on of the Transvaal is roughly
estimated at 65,000, of whom about 24,000 are voting citizens. The
Uitlanders, or alien population, five-sixths of whom speak English, are
estimated at 180,000, of whom nearly one-half are adult males. These
Uitlanders hold sixty-three per cent. of the landed and ninety per cent.
of the personal property in the country. In December, 1895, their number
was increasing at the rate of one thousand per week through arrivals
from Cape Town alone; and though this influx fell off for a time, while
political troubles were checking the development of the mines, it rose
again with the renewal of that development. Should the Deep Level mines
go on prospering as is expected, the rate of immigration will be
sustained, and within ten years there will probably be at least 500,000
Uitlanders in the Republic, that is to say, nearly eight times the
number of the Boers.

The numerical disproportion between these excluded persons--a very large
part of whom will have taken root in the country--and the old citizens
will then have become overwhelming, and the claim of the former to enjoy
some share in the government will be practically irresistible. The
concession of this share may come before 1907--I incline to think it
will--or it may come somewhat later. The precise date is a small matter,
and depends upon personal causes. But that the English-speaking element
will, if the mining industry continues to thrive, become politically as
well as economically supreme, seems inevitable. No political agitation
or demonstrations in the Transvaal, much less any intervention from
outside, need come into the matter. It is only of the natural causes
already at work that I speak, and these natural causes are sufficient to
bring about the result. A country must, after all, take its character
from the large majority of its inhabitants, especially when those who
form that large majority are the wealthiest, most educated, and most
enterprising part of the population.

Whether this inevitable admission of the new-comers to citizenship will
happen suddenly or gradually, in quiet or in storm, no one can venture
to predict. There are things which we can perceive to be destined to
occur, though the time and the manner may be doubtful. But as it will be
dictated by the patent necessities of the case, one may well hope that
it will come about in a peaceable way and leave behind no sense of
irritation in either race. Boers and Englishme