"apprenticeship"; to
introduce railways and schools; he claimed the right to impose
taxation, he got to be credited, in the long run, with the belief that
the devil's tail was not as long as it is represented in the old Bible
pictures. When the Boers were defeated by Sekukuni, they looked upon it
as a punishment from God for having a "free thinker" for President. The
commandos disbanded themselves. At the same time Cetewayo, the Zulu
Chief, was threatening the Boers in the south. Caught between two fires,
without resources or organisation, annihilation was before them. Now the
English, for their own security, had the greatest interest in preventing
the extermination of white men by natives; and on that ground, apart
from all sentimentality, they had never ceased to protest against the
methods employed by the Boers, as the surest means of bringing about
that result. Theophilus Shepstone, who possessed great influence over
the Zulus, was sent to Pretoria. Unable, even with the help of their
President, to bring any order into the Government of the Transvaal, he
ended by annexing it on 12th April, 1877. He annexed it in order to save
it. Had the English abandoned it to itself, the Boer territory would
have been occupied by Basutos and the Zulus, and the Boers would have
disappeared from the face of the earth.

4.--_The Annexation of the Transvaal and the Conventions of 1881 and
1884._

M. Kuyper is very unjust when he reproaches the English with the
massacre of the Zulus; for it was all to the profit of the Boers, who,
it may be added, rendered no assistance. Once delivered from their
native enemies by the English, the Boers appointed, December 16th, 1880,
a triumvirate, composed of Pretorius, Krueger and Joubert. They demanded
the re-instatement of the South African Republic, under British
protection; they commenced attacking small detachments of English
troops, and on February 27th they surrounded a force on Majuba Hill,
killing 92 officers and men, General Colley among them, wounding 134,
and taking 59 prisoners. That is what is called "the disaster of Majuba
Hill." An army of 12,000 men was on the way out; Mr. Gladstone, in his
Midlothian Campaign, had protested against the annexation; and,
although, after he became Prime Minister, he supported it in the speech
from the Throne, the hopes he had given to the separatists proved well
founded, for after this defeat he became a party to the Convention of
1881, by which