the 8th of May, 1899, written by Mr. J.X. Merriman, the Cape
Treasurer during the Schreiner Ministry. As he is one of the leaders of
the irreconcilable Afrikander group he cannot be suspected of undue
sympathy towards England. In his first letter to Mr. Steyn a year before
the Uitlanders had petitioned for a redress, fourteen months before the
Bloemfontein Conference, eighteen months before the declaration of war,
the following passage is to be found:--

"Yet one cannot conceal the fact that the greatest danger to the
future lies in the attitude of President Krueger and his vain hope
of building up a State on a foundation of a narrow unenlightened
minority, and his obstinate rejection of all prospect of using the
materials which lie ready to his hand to establish a true Republic
on a broad liberal basis. The report of recent discussions in the
Volksraad on his finances and their mismanagement fill one with
apprehension. Such a state of affairs cannot last, it must break
down from inherent rottenness, and it will be well if the fall does
not sweep away the freedom of all of us.

"I write in no hostility to the Republics: my own feelings are all
in the opposite direction; but the foes of that form of government
are too often those of their own household. I am quite sure that
you have done what you can in modifying the attitude at Pretoria;
but I entreat you, for the welfare of South Africa, to persevere,
however unsatisfactory it may be to see your advice flouted and
your motives so cruelly misrepresented by a section of colonists.

"Humanly speaking, the advice and good will of the Free State is
the only thing that stands between the South African Republic and a
catastrophe."

Alluding to the Kotze incident, the upshot of which was that Krueger and
the Volksraad claimed the right to overrun judicial decisions, he
writes:

"The radical fault is the utter incapacity of the body that affects
to issue its mandates to the Courts. In England it is a Parliament,
but then it represents the intelligence of the country, and in
Switzerland the same; in the Transvaal it is a narrow oligarchy."

In a letter dated 1st January, 1899, President Krueger is depicted as
follows:

"I had the opportunity the other day of a long talk, or rather
several talks, with Lippert about the Transvaal. He takes a very