sand five hundred signatures, asking for the restoration of their independence, and sent it to England. In the meantime affairs in Great Britain were taking a favorable turn for the Boers. In his Midlothian campaign, in November, 1879, Mr. Gladstone had condemned the annexation of the Transvaal in the strongest terms and had announced his intention to restore Transvaal independence if he came into power. The Boers got hold of his speech and circulated copies of it among their people, who accepted it as an invitation to revolt. After the dissolution of the British Parliament, in March, 1880, and the elections in Great Britain, which returned the Liberal party, under Mr. Gladstone, to power, the Boers were chagrined to find that Mr. Gladstone had changed front on the Transvaal question and that he now announced that the Transvaal must remain British territory. They accordingly resolved to appeal to arms to recover their independence at once and made preparations for the struggle. Boer hopes had been raised too high thus to be doomed to disappointment. The rupture began when the Boers resorted to their old expedient toward their own governments when their public servants were unpopular the refusal to pay taxes. The determination of the British Administrator of the Transvaal, Sir Owen Lanyon, to enforce payment of taxes by the seizure of the goods of a recalcitrant farmer led to open defiance and brought matters to a crisis. The Boers held a great public meeting at Paardekraal, in which Paul Krüger, Marthinus Wessels Pretorius and Petrus Jacobus Joubert were elected a triumvirate to conduct public affairs; and the independence of the Transvaal was declared on December 16, 1880. The Boers offered to indemnify Great Britain for her expenditure in behalf of the Transvaal if their independence was restored. War ensued. The Boers attacked two hundred and fifty British troops at Middelburg, December 23, 1880, killing one hundred and twenty and taking the remainder prisoners. The Boers were repulsed at Potchefstroom, January 7, 1881. Sir Owen Lanyon, the British Administrator in the Transvaal, was summoned to surrender Pretoria; and the Boers closely besieged Potchefstroom. Early in January, 1881, the Boers invaded Natal. On January 26, 1881, a British force of one thousand men, under General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, was repulsed in an attack upon the strong position of five thousand Boers, under General Joubert, at Laing's Nek; the British losing one hundred and eighty-five killed, wounded and missing. On February 8, 1881, the British under General Colley again were defeated by the Boers under Joubert behind rock cover, on the Ingogo River; the British losing one hundred and fifty killed and wounded. On Sunday, February Trans vaal Independ ence under British Suzerainty. 27, 1881, General Colley's force of about six hundred and fifty men was defeated by a superior force of Boers in the battle of Majuba Hill, six thousand feet above sea-level and three thousand feet above camplevel. General Colley was killed, and he lost about two hundred and fifty officers and men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, the survivors fleeing headlong from the scene of action. The Boers, who fought under cover behind rocks and crags, lost about one hundred and thirty in killed and wounded. The Boer victory at Majuba Hill was followed by an armistice and a treaty of peace, in March, 1881, by which Great Britain, in accordance with Mr. Gladstone's first announced Transvaal policy, acknowledged the independence of the Transvaal, under the suzerainty of the British crown. The Transvaal Boers were to have local selfgovernment; but the British government was to control the foreign relations of the restored Republic, and was granted the right to march troops across the Transvaal at any time, while a British Resident Agent was to be established at Pretoria. All munitions of war captured on either side during the war were to be restored. White men of all nationalities were to have equal rights with the Boers in the Transvaal to reside, travel and carry on business in the country and were not to be subject to any special taxation. Slavery of the blacks was to be prohibited, and their interests were safeguarded by other clauses. The treaty also provided that Great Britain should receive compensation for her heavy expenditure on account of the Boers in the wars with the Zulus, the Kaffirs and other native African tribes-a sum equal to about ten million pounds sterling (about fifty million dollars in United States money). The acceptance of these terms by the Boers ended the war. In August, 1881, a Royal Commission on the part of Great Britain concluded a definitive treaty with the Transvaal Republic, on the basis of the preliminary treaty. Founding of the Second Trans Republic. SECTION IV. THE SECOND TRANSVAAL REPUBLIC (A. D. 1881-1899). THUS was founded the second Transvaal Republic, officially called the South African Republic. The reason why Great Britain retained control of the foreign relations of the Republic was to prevent the vaal Transvaal from making treaties or alliances with foreign powers to the prejudice or disadvantage of Great Britain, and to guard against the danger to the whole white population of South Africa involved in wars between the Boers and the native blacks. The provisions of the treaty of 1881 providing for equal rights for whites and freedom for blacks were the same as those of the Sand River Convention of 1852, when the first Transvaal Republic was acknowledged as an independent state by Great Britain. During the four years that the Transvaal was under British rule (1877-1881) equality of political rights existed in the Transvaal. While the negotiations for the definitive treaty of peace, in August, 1881, were in progress, Paul Krüger, on behalf of the Transvaal triumvirate, assured the British commissioners that the same political equality for all white men should be maintained under the restored Republic as had existed under the British régime. Paul In 1882, the second year of the second Transvaal Republic, Ste- President phanus Johannes Paulus Krüger was elected President of the Trans- Kruger. vaal, or South African Republic. In 1883 he was confirmed in the office for the term of five years, and he was reëlected in 1888, 1893, and 1898. So thoroughly was he master in all the affairs of his little state that it is scarcely too much to say that the history of the second Transvaal Republic was the history of President Paul Krüger. Through this remarkable man, whose fame became world-wide, the Transvaal, before known outside of South Africa only by name, even among the enlightened, also became famous throughout the civilized world. His wonderful personality and force of character stamped themselves upon his country, whose constitution and laws really reflected his personal wishes and religious prejudices. During all those years he presided almost as an absolute ruler over the people whom he governed in that isolated little state. His Charac President Krüger had been a prominent man in