"England just wants to annex the Transvaal, and no doubt the Orange Free
State too. This we know; but what she does not know is, that we can at
this moment reverse the tale--we can seize in one day Cape Town, Port
Elizabeth, East London, and Durban, and within a very short time turn
every Englishman out of the Colonies, out of the land which England has
robbed us of."

Those words were spoken by a Bond man who is known to rarely speak in
public. When asked by a Uitlander how it could be done, he relapsed into
his usual prudent reticence, and merely remarked grimly, "We can do it."

But for subsequent revelations and the present sequel those words would
have been forgotten, and were at the time attributed by some to mere
boastful exuberance.

In July last the topic was discussed by some Boers at the house of a
highly placed military official, about the five per cent. tax upon the
profits of the gold industry. One said it should be raised to
twenty-five per cent. for the benefit of the burgher estate. That
official, who, by the way, had just returned from a gathering of country
officials at Pretoria, sententiously replied "that it was no more a
question of any tribute, but of taking the mines altogether out of the
capitalists' hands"; and when another burgher interposed a doubt as to
the fairness of such a proceeding, that official continued by saying,
"Fairness indeed! it is we who have submitted to unfairness only too
long--_ons wil nou Engelse schiet_ (we want now to go on the battue of
Englishmen)."

When the Transvaal Government had secured the assent of both Volksraads
to the seven years' franchise measure it was thought desirable, as a