TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ARE THE OUTLANDERS REALLY OPPRESSED? ARE the Outlanders really oppressed ? That is the question which the Dean of Winchester asks in the able and moderate letter which we publish in another column. It is one which it is most important should be asked and answered, and we are grateful to our correspondent for having put the issue so plainly. The Dean of Winchester divides his main question into two sub-questions : (a) " Do the grievances of the Out- landers really amount to what may be fairly called oppression ? " and (b) Is the oppression, if it can be shown to exist, sufficient to justify war ? Let us take first the nature of the oppression from which the Outlanders suffer. Oppression is, of course, a relative term. 'What would be oppression under one set of circum- stances., at one epoch, or for one race, is not necessarily always oppression. What we have got to ask is,—Is the treatment of the white immigrants in the Transvaal —Englishmen, Scotch men, Irishmen, Australians, Canadians, and Cape Colonists—of a kind which can fairly be called oppression ? We believe that it is, and that it can be shown to be as bad as or worse than what we all agree to regard as oppression,—the treat- ment of the Italians by Austria during the "fifties" and the treatment accorded by us to the Dutch in Cape Colony sixty years ago.
Let us ask our correspondent, and those who think with him, one or two questions. They do not by any means exhaust the case of the Outlanders against the Boers, but at least they show some of the oppressions complained of. (1) Is it not oppression in a modern white community to keep the majority without their fair share in the govern- ment, and to tax them without giving them representa- tion ? The Dutch in Cape Colony in the "thirties" certainly thought it was so, and stated their belief in the strong and vigorous words lately quoted by Sir William Harcourt. But the Outlanders are deprived of the right of self-government, and are taxed, and heavily taxed, without representation. (2) Is there not oppression when people are at the mercy of a police force whose members are both stupid and brutal, who will kill a man at sight if he appears to be going to resist arrest (witness the Edgar case), who issue warrants on affidavits they know to be perjured, who use agents-provocateurs (witness the case of Mr. Nicholls), and who try to break up public meetings by threatening to send in men to strip the women naked who were attending the meeting (witness the reform meeting this spring) ? (3) Is it not an oppression for the majority of a nation to be forced in the 'DAV Courts and in all public business to forego the use of their own language ? We allow—"allow" is not the right word, for we do no act of grace and favour, but merely refrain from com- mitting an injustice—the French Canadians and the Cape Dutch to use their own tongue, and even the Maori representatives are, we believe, allowed to speak Maori in the New Zealand Parliament. Everywhere indeed (witness what is going on in Austria) the question of language is regarded as of the utmost importance. Yet we are told that it is absurd to represent the refusal of the Boers to allow the use of English as well as Dutch in official matters as an act of oppression. The Cape Dutch, at any rate, did not think it was an un- important matter,—for they placed the demand to use their own language side by side with the demand for representation and reform of the Law Courts. (4) Is it not an oppression, and especially for unenfranchised men, when the Law Courts are placed within the control of the Government and when Judges who will not take orders from the Executive are driven from the Bench ? We thought it oppression in the days of the Stuarts. Why is it not oppression now ? We do not want to exaggerate. Here is what is said as to the matter by a very able and extremely moderate writer—" Africanus "—in an article in the new number of the Asiatic Quarterly. After men- tioning the complicated constitutional quarrel over the alleged testing power of the Courts, he proceeds :—" But the practical aspect of the question is that Mr. Justice Koetze bad enjoyed the confidence of all classes in the Transvaal, and the Bench was known to be a safeguard- of individual liberty. But when Mr. Koetze was deposed, and replaced by Mr. Gregorowski, a creature of the Presi- dent, all South Africa knew that the Transvaal Judicial Bench had become the tool of the Executive." (5) Is it not oppression when a man's religion is inquired into before he can be allowed to enter State employment? Surely those who have always insisted here that a man shall suffer no inquisition in regard to his creed will not deny this ? Yet as The writer of a letter in Thursday's Times shows, no man who is a Roman Catholic is employed by the South African Republic. (6) Is it not oppression when the liberty of the Press is interfered with and news- paper editors are liable to be treated as newspaper editors have recently been treated in the Transvaal ? (7) Is it not oppression that the money contributed by the majority in order to promote public education is spent on schools in which English is treated as a foreign tongue ? (8) Is it not oppression when the minority arm themselves and do not allow the majority to carry arms ? Stay-at-home people who have not considered the question • in detail may think this no oppression, but put them in a place filled with disarmed black men and side by side with a minority of armed white men, and we venture to say that they will not take long to see that disarmament under such circumstances is oppression. To be turned into a White Kaffir is very keen oppression in South Africa.
