TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE SENTENCES ON THE OUTLANDERS. THERE has not been in our history an affair at once so discreditable and so disastrous as this plot of the Rand capitalists for seizing Johannesburg. It was bad in conception, futile in execution, injurious in every one of its consequences. The Outlanders had no sort of right while they were foreigners enjoying protection and making money to rise in insurrection against the legal Government, which it is perfectly clear from the cipher telegrams given elsewhere that they prepared to do, while their instigation of a foreign invasion directed against their hosts, even if they were unpleasant hosts, was morally as well as legally a crime. Suppose the Germans in London, indignant at some repres- sive Alien Act, were to act as the Outlanders acted, what should we say and do ? The movement was from the beginning indefensible, while its management was so feeble as to be explicable only by the reflection that very rich men by the nature of things never can manage a revolution successfully. They never are, or can be, sufficiently in earnest. The Johannesburg leaders by their own confession were never certain whether their people were fully with them, whether they wanted Dr. Jameson or not, whether the occasion was one for fighting or only for some kind of compromise. They never fought when they ought to have fought ; they betrayed their rash ally, not, as we believe, either from treachery or cowardice, but from sheer bewilderment and incapacity ; and then, when all was lost and they were the prisoners of a Govern- ment at once irritated and alarmed, they, instead of either defending themselves or throwing themselves on the mercy of the tribunal, first defended themselves and then gave themselves away by pleading guilty. The effect even onthem- selves has been most disastrous. They incurred legally and formally a sentence for high treason which is always in all countries death, and thus placed themselves in such a position that sentences, which for them are sentences of great severity, seem to the majority of mankind merciful by comparison with that which might have been inflicted. There never was an attempted revolution so muddled, and the political consequences have been almost worse than the personal. The policy of fusion between the two white nationalities which occupy South Africa, a policy on which the whole future of that great dominion depends, has been thrown back for twenty years. The British Government has been compelled to appear as accuser-in-chief of its own citizens, and as a sort of suppliant for mercy to a subordinate State. A quarrel which may have far-reaching consequences has been generated between two great European States which have never in history exchanged a shot, and which have twice been allies in a great struggle for the freedom of Europe, while the British Government, which throughout has sought nothing but a peaceful continuance of the status quo, has been placed in a position which the rest of the civilised world, justly or unjustly, describes as one of humiliation. Its citizens are treated by a little African Power as traitors or incendiaries, and it has absolutely nothing to say except that mercy, whether deserved or undeserved, will prove in the end to be sound policy. If ever men deserved ill of their country by an act, 'whether of crime or folly, it has been the leaders of the insurrection against the Government of the Transvaal. And we say this without crediting or discrediting them with the Matabele revolt, though that also was one of the direct consequences of their rashness and stupidity. Grant their whole case as they describe it for themselves through a hundred pens, and still it is hardly possible for English statesmen to keep their patience with men so devoid of all the qualities of men of action.
We cannot see that those statesmen with Mr. Chamber- lain as their mouthpiece have as yet made any mistake, except the trifling and formal one of explaining to Presi- dent Kruger why, with a native rebellion in full blast, it had been decided to strengthen the garrisons in South Africa. He had no more to do with that decision than the Khedive bad, and explanation to him necessarily wore an appearance of apology. That, however, is a trifle, and of serious objection to the Government conduct of affairs we see none. It may be said, and we fully agree, that as a rule secrecy is essential to successful nego- tiation, but in this particular case very resolute and adroit persons were carrying on a campaign of misrepre- sentation, and if Mr. Chamberlain had not published his despatches and the replies of President Kruger, the whole attitude of the two Governments might have been miscon- ceived to the immediate and dangerous exacerbation of a struggle which was bitter enough already. Mr. Chamber.. lain has prevented the excited Boers from doing any act, such as shooting Dr. Jameson or hanging Colonel Rhodes, which would have made the quarrel irreparable, he has strongly urged the claims of British immigrants to be heard when they petition for civil rights, and he has offered the President of the Transvaal every courtesy should he act on his original and expressed intention of visiting London to settle the points maintained by his own State to be in dispute. It is perfectly true that Mr. Chamber- lain has not succeeded, except in securing comparative mercy for offenders, but that is not the result of his action but of the conditions which provoked it. We have no right to go to war with an unoffendiug Power because certain Englishmen, no matter from what motives, have done it a violent wrong, and, short of going to war, what do the objectors think ought to have been done or omitted which has been done or left undone ? The rights of the