4.--_Security of the Individual according to Boer ideas._

Krüger's petitioners further asserted that the petition to the Queen was
"the work of capitalists and not of the public." As a matter of fact,
incensed at the murder of Edgar--a working man--the men who were the
first to sign that petition were working men. The principal mining
company of Johannesburg had shown an example of that prudence we see too
often among capitalists, and had dismissed Mr. Wybergh, the President of
the _South African League_, who was one of their employés. The President
of the Chamber of Mines, Mr. Rouliot, in his statement of January 26th,
1899, took pains to dissociate it from the campaign of agitation. This
display of weakness availed nothing. The Government of Pretoria took up
the attitude that has succeeded so well in deceiving public opinion:
that of a council composed of honest men, innocent victims of capitalist
rapacity.


5.--_The Murder of Mrs. Appelbe._

Here is a proof of the security enjoyed by the Uitlanders, at the very
time when the Government of Pretoria closed its list of signatures to
the counter-petition. On Friday April 28th, Mrs. Appelbe, the wife of a
Wesleyan minister of Johannesburg, was going to chapel accompanied by a
Mr. Wilson, a chemist. They were set upon by a band of men in the pay,
it is said, of canteen keepers, sellers of liquor to the natives. Mrs.
Appelbe received such severe injuries that she died on the Thursday
following. Mr. Wilson, who was badly wounded in the head, eventually
recovered. On May 8th, the police affected to know nothing of the
outrage; nor did they ever discover the murderers of Mrs. Appelbe, thus