urvey will, moreover, aid in bringing into stronger
relief those naked truths to which the tribunal of impartial history
will assuredly testify hereafter, in adjudging the case between
ourselves and our enemy. And the questions which present themselves for
solution in the approaching conflict have their origin deep in the
history of the past; it is only by the light of that history that it
becomes possible to discern and appreciate the drifting straws which
float on the currents of to-day. By its light we are more clearly
enabled to comprehend the truth, to which our people appeal as a final
justification for embarking upon the war now so close at hand.

History will show convincingly that the pleas of humanity, civilisation,
and equal rights, upon which the British Government bases its actions,
are nothing else but the recrudescence of that spirit of annexation and
plunder which has at all times characterised its dealings with our
people.

THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

The cause for which we are about to take up arms is the same, though in
somewhat different form, as that for which so many of our forefathers
underwent the most painful experiences centuries ago, when they
abandoned house and fatherland to settle at the Cape of Good Hope, to
enjoy there that freedom of conscience which was denied them in the land
of their birth. In the beautiful valleys lying between the blue
mountains of the Cape of Good Hope they planted the seed-germ of
liberty, which sprang up and has since developed with such startling
rapidity into the giant tree of to-day--a tree which not only covers a
considerable area in this part of the world, but will yet, in God's good
time, we feel convinced, stretch out its leafy branches over the whole
of South Africa. In spite of the oppressive bonds of the East India
Company, the young settlement, containing the noblest blood of old
Europe as well as its most exalted aspirations, grew so powerfully that
in 1806, when the Colony passed into the hands of England, a strong
national sentiment and a spirit of liberty had already been developed.

[Sidenote: The Africander spirit of liberty]

As is forcibly expressed in an old document dating from the most
renowned period of our history, there grew out of the two stocks of
Hollanders and French Huguenots "a united people, one in religion,
united in peaceful reverence for the law, but with a feeling of liberty
and independence equal to the wide expanse o