British Government under the Convention of 1884 have been strenuously affirmed. Its claim to be heard on behalf of its own subjects, when complaining of wrongs suffered in a foreign State, has been resolutely asserted. Its position as the paramount Power in South Africa, with the rights derivable from that position, has been. defended with a haughtiness which has satisfied even Jingoes, and which the Continent denounces as unbearably arrogant. And lastly, its conscience has been cleared,— a very essential matter with a population like ours. It is all very well to talk of the Outlanders' grievances, and the arrogance of the Burghers, and President Kruger's. cunning, but there is not a competent man in the country who does not feel convinced that if there had been no gold in the Transvaal the Boers might have governed and legislated, and, if you will, strutted in the Republic just as much and as long as they liked. The origin of the mischief is the search for gold, and to have fought a war- to facilitate that search, or rather to make of English- men the only searchers, would have revolted the instincts of every decent man in the land. It is nonsense to say the Boers are shutting up resources which properly belong to humanity. The Boers admit all gold and diamond diggers into their territory on terms which, though they are highly favourable to the Treasury of the Transvaal, are so little unfavourable to the immigrants that London is getting choked with African millionaires who outshine the old Nabobs of Burke's antipathy, and that the very men now condemned so severely by the Court of Pretoria are known to be worth twelve millions sterling. We have not an atom of liking for the Boers, who are at heart as well as in practice slaveholders, and who, so far from being " simple " farmers, love money at least as much as any of the immigrants do, but to accuse them, in the face of the facts, of taking an undue share of the resources of their own country, is not only foolish, but unjust. They do not take half the proportion which the Chartered Com- pany propose to take, though they take it no doubt in a clumsy way through monopolies, so that much of their taxation falls upon miners who do not succeed. No just cause of war has yet arisen, and short of war, the British Government has been as strenuously British as it well could be.
It seems to us that the true policy for both the British Government and the British people is to wait, and do nothing with as much dignity as they can, at least until the native revolt is over. That may demand very consider- able exertions. The news of the week is all good, especially the defeat of the advancing impis on Monday, but the tribes have still to be pursued into their own fastnesses, and there is still the danger arising from the rinderpest to be surmounted. That danger is exceedingly formidable. The wealth of the natives of South Africa is all in cattle, they estimate prosperity by oxen, and a murrain among their herds throws them into the kind of angry despair which the dread of hunger produces in a European city. The present epidemic, it is clear, is exceptionally malignant, and it appears to be spreading through all the provinces in which natives of the fighting type still remain numerous. Under such cir- cumstances the scientific preventive—the slaughter of every herd in which the disease has appeared—must seem to men who do not understand its necessity positively malig- nant. Even English herd-owners will not bear it without careful provision for compensation, and we suspect the com- pensation to native tribes in South Africa is very small and very irregularly paid. There may be a serious rising on this account, even it the Matabele are quickly defeated, and the natives are now so well armed and so well understand European tactics that their subjugation may demand a great expenditure both of energy and means. Our policy, therefore, should be to strengthen the garrisons, both local and Imperial, to improve so far as possible the means of mobilisation, and to leave the Dutch Republics, if they will allow us, severely alone to await the day when they will find that almost imperceptibly they have become British. Of course, if their Jingoes get the upper hand and either maltreat British citizens, or enter on a course of con- fiscation, or declare that the Republics are independent as regards foreign relations, force must be employed to bring them to their senses, but there is no reason to apprehend any rash measures of the kind. The Boers are, no doubt, puffed up with their constant good luck when resisting British attacks, but they must be well aware that they have nothing to gain by war, and that their position just as it is is one of the most fortunate in history. At least, we can recall no other Republic in which every man was for his wants well-off, in which all taxes were paid by foreign immigrants and foreign toil, and in which the whole community, without ever submitting to a conscription or entering a barrack, had acquired a high military reputation. We cannot believe that these advantages will be wilfully thrown away, and do not see wherein, if peace is maintained for the next ten years, Great Britain will suffer except from a few taunts; and what do taunts matter to a people with our history P If it amuses Dirck Cloete to consider John Bull cowardly or soft, let him consider it ; he will recon- sider that opinion before the end arrives. England is not in a hurry if the capitalists are. She survived Napoleon, and she will survive Kruger, not to mention the very memory that there ever was a Dutchman between the Zambesi and the Cape. What proportion of all those who can read now know that New York was once a possession and a settlement of the Dutch ?
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