But we need not go on. We have purposely avoided the questions of misgovernment connected. with the liquor and native questions and with the corruption of Government officials which poisons the whole Adminis- tration and so grievously handicaps the poor man. We think it might fairly be argued that a corrupt and in- efficient Administration which cannot provide for sani- tation, which allows a scandalous liquor traffic among the natives, which could not protect a woman from murder at the hands of the men whose misdeeds her husband had ex- posed, must be described as oppressive when those who suffer under it, and would gladly reform it, are excluded from providing a remedy. We do not, however, desire to press this point. All we want to urge is that it can be shown that oppression does exist,—provided, as we have said, that treatment such as we accorded to the Cape Dutch sixty years ago, and treatment such as Austria gave to Lombardy and Venice, is to be regarded as oppression. But our correspondent, the Dean of Winchester, does not seem to think that the oppression, even if it exists, would justify war. He tells us that seventy years ago the majority here were in the position of the Outlanders, and then he asks would those wrongs have justified civil war ? We do not desire to shirk his challenge. Most assuredly those wrongs would have justified civil war. What is more, they would not have been got rid of had not Englishmen been prepared to resort to war to put an end to them. The Lords before the Reform Bill were like the Boer oligarchy. They would yield nothing to moral pressure. When, however, the people of Birmingham began to drill, and when it became evident that unless they passed "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill" the sword would take the place of argument, the Peers yielded. A great
lawyer—the late Mr. Commissioner Hill—used, we believe, to show a rifle which, as a young man, he, in company with many others, had bought during the Reform agita- tion. He and those who thought like him were determined that if the Lords would not yield with- out force they should have force, for fortunately the unenfranchised English, unlike the Outlanders, had the right to carry arms. That the Lords yielded to force and not to mere moral pressure cannot possibly be doubted, and who will dare to say that it was not right and wise to prepare to fight rather than to submit to the con- tinuance of oligarchic rule ? To maintain that civil and political wrongs, when sufficiently grave, and endured by a sufficiently large number of people, ought not to be righted by force of arms, seems to us to belie all the lessons of history. What would England be now if her people had never been willing to use force to establish and to guard the rights of self-government and individual liberty ?
Before we leave our correspondent's letter we must say a word as to his statement that it is impossible to insist upon race equality in the Transvaal, because "equality of rights would only lead to perpetual friction between the two races, which are so diametrically opposed that the possibility of their fusion seems well-nigh hope- less ; especially if their natural antagonism is embittered by war." Surely that is a very dangerous principle of action. If we had applied it at the Cape, and in Natal, and in Canada, we should have ruined the Empire. On the 91) contrary, we hold that the only possible solution of the South African problem is to base the polity of what Mr. Kipling has so finely called "the last and the largest Empire" on absolute race equality. We tried the plan of putting one race above the other, and the brave and stubborn Dutch taught us that we were in the wrong. Like sensible men, we admitted our mistake, and in Cape Colony and Natal allow no political distinction to be made between British and Dutch. Now it seems that the Boers of the Transvaal must be taught a similar lesson. If they had only been reasonable and had inclined their hearts to wisdom they might have learned it slowly and little by little. Unfortunately, and no one can regret it more than we do, they appear determined not to learn the lesson of justice and good sense except at the hands of that sternest of schoolmasters, the sword.
Previous page
