in which the Press and political
agents of the Government of Pretoria are stirring up ill-feeling against
the proprietors and managers of mines. Persons without any defined
profession, attracted by the vision of gold, have flocked to
Johannesburg; unable to find employment, they have become a discontented
proletariat. These are the true adventurers, if the word be taken in its
worst sense. Mr. Krueger and his agents choose them as colleagues and pit
them against the "wealthy metal-hearted mine owners." This is the policy
pursued by Dr. Leyds in Europe, where he has been clever enough to
excite alike the capitalist and socialist Press against the hated mine
owner.

Mr. Rouliot continues, that it is not within the province of the Chamber
of Mines to provide work for incompetent workmen. It was, no doubt,
from among these men that Mr. Krueger had raised the signatures of the
counter-petition which so "emphatically" declared the administration of
the South African Republic "to be all that could be desired."

5.--_The Petition and the Despatch of May 10th._

They were _bona fide_ workmen who took the initiative in the petition of
March 28th, 1899, called forth by the murder of their fellow-workman,
Edgar. We see, from Mr. Rouliot's report, that the Chamber of Mines
regarding the petition as compromising, disassociated itself from it.
Nor was that all. The President of the South African League in the
Transvaal, Mr. W. John Wybergh, a consulting engineer by profession, was
dismissed by one of the principal companies.

These undeniable facts prove that "capitalist intrigues," as Dr. Kuyper
calls them, were not the causes of the present war.

The British Government could not disregard a petition which 21,684
British subjects addressed to it; even had its responsibility not been
pledged by Articles 7 and 14 of the Convention of 1884, relying upon
which those British subjects had settled in the Transvaal. Every
civilised Government concerns itself with injuries done to its citizens
in foreign lands. The petition of March 28th, was acknowledged by Mr.
Chamberlain in a despatch to Sir A. Milner of May 10th, 1899, in which
he says that "the complaints of the Uitlanders rested on a solid basis."
From the moment that the British Government "put its hand to the
plough," and that Lord Salisbury declared it would not draw back, the
end was easy to foresee. Mr. Krueger had recourse to his habitual
expedients. I said at the time what