THE BOERS AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.
PRESIDENT KRUGER, in his message to the Volksraad on the Jameson raid, declaring his in- tention to discuss with them " in later and calmer moments the causes which led to the dastardly plot against the State," says that it is " the firm resolve of the Government to maintain the sacred rights and interests of the Republic, and establish the same on a more firm and secure foundation." That., of course, is very ambiguous language, according as we interpret the " more firm and secure foundation " in one sense or another. But it is, at all events, a good omen that the President prorogued the meeting of the Volksraad to the May Session. Three or four months hence there will be, or at least ought to be, much more chance of reasonable and sober deliberations than there can be now. And while the delay gives time for the cooling down of passion, it also gives time for Mr. Chamberlain to place before the President of the Boer State the considerations showing it to be his true wisdom so to modify the Constitution as to include a much larger infusion of the immigrants, whose taxes really pay the way of the State, and whose wishes it ought to be impossible much longer to ignore. A "Republic" which is not, as Lord Tennyson expressed it, "broad-based upon the people's will," is only a parody of what a Republic should be.
It is stated by those who wish to set the Transvaal free from the influence of the United Kingdom, that the Conven- tion of 1884 virtually abolished, and was understood by the Boers as abolishing, the Suzerainty of the United Kingdom, because the word " Suzerainty " was altogether ignored in that Convention. But political sagacity does not depend on the skill with which objectionable words are excluded from any important contract, but on the lucid expression of the real drift of the contract as it is actually made. Now, nothing can be plainer than that a contract which gives another Power an absolute veto on a numerous class of possible engagements,— both foreign and commercial,—as our Convention of 1884 with the Boers does, altogether establishes the thing Suzerainty, whether it ignores the word or not. No State can be a Sovereign State which acknowledges in the most explicit way that it cannot enter into agreement with a foreign Power, and cannot impose a certain class of taxes on the residents within its own bounds, without the consent of a Government over which it exerts no control. Call such a State what you please, semi- Sovereign, or limited in certain directions by the will of that independent Government, no one who under- stands the meaning of words at all, can call it a really independent State. It does not matter much what the word used may be, whether it is said to be under the suzerainty, or under the protection, or under the guidance and control, of another Government, the fact re- mains that it is not free to take whatever resolves it pleases, without the consent of that separate Government; in other words, that so far as the specified limitations go, it is in leading-strings to that other Government. No doubt the British Government in 1884 dropped the word "Suzerainty,"—very unwisely, as we think,—to soothe the feelings of the Boers who were restive at the use of a word which not only seemed to limit their independence, but did limit it in the most specific manner. It was a foolish concession to a sensitiveness that could not brook the facing of plain facts. But though the two contracting Powers consented to get rid of plain speaking for the sake of sparing sensitive national feelings, they did not get rid. of the actual obligations which that plain speaking would have made more conspicuous, for they re-enacted those obligations in the most express and emphatic terms. Excepting only with the Orange Free State, no engagement was to be made with any Power on the surface of the globe, which the Government of Great Britain and Ireland was not at liberty to veto, and no system of taxation was to be adopted which would have placed the foreign residents in the Transvaal at a disadvantage as com- pared with the Boer residents in relation to any particular class of financial transactions. Within these duly de- fined spheres, the Boer Republic was refused the right of making its own laws. It was left free to make the suffrage as limited as it chose. It was left free to do what un- fortunately it has done, deny the Outlanders every scrap of practical influence over the legislation of the State. But it was not left free to enter into separate engagements with other Powers, European or otherwise, and it was not left free to adopt any commercial and financial system it chose, whether Protective or otherwise. In other words, within these two spheres, it was to be more or less subject to the will of the British Government. No doubt, after the Convention of 1884, the Boer Republic was to be held in somewhat looser and less effectual leading-strings than it was between 1881 and 1884, but it was to be held in very conspicuous and well-defined leading-strings still. About that fact there is no possibility of doubt. It lies on the very surface of the later Convention, nor was there any suggestion that the thing Suzerainty was abolished, whatever may or may not be urged as the reason for the suppression of the word.
Now the question remains whether it was indeed politic or wise to leave the Boers completely free as to the exclusion of all Outlanders from political power, while refusing them the right to have a foreign policy and commercial policy of their own. For our own part we do not think it was. We think a great mistake was made, when the Boers were permitted to establish as close an oligarchy as they pleased for the internal government of the State, and for the per- manent exclusion of all Outlanders from political power; while the Boer rulers were prohibited from entering into any negotiations with foreign States, whether political or commercial, which the Government of Great Britain and Ireland might disapprove. If you take power to forbid a State doing certain things which it is certain to wish to do under given conditions, it would be much better to take power also to forbid those conditions. We see now that the Boers were encouraged by some of the European Powers to keep down the large mining population which entered the Transvaal chiefly from Great Britain, though they were denied the right of contracting treaties with those Powers. In fact, their Consuls in foreign lands, in Germany for instance, became quasi-diplomats, and in that manner veiled foreign relations were established which led to the recent crisis when Germany almost declared for the independence of the South African Republic, and was understood to have encouraged it to assert its absolute independence of Great Britain. If the Outlanders had been fairly, or even decently, repre- sented in the legislature of the Transvaal, no complication of this kind could have arisen. It seems to us that the British Government of 1884 would have done much better if it had not ignored the Suzerainty, and had taken measures to ensure to the Outlanders in the Transvaal some reasonable share in the internal government of the Republic. But the desire of diplomatists to smooth over appearances, and let the language used look more agreeable than the facts, has often resulted, as it has resulted in this case, in making the facts much more dis- agreeable and unmanageable than they need have been.
For the present, Dr. Jameson's very ill-conceived and ill-executed raid has tied Mr. Chamberlain's hands. He cannot press now upon President Kruger the admission of the Outlanders to true political power with half the :authority and effect which would have attached to his representations. if this unfortunate act of war bad never taken place. But even now he should do what he can. It is childish to take securities against an anti.English foreign policy, and yet to leave the Boer oligarchy 'So completely undiluted, that an anti-English bias in the Boer foreign policy is all but inevitable. What the 'Conventions of both 1881 and 1884 explicitly contemplated was so to arrange the Constitution that the Boers and the English inhabitants of the Transvaal should be enabled to live together without coming to blows every two or three years. Well, the only conditions to secure that would be conditions tending at least towards putting the British and the Dutch inhabitants on some sort of political equality. It is hardly an opportune moment for effecting this object, when the British inhabitants have so flagrantly and violently misbehaved themselves. Nevertheless, President Kruger will never attain that " more firm and secure foundation " for which he wishes, without conceding to the Outlanders the political power to negative laws which oppress them as effectually as a similar power is now possessed by the Boers. The only real security for harmony between the two very different elements, is to make them one people. And Mr. Chamberlain, in pressing this policy on President Kruger, will have the great advantage that what he places before Mr. Kruger with all the authority of a statesman who can interfere effectually whenever the attempt is made to undermine English influence in the Transvaal, the steady stream of English immigrants will render more and more visibly inevitable even to those keen but jealous eyes. A narrow oligarchy in a populous country san never be "secure ;" and the " firmer " it is in defying the popular pressure for a larger and more comprehensive system, the more obviously insecure it will be. It is madness for a small caste to hold out against a constantly increasing pressure of popular feeling. What the British Government can do is to prevent the bursting of the floodgates by inducing the Boer oligarchy gradually but deliberately to open them before they give way with a crash.
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