a single shilling, and the State treasury contained
only twelve shillings and sixpence wherewith to pay the interest on a
comparatively heavy State debt, besides almost innumerable other
claims.

No wonder, therefore, that Burgers, in disgust, declared he would
sooner be a policeman under a strong government. "Matters are as bad
as they ever can be," said he; "they cannot be worse!" Hence its
annexation, in 1877, by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, without the
assistance of a solitary soldier, but with the eager assent of
thousands of the burghers, bade fair to prove the salvation of the
Transvaal, and probably would have done, had the easily-to-be-obtained
consent of the Volksraad been at once sought, and Lord Carnarvon's
promise of speedy South African Federation, together with a generous
measure of local self-government, been promptly redeemed. But European
complications, with serious troubles on the Indian frontier, caused
interminable delay in the maturing of this scheme; and as the
disappointed Boers grew restive, a "Hold your Jaw" Act was passed,
making it a penal offence for any Transvaaler even to discuss such
questions. In our simplicity we sit upon the safety valve and then
wonder why the boiler bursts. To the "Hold your Jaw" policy the Boer
reply was an appeal to arms; and at Majuba in the spring of 1881 their
rifles said what their jaws were forbidden to say. Majuba was indeed a
mere skirmish, an affair of outposts; but Magersfontein and Spion Kop
are the legitimate sons of Majuba.

[Sidenote: _The man who Schemed as well as Dreamed._]

Napoleon, with possibly a veiled reference to himself, once said to
the French people, "You have the men, but where is _The Man_?" The
Boers in the day of their uprising against British rule found "The
Man" in PAUL STEPHANUS KRUGER. To all South Africa a veritable "man of
Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as
their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness
no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British
subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of
the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a
consistent hater of all things British. When only ten years old, a
tattered, bare-legged, unlettered lad, he joined "The great Trek"
which in 1837 sought on the dangerous and dreary veldt beyond the Vaal
a refuge from British rule. He it was who, surviving the terrors of
those