natural growth of the
Dutch population gave a certain substance in it down to 1885, was in
that year destroyed by the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand, which
brought a new host of English-speaking settlers into South Africa, and
assured the numerical and economic preponderance of the English in the
progressive and expanding regions of the country. It is also true that
the Transvaal Government made military preparations and imported arms on
a large scale. They expected a rising even before 1895; and after 1895
they also expected a fresh invasion. But there is not, so far as the
public know, any shred of evidence that they contemplated an attack upon
Britain. The needs of defence, a defence in which they doubtless counted
on the aid of the Free State and of a section of their own Uitlanders,
sufficiently explain the accumulation of warlike munitions on which so
much stress has been laid.

The conclusion to which an examination of the matter leads is that no
evidence whatever has been produced either that there was any such
conspiracy as alleged, or that a conflict between Dutch and English was
inevitable. Such a conflict might, no doubt, have possibly some day
arisen. But it is at least equally probable that it might have been
avoided. The Transvaal people were not likely to provoke it, and every
year made it less likely that they could do so with any chance of
success. The British element was increasing, not only around their
State, but within it. The prospect of support from a great European
Power had vanished. When their aged President retired from the scene,
their old dissensions, held in check only by the fear of Britain, would
have reappeared, and their vicious system of government would have
fallen to pieces. So far as Britain was concerned, the way to avert a
conflict was to have patience. Haste had been her bane in South Africa.
It was haste which annexed the Transvaal in 1877, when a few months'
delay might have given her the country. It was haste which in 1880
wrecked the plan of South African Confederation. It was haste which
brought about that main source of recent troubles, the invasion by the
South Africa Company's police in 1895.

In these reflections upon recent events nothing has been said, because
nothing could now be profitably said, upon two aspects of the
matter--the character and conduct of the persons chiefly concerned, and
the subterranean forces which are supposed to have been at work on