not
educated enough to be clerks!'

{18} (July, 1899.) The law has been declared by the law officers
of the Crown to be a breach of the London Convention.

CHAPTER III.

THE ORIGIN OF THE MOVEMENT.

Having failed in their constitutional attempts to secure a reasonable
voice in the government, or any redress of their grievances, there
came the time when men's thoughts naturally turned to the last
expedient--force. Up to and so late as the Volksraad Session of 1895
a constitutional agitation for rights had been carried on by the
Transvaal National Union, a body representing the unenfranchised
portion of the population. Of its members but few belonged to the
class of wealthy mine and land owners: they had so far abstained from
taking any part in a political organization which was viewed with
dislike and suspicion by the Government and the great majority of the
Boers. It has been asserted by a few Progressive members of the Raad
that many of the Boers were themselves opposed to the policy adopted
towards the newcomers; but, whilst this may be to some extent true,
it is more than questionable whether any of the burghers were willing
to concede a share in the power of government, although it is certain
that great numbers would not have taken active steps against the
Uitlanders but for the invasion by a foreign force. Any extending of
the franchise means to the great majority of the Boers a
proportionate loss of independence.

When the matter of the Independence of the Republic is discussed it
must not be forgotten that independence conveys something to the
Boers which is radically different from what it means to anyone else.
That the State should continue for ever to be independent and
prosperous--a true republic--would be mockery heaped on injury if the
absolute domination by the Boer party should cease; and when the
parrot-like cry of 'The Independence of the State is threatened' is
raised again and again _a propos_ of the most trivial measures and
incidents, this idea is the one that prompts it. Instances
innumerable could be quoted seemingly illustrating the Boer
legislators' inability to distinguish between simple measures of
reform and justice, and measures aimed at undermining the State's
stability and independence. It is not stupidity! It is that the Boer
realizes at least one of the inevitable consequences of reform--that
the ignorant and incapable must go under. Reform is the death-knell
of his oliga