lly
pursued was the right one, little fault can be found with the terms
actually agreed to. No doubt they were generous, but they gave the
British Government practically a free hand to shape the settlement of
the country, and left it to them to decide at what time, and by what
stages, to establish self-government in the new colonies. The two
respects in which the Vereeniging terms seemed at first sight
dangerously lenient were the undertaking to allow the Boers to possess
rifles for their protection and the recognition of the Dutch language
in the law courts and public schools. Yet both of these concessions
are justified by considerations of practical convenience and sound
policy. In respect of the first it must be remembered that in certain
districts of the Transvaal the population is composed of a very small
number of Europeans, almost exclusively Boers, living in isolated
homesteads, together with a native population many times as numerous
and still under the immediate authority of its tribal chiefs. The
refusal to allow the Boers thus circumstanced to provide themselves
with the only weapons sufficient to protect them against occasional
Kafir outrages and depredations would have thrown a heavy
responsibility upon the new administration, or involved it in an
altogether disproportionate expenditure on European and native police.
At the same time, in view of the smallness of the Boer population in
such districts, the necessity for obtaining a licence (required under
the clause in question) provided the Government with an efficient
remedy against incipient disaffection. For under the licence system--a
system generally adopted as a check upon the acquisition of arms by
the natives in South Africa--the number of rifles possessed by the
Boers in any particular district would be known to the Government;
while, at the same time, the power to refuse or withdraw the privilege
of possessing a rifle from any person believed to be disaffected to
British rule would form an additional safeguard.

In respect of the second concession, there could be no question, of
course, as to the desirability of hastening the general adoption of
English as the common language of the Europeans of both races in South
Africa. But any attempt to proscribe the Dutch language would have
resulted in creating an obstinate desire to preserve it on the part of
the Boers, coupled with a sense of injury; and would, therefore, have
retarded rather than advanc