leave upon us is strengthened by many passages in which the author has not taken the trouble to bring his sentences into accordance with the simplest rules of grammar. We may give a few examples : 'Hardly had Somerset galloped off, and just as Wellington rode out alone to Huarte, when a patrol of French cavalry entered the village.' (i, 333.) 'With what different feelings he viewed these scenes from those when last he stood among them!' (i, 382.) 'Not ashamed some, in the delirium of success, others under the sheer pang of remembered defeat, to revile the great commander, by declaring that before the battle was fairly lost he rode off the field.' (ii, 84.) Another class of errors consists of those in which one name is substituted for another by some trick of memory on the author's part. Sir Herbert knows well enough that Sattara was not the capital of the Peshwas, nor Agra that of Scindiah; the right names-Poona and Gwalior-appear in many pages of his book; yet on pp. 53 and 72 of vol. i he makes these unaccountable substitutions. Again, throughout the account of Assaye, the river which Wellesley had to cross is styled the Kistna. It was really the Kaitna: the larger and better-known stream which Sir Herbert names does not come within two hundred miles of the battle-field. It is comparatively seldom that we have detected absolute mis-statements of fact as opposed to errors of names; but there is a grave slip on p. 70 of vol. ii, where Picton is described as the beloved chief' of the old 88th, the Connaught Rangers. Anyone who has read Grattan's 'Peninsular Diary,' or other writings by officers of the 88th, will remember that Picton was detested by the regiment. He had called them 'ragged Connaught foot-pads,' accused them of selling their cartridges to buy aguardiente, and steadily refused to recommend any of their officers for promotion or to insert their names in despatches. Hence came a well-grounded dislike for him in the regiment, which was not forgotten for long years after his death. Another error of some importance is the description (vol. i, p. 55) of Kruse's brigade at Waterloo as consisting of Dutch cavalry. They were really Nassau infantry. We wish Sir Herbert a competent and conscientious proofreader for his next edition, and trust that he may find time to reconsider his enthusiasm for M. Houssaye's version of Waterloo. With a moderate amount of revision his book may take its place as the standard Life of our greatest British General. ART. XII.—THE AFRIKANDER BOND. 1. The Boer States. By A. H. Keane. London: Methuen, 1900. 2. The Transvaal from Within. By J. P. Fitzpatrick. Popular edition. London: Heinemann, 1900. 3. On the Eve of the War. By Evelyn Cecil, M.P. London: John Murray, 1900. 4. A Century of Wrong. Issued by F. W. Reitz. London: 'Review of Reviews' Office, 1900. 5. The Birth of the Bond. Josiah Slater, 1900. Grahamstown, Cape Colony : 6. Paul Kruger en de Opkomst van de Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. By J. S. van Oordt. Amsterdam: HollandAfrikander Publishing Company, 1898. 7. Transvaalsche Herinneringen. By E. T. P. Jorissen. Amsterdam: 1897. 8. South African Press: (English) Cape Times; Cape Argus; Friend of the Free State; (Dutch) De Patriot; Zuid Afrikaan; Ons Land; De Express. A SECTION-a large section-of the Dutch inhabitants of South Africa have long cherished a desire to convert that country into a Republic, or federation of Republics, in which Great Britain shall have no more place or authority than she has in the Republics of France or Switzerland; and certain of their leaders, not in the Transvaal and Orange Free State only, but in Natal and the Cape Colony also, have been working together to accomplish this desire. To call this desire and the concerted endeavour to accomplish it a 'conspiracy,' is to assert more than in the very nature of things can be proved; and to assert more than can be proved is to play into the hands of the champions of the South African Republics, enabling them to divert attention from the dangerous disaffection of the Dutch by a controversy as to the name by which that disaffection should be called. As Mr. Fitzpatrick remarks, in the introduction to the popular edition of his admirable book: charges of treason and conspiracy are unnecessary. It is sufficient to show that the aim of the Transvaal has been to subvert the Imperial authority and expel the Imperial power, and that the sympathetic attitude of the Afrikander Bond, however human it may be, has been used to draw British subjects into a dangerous course, and has led them to coquet with an ambition which the British half of the population and the British Empire will resist at all costs.' With a view to discover the origin and prevalence of this ambition or aspiration, let us examine its manifestations in the several States and colonies of South Africa. Take first the Transvaal. That the Transvaal has continuously sought to escape from every vestige of dependence upon England, and to become a 'sovereign international State,' is clear from the history of the last twenty years. It is equally certain that an increasing number of the Boers and their leaders sought to procure the emancipation of the Transvaal as the indispensable first step to the emancipation of all South Africa. There is nothing surprising in these aspirations. Like the Orange Free State, the Transvaal was founded and peopled by fugitives from the British settlements at the Cape; and the antipathy to British ideas and British rule, which prompted them to incur untold hardships to escape therefrom, has ever since been sedulously fostered. Mr. Kruger was one of these fugitives, and most of the burghers now in arms against us are their sons or grandsons. Clearly, then, to deny the existence of an anti-British movement in South Africa, and to ascribe to the Jameson Raid the Transvaal's participation in this movement, is to ignore the great historical fact that it was in antipathy to British rule that the Boer Republics had their origin. How faithfully the genetic aspirations of the founders of the South African Republic have been echoed and perpetuated by their successors in the management of its affairs is abundantly shown in the records of the Volksraad and