y the National Union to
deal with. Even the National Union would have lost most of its support
if he had reformed the administration and allowed English to be used in
the schools. He might have taken a hint from the Romans, who, when they
admitted a large body of new citizens, managed to restrict their voting
power, and might, in granting the suffrage to those who had resided for
a certain period on the Rand, have kept the representation of the Rand
district so small that it could not turn the balance against the old
Boer party in the Volksraad. Had he gone further, and extended the
franchise to all immigrants after, say, five years' residence, he might
not only have disarmed opposition, but have made the South African
Republic a powerful State, no considerable section of whose inhabitants
would thereafter have thought of putting themselves under the British
Crown. To have gone this length would no doubt have been to take the
risk that a Republic of Boers might become before long a Republic of
Englishmen, with an English President; and from this he naturally
recoiled, not merely out of personal ambition, but out of honest
national feeling. But short of this, he might, by dividing his enemies,
have averted a grave peril, from which he was in the end delivered, not
by his own strength, but by the mistakes of his antagonists. However, he
kept the ship steadily on her course. He had grown accustomed to the
complaints of the agitators, and thought they would not go beyond
agitation. When pressed to take some repressive measure, he answered
that you must wait for the tortoise to put its head out before you hit
it, and he appeared to think it would keep its head in. He is one of the
most interesting figures of our time; this old President, shrewd, cool,
dogged, wary, courageous; typifying the qualities of his people, and
strong because he is in sympathy with them; adding to his trust in
Providence no small measure of worldly craft; uneducated, but able to
foil the statesmen of Europe at their own weapons, and perhaps all the
more capable because his training has been wholly that of an eventful
life and not of books.

This was how things stood in the Transvaal in November, 1895. People
have talked of a conspiracy, but never before was there, except on the
stage,[84] so open a conspiracy. Two-thirds of the action--there was
another third, which has only subsequently become known--went on before
the public. The visitor had hardly