not to think a little of the Boers themselves, their characteristics and
their failings. At Johannesburg I had been specially struck by men, who
knew them from long experience, telling me how fully they appreciated
the good points of the burghers--for instance, their bravery, their love
of their country, and their simple, unquestioning, if unattractive
faith, which savoured of that of the old Puritans. Against these
attributes their pig-headedness, narrow-mindedness, laziness, and
slovenliness had to be admitted. All these defects militated against
their living in harmony with a large, increasing, and up-to-date
community like the Johannesburg Uitlanders. Still, one could not forget
that the Transvaal was their country, ceded to them by the English
nation. They left Cape Colony years ago, to escape our laws, which they
considered unjust. It is certain we should never have followed them into
the Transvaal but for the sudden discovery of the gold industry; it is
equally true they had not the power or the wish to develop this for
themselves, and yet without it they were a bankrupt nation. There is no
doubt that the men who made the most mischief, and who for years
embarrassed the President, were the "Hollanders," or officials sent out
from the mother-country of the Dutch. They looked on the Transvaal only
as a means for getting rich. Hence the fearful state of bribery and
corruption among them, from the highest official downwards. But this
very bribery and corruption were sometimes exceedingly convenient, and I
remember well, when I revisited Johannesburg in 1902, at the conclusion
of the war, hearing people inveigh against the hard bargains driven by
the English Government; they even went so far as to sigh again for the
good old days of Kruger's rule. Now all is changed once more, after
another turn of the kaleidoscope of time, and yet it is well to remember
that such things have indeed been.