Raid and Reform : by a Pretoria Prisoner. By Alfred
P. Hillier,. M.D., &c. (Macmillan and Co.)—The adherents of the Reform movement in Johannesburg are as garrulous on paper as they were ineffectual in action, but Dr. Hillier's book contains much interesting information about Transvaal affairs. His sketch of the early history of the South African Republic, although slight,. throws some light upon a series of events about which most Englishmen are absolutely ignorant, although it is well known to students that the Boers passed through a period of civil war in the " fifties." Dr. Hillier shows that he is free from racial prejudice, and he realises, with regret, that the outbreak of 1890 has had the unfortunate, but inevitable, effect of turning a con- • stitutional movement, with which the progressive Dutch were in sympathy, into a racial conflict. His criticisms of the Transvaal oligarchy are just ; but, while he remarks with reason that the authorities of the South African Republic have transgressed against those Republican principles to which they used to appeal, be hardly seems to understand that the Boers have unconsciously returned to the old Greek Republican ideal,—the theory of a small community of freemen with equal rights amongst fun' citizens, ruling over a greater population of " resident aliens" and barbarians. The idea is an anachronism, and, in the case of the Transvaal Boers, it is due to a peculiar reading of the Old Testament, and not to any acquaintance with Greek history ; but at the same time it would be well if we were to acknowledge that on some such theory of government, which they are too inar- ticulate to explain, the Burghers base their political conduct. Annexed to the book are two 'very interesting articles on the- "Antiquity of Man in South Africa," which are out of place in their environment. The revision of the proof-sheets appears to have been somewhat careless.
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