the history of his country for half a century. He took a prominent part in the civil wars of the Transvaal and the wars against the Orange Free State, from 1852 to 1864, and was the head of the Dopper faction; the Doppers being the strictest section of the Dutch Reformed Church. He was among the annexationists of 1877 and was a leader of the independents of 1880-1881. By his masterful powers he made everything bend to his will. He often preached in the great church at Pretoria, and in his sermons he told his people that God was and always teristics. had been on their side and would enable them to overcome their enemies in battle. His intense piety would not permit him to accept an invitation to the Queen's ball during his visit to London in 1884, such things being too sinful in his estimation. In Paris he was shocked at the ladies' modes of dress. He read few newspapers. Once he was reported to have said: "The Bible is one of the few books I have time to read." It must be acknowledged, however, that the small selection of other books that he read was good--such as Pilgrim's Progress, Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, and histories of the Prince of Orange and of the Thirty Years' War. His manners were those of a simple farmer. He was said to have frequently received visitors in his shirt President cratic General of the Boers. Their of For sleeves; to have appeared in public without collar or necktie, and not to have been wasteful of water at his toilet. To his people he was reverently and affectionately known as "Oom Paul"; that is, "Uncle Paul," implying that he was "everybody's uncle." During his visit to London in 1884 he was so poor that he could not pay his hotel bill, but after the discovery of the Rand gold mines he was said to have become worth twenty-five million dollars. We have alluded to President Krüger's absolute and despotic rule. All political power was in his hands and that of a council of seven. These men practically exercised the legislative and judicial power of the state as well as the executive power. They ignored the laws and orders of the Volksraad, or legislative body, and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the land. In short, the Transvaal was a republic only in name, and was in reality a seventeenth century Dutch and French settlement a theocratic or religious oligarchy masquerading as a republic-with only the descendants of Protestant Dutchmen and Frenchmen having any political rights. Jews and Catholics were disfranchised, and only members of the Dutch Reformed Church could hold office. The naturalization laws were so illiberal that it required long residence and ten years' military service in the Transvaal armies before an alien or foreigner could become a citizen of the Republic, although he was drafted into the army and subject to a poll tax. The black man was denied all civil as well as political rights and was practically in a state of slavery, the Boers looking upon the negro as being no human being and having no soul. Negroes were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks of streets or to enter a Boer church. The Boers are pious and bigoted and very attentive to their church duties. They resemble the English Puritans and the Scotch Covenanters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in their aversion to frivolous amusements, which they consider sinful. They are primitive and mediaeval in their habits and beliefs and unprogressive in their character. They are averse to hard physical labor, and have their work done by their black servants, or slaves. They regard foreigners with jealousy and suspicion and the English Jealousy with intense animosity, ingrained into them by the history and tradieigners. tions of a century. They like to be left alone with their country and to live a pastoral life on their immense farms of thousands of acres and tend their cattle and sheep, and have contempt for the wealth represented by gold and diamonds. They love their national independence and are so intensely patriotic that they are ready to shed their last drop of blood to maintain their separate national existence. They are averse to paying taxes, and the desperate straits of their country in the past were attributable largely to this fact. They were a great military power and are among the best soldiers in the world. In fact, under President Krüger their little republic became a military camp, like the great monarchies of Continental Europe. They have great reverence for the Old Testament, especially the warlike portions which tell how God's chosen people showed no mercy to the heathen people around them; and they justify their harsh treatment of the native blacks by precedents from the Hebrew sacred texts. Until lately they had no schools; and formerly they opposed the introduction of railroads because railroads are not mentioned in the Bible, though they had no religious scruples against the introduction of firearms or heavy artillery, even if these instruments of warfare are not mentioned in the Bible. Their dwellings and other buildings are very simple and primitive, as are also their farm machinery and implements. In short, they have great veneration for the methods and ideas of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and do not readily take to newfangled, modern notions. Their fondness for hunting has made them good marksmen from childhood, and the Boer women can shoot as well as the men. Their Military Char acter. Their Unpro gressive ness. Dutch Lan The Dutch language of South Africa is not the pure Dutch of Corrupt Holland, but a corrupt Dutch produced by the mingling of the Huguenot French element with the Dutch population of South Africa. This corrupt Dutch is the only language allowed to be taught in the Boer schools. The Boers of the Orange Free State and of the British colonies of South Africa, who have not been isolated from the outside world, have progressed with the British colonists of South Africa and have adopted modern ideas and methods, for which reason they have not been looked upon with favor by their unprogressive and primitively-disposed kinsmen of the Transvaal Republic. The conditions of the convention of 1881, by which the Transvaal became an independent but not a sovereign state, were irksome and distasteful to President Krüger from the beginning; and his efforts were directed to getting rid of British suzerainty and control of the foreign relations of his country, which he desired to have wholly independent in its foreign as well as in its domestic affairs. As President Krüger now desired to cultivate foreign relations, the suzerainty and foreign-relations provisions of the treaty of 1881 became particularly inconvenient. The previous isolation of the Transvaal Boers from all intercourse with the outside world was the reason why they and their country were comparatively unknown to the civilized world and was the main cause of the popular sympathy for the Boers throughout the world. Only as a guage. Orange and Other Boers. Boer Dissatis faction with British ainty. Results of Boer Isolation. |