Gradually In The
Press Of The English-Speaking Countries The Raid Was Ceasing To
Obscure The Issue.
More and more clearly it was coming out that no
permanent settlement was possible where the majority of the
population was oppressed by the minority.
They had tried peaceful
means and failed. They had tried warlike means and failed. What was
there left for them to do? Their own country, the paramount power
of South Africa, had never helped them. Perhaps if it were directly
appealed to it might do so. It could not, if only for the sake of
its own imperial prestige, leave its children for ever in a state
of subjection. The Uitlanders determined upon a petition to the
Queen, and in doing so they brought their grievances out of the
limits of a local controversy into the broader field of
international politics. Great Britain must either protect them or
acknowledge that their protection was beyond her power. A direct
petition to the Queen praying for protection was signed in April
1899 by twenty-one thousand Uitlanders. From that time events moved
inevitably towards the one end. Sometimes the surface was troubled
and sometimes smooth, but the stream always ran swiftly and the
roar of the fall sounded ever louder in the ears.
CHAPTER 3.
THE NEGOTIATIONS.
The British Government and the British people do not desire any
direct authority in South Africa. Their one supreme interest is
that the various States there should live in concord and
prosperity, and that there should be no need for the presence of a
British redcoat within the whole great peninsula. Our foreign
critics, with their misapprehension of the British colonial system,
can never realise that whether the four-coloured flag of the
Transvaal or the Union Jack of a self-governing colony waved over
the gold mines would not make the difference of one shilling to the
revenue of Great Britain. The Transvaal as a British province would
have its own legislature, its own revenue, its own expenditure, and
its own tariff against the mother country, as well as against the
rest of the world, and England be none the richer for the change.
This is so obvious to a Briton that he has ceased to insist upon
it, and it is for that reason perhaps that it is so universally
misunderstood abroad. On the other hand, while she is no gainer by
the change, most of the expense of it in blood and in money falls
upon the home country. On the face of it, therefore, Great Britain
had every reason to avoid so formidable a task as the conquest of
the South African Republic. At the best she had nothing to gain,
and at the worst she had an immense deal to lose. There was no room
for ambition or aggression. It was a case of shirking or fulfilling
a most arduous duty.
There could be no question of a plot for the annexation of the
Transvaal. In a free country the Government cannot move in advance
of public opinion, and public opinion is influenced by and
reflected in the newspapers. One may examine the files of the press
during all the months of negotiations and never find one reputable
opinion in favour of such a course, nor did one in society ever
meet an advocate of such a measure. But a great wrong was being
done, and all that was asked was the minimum change which would set
it right, and restore equality between the white races in Africa.
'Let Kruger only be liberal in the extension of the franchise,'
said the paper which is most representative of the sanest British
opinion, 'and he will find that the power of the republic will
become not weaker, but infinitely more secure. Let him once give
the majority of the resident males of full age the full vote, and
he will have given the republic a stability and power which nothing
else can. If he rejects all pleas of this kind, and persists in his
present policy, he may possibly stave off the evil day, and
preserve his cherished oligarchy for another few years; but the end
will be the same.' The extract reflects the tone of all of the
British press, with the exception of one or two papers which
considered that even the persistent ill usage of our people, and
the fact that we were peculiarly responsible for them in this
State, did not justify us in interfering in the internal affairs of
the republic. It cannot be denied that the Jameson raid and the
incomplete manner in which the circumstances connected with it had
been investigated had weakened the force of those who wished to
interfere energetically on behalf of British subjects. There was a
vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists were
engineering the situation for their own ends. It is difficult to
imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a
state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely
it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances
of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him
would be to remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did
exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the
remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain
was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it
would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and
a morbid, restless conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous
evils from which a modern progressive State has to suffer.
It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their
petition praying for protection to their native country. Since the
April previous a correspondence had been going on between Dr.
Leyds, Secretary of State for the South African Republic, and Mr.
Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, upon the existence or
non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one hand, it was contended
that the substitution of a second convention had entirely annulled
the first; on the other, that the preamble of the first applied
also to the second.
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