have hitherto made him. ”

“ There was much conceded merely to save the excessive and savage self-esteem of the Boers, who, however, positively refused justice and demanded without mitigation exercise of a despotism so unwarranted and wicked as to be intolerable to civilization. The Boer statements, soliciting sympathy, circulated in the United States have dwelt upon the assertion that the British subjects, who meant to reside permanently in the Transvaal, refused to become citizens of the South African Republic on any conditions. ”

“ This policy of extension, however, required statecraft, a quality somewhat lacking amongst the rude legislators of Pretoria or Bloemfontein. It also needed money, the supply of which, before the discovery of gold, was sadly deficient. Government of Dutch Adventurers President Brand, of the Free State, was a statesman, but, in the ordinary sense of the word, was never a Boer, and would have nothing to do with the more aggressive ambitions of the Transvaal rulers. ”

“ The Boers did not really want the latter, but it is fairly evident now that they fully appreciated the importance of holding the only route to the north which still remained open to British acquisition. Had President Brand shared in the hostile sentiments of many of his own people and of his compatriots over the Vaal toward Great Britain, he would never have sold his claim even for the sum which did so much to place the finances of the Free State upon a sound footing. From this time forward to the end of the century, however, the Orange Free State enjoyed a condition of progressive prosperity. ”

“ The Boers, in fact, did not want firm government or free institutions; they desired liberty to do as they liked with their own living chattels and with the natives of the soil. They deliberately cultivated modes of life and thought diametrically opposed to everything the Englishman holds dear, and carefully fanned the smouldering embers of dislike and distrust in their own breasts until they became a flame of active hatred. ”

“ It can hardly be said to be connected with questions of government or constitution. No Government at all would suit the Boer if it were practicable, and his record shows that an oligarchy is no less agreeable to him than was the one-time division of 15,000 settlers into four republics. He knows little of the struggles of his reputed ancestors in Holland for freedom of the higher kind, and for that equality of religious and racial rights which he is now the first to spurn, and to even fight in order to prevent others from obtaining in parts of South Africa. ”

“ So long as the Boer love for independence was simply a fond regard for isolation, which inflicted no serious injury upon other white people around him, the British Empire and its citizens had no right to interfere or to do more than laugh at its crudities and, perhaps, denounce its cruelties to inferior races. ”

“ It is not liberty they long for, but license. The "sturdy independence" of the Boer resolves itself into a determination not to have his affairs interfered with by any superior power whatsoever, and not to pay taxes if he can possibly avoid it. But he has also a specific cause of complaint against the English Government, which would alone cause him to do his utmost to get rid of it, and that is its mode of dealing with natives, which is radically opposite to his own. This is the secret of Boer patriotism. ”

“ Life at Pretoria was at this time far from pleasant for the Boers who remained loyal to their cause.
Most people who had the means, or were not bound to the country by the closest ties, let their houses and went to Europe until the war was over. Many of those who did not leave of their own free will were sent away to the coast, where they were considered safe from plotting against the British, and the few remaining Boer families were apparently on their best behaviour, above all dreading the fate of their fellow-countrymen. ”

“ So many non-legal things had been done in a high-handed way, and so many raids into native territories had been made by the Boers themselves, that the sort of respect for legality which Europeans feel was still imperfectly developed in all sections of the population. Those of the Reformers, however, who sought to justify their plans, argued that the Boer Government was an oligarchy which overtaxed its subjects, and yet refused them those benefits which a civilised Government is bound to give. ”

“ The Uitlanders of British, Australian, German and American extraction, inter-mixing with the Boers, would [Pg 94] soon have merged their national characteristics, and have become simply citizens of the South African Republic.
The Boers might have constructed a vast, wealthy and powerful State in which for generations to come, they would have held the supremacy. As a conquered people they will be compelled to accept the constitution they might have granted, and granted the more readily as they would have reaped the largest share of the benefits. ”

“ It was such cant that enabled the Boers to carry on the war of independence against mighty England to a successful issue. It was such cant that brought the elaborate plots of Rhodes, Jameson and the Johannesburg revolutionists to utter failure. It will be such cant that will make South Africa a free and united Republic, in which all the races of the world shall live free and united! ”

“ The Boer love for liberty or independence became simply a love for isolation from the rest of humanity and a desire to imitate the slave-owners of Old Testament history. The final result has been the creation of a foreign, or Hollander, oligarchy in both the Dutch republics for the purpose of preserving this condition. The British ideal is freedom in government, in trade, in politics, for himself and for others, regardless of race, or creed, or color. The Boer principle of morality has always been a mere matter of color; that of the average Englishman is very different. ”

“ The chief care, concern and anxiety of the Boer is that a government of the people must not by any chance be established in Transvaal. It is the elementary principle of the Boer disposition and government, that there are no real "people" except Boers, who place the Hottentot, the Englishman, the Zulu and the Kaffir, the American, the German and the Frenchman on the same level. ”

