e year's residence. In 1882 it was
raised to five years, the reasonable limit which obtains both in Great
Britain and in the United States. Had it remained so, it is safe to say
that there would never have been either an Uitlander question or a war.
Grievances would have been righted from the inside without external
interference.

In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the franchise was
raised so as to be only attainable by those who had lived fourteen years
in the country. The Uitlanders, who were increasing rapidly in numbers
and were suffering from the formidable list of grievances already
enumerated, perceived that their wrongs were so numerous that it was
hopeless to have them set right seriatim, and that only by obtaining the
leverage of the franchise could they hope to move the heavy burden which
weighed them down. In 1893 a petition of 13,000 Uitlanders, couched in
most respectful terms, was submitted to the Raad, but met with
contemptuous neglect. Undeterred, however, by this failure, the National
Reform Union, an association which was not one of capitalists, came back
to the attack in 1894. They drew up a petition which was signed by
35,000 adult male Uitlanders, as great a number probably as the total
Boer male population of the country. A small liberal body in the Raad
supported this memorial and endeavoured in vain to obtain some justice
for the new-comers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece of this select band.
'They own half the soil, they pay at least three-quarters of the taxes,'
said he. 'They are men who in capital, energy, and education are at
least our equals. What will become of us or our children on that day
when we may find ourselves in a minority of one in twenty without a
single friend among the other nineteen, among those who will then tell
us that they wished to be brothers, but that we by our own act have made
them strangers to the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal sentiments
were combated by members who asserted that the signatures could not
belong to law-abiding citizens, since they were actually agitating
against the law of the franchise, and others whose intolerance was
expressed by the defiance of the member already quoted, who challenged
the Uitlanders to come out and fight. The champions of exclusiveness and
racial hatred won the day. The memorial was rejected by sixteen votes to
eight, and the franchise law was, on the initiative of the President,
actually made more st