really based not so much on racial differences as on
economic interests. The rural element which desired a protective tariff
and laws regulating native labour, was mainly Dutch, the commercial
element almost wholly British. Mr. Rhodes, the embodiment of British
Imperialism, was Prime Minister through the support of the Dutch element
and the Africander Bond. Englishmen and Dutchmen were everywhere in the
best social relations. The old blood sympathy of the Dutch element for
the Transvaal Boers which had been so strongly manifested in 1881, when
the latter were struggling for their independence, had been superseded,
or at least thrown into the background, by displeasure at the
unneighbourly policy of the Transvaal Government in refusing public
employment to Cape Dutchmen as well as to Englishmen, and in throwing
obstacles in the way of trade in agricultural products. This displeasure
culminated when the Transvaal Government, in the summer of 1895, closed
the Drifts (fords) on the Vaal River, to the detriment of imports from
the Colony and the Orange Free State.

In the Orange Free State there was, as has been pointed out in Chapter
XIX., perfect good feeling and cordial co-operation in all public
matters between the Dutch and the English elements. There was also
perfect friendliness to Britain, the old grievances of the Diamond
Fields dispute (see page 144) and of the arrest of the Free State
conquest of Basutoland having been virtually forgotten. Towards the
Transvaal there was a political sympathy based partly on kinship, partly
on a similarity of republican institutions. But there was also some
annoyance at the policy which the Transvaal Government, and especially
its Hollander advisers, were pursuing; coupled with a desire to see
reforms effected in the Transvaal, and the franchise granted to
immigrants on more liberal terms.

Of the Transvaal itself I need say the less, because its condition is
fully described in Chapter XXV. There was of course much irritation
among the Uitlanders of English and Colonial stock, with an arrogant
refusal on the part of the ruling section and the more extreme
old-fashioned Boers to admit the claims of these new-comers. But there
was also a party among the burghers, important more by the character and
ability of its members than by its numbers, yet growing in influence,
which desired reform, perceived that the existing state of things could
not continue, and was ready to join the Uitla