as been exactly the same. Their grievance
against him is incomparably worse, because of their liability to
become involved in the consequences of a policy which they are not
allowed to influence. But President Kruger is, above all things,
practical. Everything is gauged by the measure of the advantage which
it can bring to him; and his treatment of the Free State is
determined by their utility to him and his power over them, and is
not influenced by their moral claims upon his good will. Natal and
Portugal have their experience of broken agreements and strained
interpretations, of intrigues with native subjects and neighbours
for the extension of rights or boundaries, all designed to benefit
the Transvaal and to undermine them. All, all with the same result!
Something for nothing! Within the borders of the Transvaal the policy
is the same. Moral rights and the claims of justice are unrecognized.
For services rendered there may be some return; a privilege, a
contract, an appointment. But this cannot be properly regarded as a
neglect of principle upon Mr. Kruger's part, for after all the reward
is at the expense of the Uitlanders. It is usually the least price at
which the service could be secured; and it is generally in such
form as to give the recipient a profit in which the members of the
Government party largely share, but it never confers a power to
which the President himself is not superior; indeed, it is almost
invariably hedged about by such conditions as to make its continuance
dependent upon the President's good will. If any one should
think this description of conditions in the Transvaal and of the
President's policy to be unduly harsh, let him satisfy himself by an
investigation of those matters which appear on merely superficial
examination to support opinions contrary to those expressed by the
writer. Let him examine the terms of the closer union with the Free
State, the circumstances leading to the closing of the Vaal River
drifts, the condition of the Dutch subjects of Cape Colony and of the
Orange Free State in the Transvaal, the Netherlands Railway tariffs
as they operate against Cape Colony and the Free State, the Railway
Agreement with Natal, the disputes with Portugal, the attempts to
acquire native territory on the East Coast, the terms of the
Netherlands Railway Concession, Selati Railway Concession, Dynamite
Concession--in fact, all other concessions, monopolies, contracts,
privileges, appointment