A remarkable letter from the Rev. John Moffat, son of
the famous missionary and explorer, who has himself in a long residence in South Africa earned an honourable reputation as the friend of the natives, is published in Thursday's Daily News. Dr. Moffat states his conviction that Mr. Kruger never intended to make any concessions ; that if we had placed an adequate defensive force on our borders before the certainty of war, it would have been accepted as a menace by the Boers ; that the wrongs of the Outlanders were only one symptom of a disease which originated at Pretoria in 1881; and that the ascendency of the Cape Boers would have made matters worse for the natives in the Colony. " But," he adds, "the condition of the native in the Transvaal is 100 years behind that of our natives in the Cape Colony, and you may take it as a broad fact that in proportion as Boer domination prevails the gravitation of the native towards slavery will be accelerated. The Nonconformist Liberals, who are now so fiery against what they consider an injustice to the Boers, stood by like dumb dogs in 1881, and allowed 500,000 natives to be handed back to Boer domination, and why ? Because it was necessary to support Mr. Gladstone in his policy of retrocession." The Boers may be "struggling to be free" themselves, but they are struggling to keep the natives and Outlanders in serfdom.
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