the pages of our own Blue-books. President Burgers, who was never tired of picturing a United South Africa under the Dutch flag, and who sacrificed his private fortune in vain efforts to construct a railway to Delagoa Bay, which he held to be indispensable to the transformation of the raw little State under his rule into a Dutch Dominion co-extensive with South Africa-President Burgers thus explained to an audience in Holland the desire of their kinsmen of South Africa : In that far-off country the inhabitants still dream of a future in which the people of Holland will recover their former greatness. He was convinced that within half a century there would be in South Africa a population of eight millions, all speaking the Dutch language, and all extending the glory of Holland--a second Holland, as energetic and liberty-loving as the first, but greater in extent and greater in power.' Then came Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, a mightier man in thought as well as in act than the ineffective clergyman * Quoted in Transvaal from Within,' popular edition, preface, p. xii. Vol. 191.-No. 382. 2 M who had preceded him in the Presidential chair. Mr. Kruger saw that the dream of a united Dutch Republic required for its accomplishment, first, an independent Transvaal, which should serve as an asylum and place of arms for the Dutch throughout South Africa. So we find him on November 14th, 1883, when in England to negotiate the London Convention, frankly writing thus to Lord Derby : It may be that the people of the South African Republic will even now thankfully accept from Her Majesty's Government some alleviation of the burden imposed upon them [by the Pretoria Convention], but whatever concessions Her Majesty's Government may be prepared to make, the reciprocal confidence between British and Dutch colonists will then only revive when Her Majesty's Government also will accept the Sand River Convention as the historical basis of all further arrangements. Any settlement not founded upon this basis cannot but be of a merely temporary character-only upon this basis can a permanent settlement be secured.' The full import of this very frank revelation of the political aims of the Transvaal appears only when we take into consideration that the Boers have always claimed, under the Sand River Convention, to which Mr. Kruger here appeals, the complete independence enjoyed by the Orange Free State under the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854. State Secretary Reitz was only repeating Mr. Kruger's claim of 1883 when, in his despatch to the High Commissioner dated May 9th, 1899, he wrote: 'The now existing right of absolute self-government of this Republic is not derived from either the Convention of 1881 or that of 1884, but simply and solely follows from the inherent right of this Republic as a sovereign international State.' † While concentrating himself on the task of releasing his State from every restraint upon its sovereignty, Mr. Kruger has never lost sight of the more distant goal of a United Dutch South Africa. But, unlike Burgers, he has never allowed the alluring vision of that goal to blind him to the pitfalls along the road by which alone it could be reached. Accordingly we hear him from time to time publicly confessing the faith of Afrikanderdom, with a caution to the more ardent not to proclaim it from the house-tops : 'I think it too soon,' he said at Bloemfontein in 1887, 'to speak of a United South Africa under one flag. Which flag is it to be? The Queen of England would object to having her flag hauled down, and we, the burghers of the Transvaal, object to hauling down ours. Blue-book, C. 3947,' p. 4. † Blue-book, 'C. 9507,' p. 32. We must be patient then. We are now small and of little importance, but we are growing, and are preparing the way to take our place among the great nations of the world.' And what of the Orange Free State? What part has it played in the endeavour to oust Great Britain from her rightful place as paramount Power in South Africa, and to establish Boer ascendency from Cape Town to the Zambesi? Until 1858 the Boers beyond the Vaal River styled their country the Dutch African Republic,' but in that year they changed its name to the 'South African Republic,' and in the change gave yet another indication of their intention to extend the name and their own ascendency to all South Africa. As a first step in this direction attempts were very early set on foot by Marthinus Wessels Pretorius, second President of the Transvaal, to absorb the adjoining Republic of the Orange Free State; but nothing was accomplished until 1889, when, on the death of Sir John Brand, Mr. F. W. Reitz (now State Secretary of the Transvaal) left the Bench for the Presidential chair. Animated by the aspirations and antipathies to which he has recently given vent in his 'Century of Wrong,' he hastened to negotiate with President Kruger the Treaty of Potchefstroom (March 11th, 1889), by which the two Republics were constituted allies. That he did not go further in this direction was due to the wise counsels of burghers like J. G. Fraser, the opponent of Mr. Steyn; C. W. H. van der Post, the ablest speaker in the Free State Volksraad; and C. J. Cloete, representing Bethlehem in that assembly. His successor, Judge Steyn, took up his work, and was able so far to complete the fusion of the two Republics—which England had once prohibited under penalty of cancellation of the Conventions-that their common interests and policy were placed under the supervision of a Federal Council of Ten. By the same instrument-the Treaty of Bloemfontein of the 9th March 1897-the alliance of 1889 was converted, as the issue has since shown, into one of offence and defence. Yet it would be a mistake to imagine that the Orange Free State was innocent of Pan-Afrikanderism until Mr. Reitz became head of the Government. President Brand himself shared the dream, but, unlike Presidents Reitz and Steyn, without bitterness towards England. Says Mr. J. S. van Oordt, writing of the War of Independence, the careful Jan Brand was convinced that as yet the time had not arrived when South Africa could tear herself loose from Great Britain'; † but De Express,' of Bloemfontein. |