THE CRY OF THE OUTLANDER.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")
S IR,—A few weeks ago (if I remember rightly) a correspondent favoured you with a Greek version of the situation in France from one of the Greek elegiac poets. May I venture to cap this by sending you the "cry of the Outlander," as my pupils and I found it this morning, enshrined in the pages of Sallust's Catiline ? I give the Latin, and append to it a translation, which is certainly free, but, I think, not wholly unfair :— "Mihi in dies magis animus accenditur, cum considero, quEe conditio vita futura sit, nisi nosmet ipsi vindicamus in libertatem. Nam, postquam respublica in paucorum ius atque ditionem con- cessit, server illis reges, tetrarchee vectigales esse : populi, nationes stipendia pendere : cet,eri omnes, strenui, both, nobiles atque ignobiles, volgus fuimus, sine gratis., sine auctoritate, his obnoxii
quibus, si respublica valeret, formidini essemus Itaque minis gratis, potentia, honos, divitiee apud illos aunt, aut ubi illi volunt : repulses nobis reliquere, pericula, indicia QuEe quousque tandem patiemini ?"
My blood boils more and more every day, as I think what our conditions will be, unless we make a bold bid for freedom. Since the control of the Republic passed into the hands of the Kruger clique, millionaires and mineowners have been its taxpayers, Swazis and Matabeles its tributaries. We Outlanders, in spite of our work on the Rand, in spite of our unimpeachable attitude —high and low alike— have been treated like the scum of the earth. We have no power, no votes : we are at the mercy of these Boers, to whom we should be a nightmare, if the Republic were sound [and we had our rights]. They have all the power, all the money, all the offices, or the control of them. We are left with "rejected addresses," Boer police, and bogus trials How long is it to last ?
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