“ It is so much easier to talk politics than to sow mealies. Some attribute the discontent among the Boers to the postponement of the carrying out of the Annexation proclamation promises with reference to the free institutions to be granted to the country, but in my opinion it had little or nothing to do with it. The Boers never understood the question of responsible government, and never wanted that institution ”

“ Yes, they are noble women, brave and patriotic women, the very women whom the English strove so hard to exterminate and whom they did murder by thousands in those prison camps.
So long as the Boer woman lives so long will there be a race of liberty-loving people in South Africa, so long will there be great Boer generals and fighting patriots daily born, and sure it is that such fighting blood will assert its independence. No one is more certain of this than Roberts, Kitchener, Joe Chamberlain, Alfred Milner and the thousands of other women-fighters in England. ”

“ The statement then goes on to give them good advice as to the advantages of indulging in manual labour when asked to do so by the Boers, and generally to show them how bright and happy is the future that lies before them. Lest they should be too elated by such good tidings, they are, however, reminded that it will be necessary to retain the law relating to passes, which is, in the hands of a people like the Boers, about as unjust a regulation as a dominant race can invent for the oppression of a subject people, and had, in the old days of the Republic, been productive of much hardship. ”

“ In reality, however, it is the result of a hundred years of racial rivalry, during which the Boer character has been evolved out of intense isolation, deliberate ignorance and cultivated prejudice into the remarkable product of to-day, while the nature of his British neighbor has expanded in the light of liberty and through the gospel of equality, of labor and of world-wide thought, into the great modern representative of progress in all that makes for good government, active intellectual endeavor, material wealth and Imperial expansion. ”

“ But there are limits to this policy of serene trust in Providence, and it is rather our duty to thank God we have taken so few falls, and brace our minds to forethought and prudence. The Boer is the easiest creature in the world to govern. He is naturally law-abiding, and he has an enormous respect for the accomplished fact. True union may take long, but the nominal amalgamation which is necessary for smooth government already exists. We must understand how slow he is to learn, how deep his pride is, how lively his suspicions. ”

“ Boers Positively Refuse Justice
The Boer President refused to think of this, on the precise and often expressed ground that the Uitlanders were a large majority of the people, and there could be no safeguards for the Boer Government if these outsiders and strangers were permitted to have any political rights whatever. The President held indomitably that the "newcomers" and "strangers" should not occupy and possess the country to any degree by force of numbers or merit of industry and property. ”

“ We hear a great deal about the Boers’ love for their country, and their willingness to shed the last drop of their blood in its defence. Those who talk thus know nothing whatever about the matter. The Boer has no country. He does not know the meaning of patriotism. He is a nomad by nature. One country is as good to him as another, if it serve his requirements. He is seldom on his farm for long, and is more happy when he takes his stock away to some distant winterveldt, and lives in his wagon, than when at home. ”

“ There is an instinct in the South African which makes him conscious, in his dim, short-sighted way, that over against him there looms the passive, irreconcilable power of the black races. He is like a man carrying a lantern, with the shifting circle of light about him, and at its frontier the darkness pregnant with presences.
The Boer, learned in Kafir varieties, stared under puckered brows at the single figure passing below the kraals. ”

“ Some one has said that real patriotism is bred only on the farms and plains of a country, and no better exemplification of the truth of the saying was necessary than that which was afforded by the wives and mothers of the burghers of the two South African Republics. Many months before the first shot of the war was fired the patriotic Boer women commenced to take an active interest in the discussion of the grave affairs of State, and it increased with such amazing rapidity and volume that they were prepared for hostilities long before the men. ”

“ Many writers urge that the Boer is naturally uncivil, that he lacks the true feeling of hospitality. The original Boer, before he was seized with a hatred for the British, was more justly speaking lacking in civility than what we term uncivil. ”

“ F.W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary; whilst this gentleman again, when lecturing at Johannesburg in July last, naively deplored the confusion of people's ideas who see anything wrong in the Afrikaner Bond, adding: "Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do or talk about."
"The peace of South Africa is only possible under Boer supremacy," is the Bond shibboleth. The end justifies the means, even to sedition, to a war of conquest and the wholesale plunder of investors. ”

“ If civilisation presses him too closely, his remedy is a simple one. He sells his farm, packs up his goods and cash in his waggon, and starts for regions more congenially wild. Such are some of the leading characteristics of that remarkable product of South Africa, the Transvaal Boer, who resembles no other white man in the world.
Perhaps, however, the most striking of all his oddities is his abhorrence of all government, more especially if that government be carried out according to English principles. The Boers have always been more or less in rebellion ”

“ If he can enlarge his mind, if he can reform existing abuses, if he can expand an archaic system of government and render it sufficiently elastic to meet the requirements of an enlarged population and important and increasing industries—well and good. If not, let the Boer beware; for he will place himself in conflict with the intelligence and the progress of South Africa. Then the Boer system will be condemned by a higher authority than the Colonial Office or the opinion of England ”

“ But in his relations and contact with the native races and real owners of the soil, the Dutch Boer seems to lose all sense of reason and justice, and to remember only those early and blood-stained annals of pioneering, when the white man and the black neither gave nor asked for quarter in their struggle for supremacy in the land. ”