great, one whose training and associations—whose very successes—had narrowed, and embittered and hardened him; as one who, when the greatness of success was his to take and to hold, turned his back on the supreme opportunity, and used his strength and qualities to fight against the spirit of progress, and all that the enlightenment of the age pronounces to be fitting and necessary to good government and a healthy State.
To an English nobleman, who, in the course of an interview, remarked, 'My father was a Minister of England, and twice Viceroy of Ireland,' the old Dutchman answered, 'And my father was a shepherd!' It was not pride rebuking pride; it was the ever-present fact which would not have been worth mentioning but for the suggestion of the antithesis. He too was a shepherd, and is—a peasant. It may be that he knows what would be right and good for his people, and it may be not; but it is sure that he realizes that to educate would be to emancipate, to broaden their views would be to break down the defences of their prejudices, to let in the new leaven would be to spoil the old bread, to give unto all men the rights of men would be to swamp for ever the party which is to him greater than the State. When one thinks on the one-century history of the people, much is seen that accounts for their extraordinary love of isolation, and their ingrained and passionate aversion to control; much too that draws to them a world of sympathy. And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations—trying to fight both fate and Nature—standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea—one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it.
To-day we are too close—so close that the meaner details, the blots and flaws, are all most plainly visible; the corruption, the insincerity, the injustice, the barbarity—all the unlovely touches that will by-and-by be forgotten—sponged away by the gentle hand of time, when only the picturesque will remain.
In order to understand the deep, ineradicable aversion to English rule which is in the heart and the blood and the bones of every Boer, and of a great many of their kindred who are themselves British subjects, one must recall the conditions under which the Dutch came under British rule. When, in 1814, the Cape was finally ceded to England, it had been twice acquired and held by conquest. The colonists were practically all Dutch, or Huguenots who had adopted Dutch as their language, and South Africa as their home. In any case they were people who, by tradition, teaching and experience, must have regarded the English as their enemies; people in whom there must have been roused bitter resentment against being handed over with the land to their traditional enemies. Were they serfs or subjects? has been asked on their behalf. Had Holland the right, the power, over freemen born, to say to them, 'You are our subjects, on our soil, and we have transferred the soil and with it your allegiance to England, whose sovereignty you will not be free to repudiate.' The Dutch colonist said 'No.' The English Government and the laws of the day said 'Yes.'
Early in the century the Boers began to trek away from the sphere of British rule. They were trekkers before that, indeed. Even in the days of Van Riebeck (1650) they had trekked away from the crowded parts, and opened up with the rifle and the plough new reaches of country; pioneering in a rough but most effective way, driving back the savage races, and clearing the way for civilization. There is, however, a great difference to be noted between the early treks of the emigrants and the treks 'from British rule.' In the former (with few exceptions) they went, knowing that their Government would follow them, and even anxious to have its support and its representatives; and the people who formed their migrating parties were those who had no or insufficient land in the settled parts, those who were starting life on their own account, or those whose families could not be located and provided for in the cramped circumstances of the more occupied parts. In the other case, rich and poor, old and young, went off as in the days and in the fashion of Moses or Abraham. They went without leave or help of the Government; secretly or openly they went, and they asked nothing but to be left alone. They left their homes, their people, the protection of an established Government and a rough civilization, and went out into the unknown. And they had, as it appeared to them, and as it will appear to many others, good reasons for taking so grave a step. For, although the colonists of South Africa enjoyed better government, and infinitely more liberty, under British rule, than they had under the tyrannical régime of the Dutch East India Company twenty years before (against which the Boers had twice risen in rebellion) there were many things which were not as they should have been. A generation had grown up which knew nothing of the arbitrary and oppressive rule of the old Dutch Company. Simple folks have long memories, and all the world over injuries make a deeper and more lasting impression than benefits; and the older generation of Boers, which could recall a condition of things contrasting unpleasantly with British rule, also remembered the executions of Slagters Nek—a vindication of the law which, when all allowance has been made for disturbed times, and the need of strong measures to stop rebellion in a newly-acquired country, seems to us to-day to have been harsh, unnecessary, and unwise in policy, and truly terrible in the manner of fulfilment.
The Boers have produced from their own ranks no literary champion to plead or defend their cause, and their earlier history is therefore little known, and often misunderstood; but to their aid has come Mr. George McCall Theal, the South African historian, whose years of laborious research have rescued for South Africa much that would otherwise have been lost. In his 'History of the Boers' Mr. Theal records the causes of the great emigration, and shows how the Boers stood up for fair treatment, and fought the cause, not of Boers alone, but of all colonists. Boers and British were alike harshly and ignorantly treated by high-handed Governors, and an ill-informed and prejudiced Colonial Office, who made no distinction on the grounds of nationality between the two; for we read that Englishmen had been expelled the country, thrown in gaol, had their property confiscated, and their newspapers suppressed for asserting their independence, and for trifling breaches of harsh laws. The following extract gives the best possible synopsis of the causes, and should whet an appetite which can be gratified by the purchase of Mr. Theal's book:
Why, then, did these men abandon their homes, sacrifice whatever property could not be carried away, and flee from English rule as from the most hateful tyranny? The causes are stated in a great mass of correspondence addressed by them to the Colonial Government, and now preserved, with other colonial records, in declarations published by some of them before leaving, in letters to their relatives and to newspapers, and in hundreds of pages of printed matter, prepared by friendly and hostile hands. The declaration of one of the ablest men among them assigns the following as the motives of himself and the party that went with him:
'GRAHAM'S TOWN,
'January 22, 1837
'1. We despair of saving the colony from those evils which threaten it by the turbulent and dishonest conduct of vagrants who are allowed to infest the country in every part; nor do we see any prospect of peace or happiness for our children in a country thus distracted by internal commotions.
'2. We complain of the severe losses which we have been forced to sustain by the emancipation of our slaves, and the vexatious laws which have been enacted respecting them.
'3. We complain of the continual system of plunder which we have for years endured from the Kaffirs and other coloured classes, and particularly by the last invasion of the colony, which has desolated the frontier districts, and ruined most of the inhabitants.
'4. We complain of the unjustifiable odium which has been cast upon us by interested and dishonest persons, under the name of religion, whose testimony is believed in England, to the exclusion of all evidence in our favour; and we can foresee, as the result of this prejudice, nothing but the total ruin of the country.
'5. We are resolved, wherever we go, that we will uphold the just principles of liberty; but, whilst we will take care that no one is brought by us into a condition of slavery, we will establish such regulations as may suppress crime, and preserve proper relations between master and servant.
'6. We solemnly declare that we leave this colony
