'Protest!
Protest! What is the good of protesting?' said Kruger to Mr. W. Y.
Campbell; 'you have not got the guns, I have.' There was always the
final court of appeal. Judge Creusot and Judge Mauser were always
behind the President.
Again, the argument of the Boers would be more valid had they
received no benefit from these immigrants. If they had ignored them
they might fairly have stated that they did not desire their
presence. But even while they protested they grew rich at the
Uitlander's expense. They could not have it both ways. It would be
consistent to discourage him and not profit by him, or to make him
comfortable and build the State upon his money; but to ill-treat
him and at the same time to grow strong by his taxation must surely
be an injustice.
And again, the whole argument is based upon the narrow racial
supposition that every naturalised citizen not of Boer extraction
must necessarily be unpatriotic. This is not borne out by the
examples of history. The newcomer soon becomes as proud of his
country and as jealous of her liberty as the old. Had President
Kruger given the franchise generously to the Uitlander, his pyramid
would have been firm upon its base and not balanced upon its apex.
It is true that the corrupt oligarchy would have vanished, and the
spirit of a broader more tolerant freedom influenced the counsels
of the State. But the republic would have become stronger and more
permanent, with a population who, if they differed in details, were
united in essentials. Whether such a solution would have been to
the advantage of British interests in South Africa is quite another
question. In more ways than one President Kruger has been a good
friend to the empire.
So much upon the general question of the reason why the Uitlander
should agitate and why the Boer was obdurate. The details of the
long struggle between the seekers for the franchise and the
refusers of it may be quickly sketched, but they cannot be entirely
ignored by any one who desires to understand the inception of that
great contest which was the outcome of the dispute.
At the time of the Convention of Pretoria (1881) the rights of
burghership might be obtained by one year's residence. In 1882 it
was raised to five years, the reasonable limit which obtains both
in Great Britain and in the United States. Had it remained so, it
is safe to say that there would never have been either an Uitlander
question or a great Boer war. Grievances would have been righted
from the inside without external interference.
In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the
franchise was raised so as to be only attainable by those who had
lived fourteen years in the country. The Uitlanders, who were
increasing rapidly in numbers and were suffering from the
formidable list of grievances already enumerated, perceived that
their wrongs were so numerous that it was hopeless to have them set
right seriatim, and that only by obtaining the leverage of the
franchise could they hope to move the heavy burden which weighed
them down. In 1893 a petition of 13,000 Uitlanders, couched in most
respectful terms, was submitted to the Raad, but met with
contemptuous neglect. Undeterred, however, by this failure, the
National Reform Union, an association which organised the
agitation, came back to the attack in 1894. They drew up a petition
which was signed by 35,000 adult male Uitlanders, a greater number
than the total Boer male population of the country. A small liberal
body in the Raad supported this memorial and endeavoured in vain to
obtain some justice for the newcomers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece
of this select band. 'They own half the soil, they pay at least
three quarters of the taxes,' said he. 'They are men who in
capital, energy, and education are at least our equals.
What will become of us or our children on that day when we may find
ourselves in a minority of one in twenty without a single friend
among the other nineteen, among those who will then tell us that
they wished to be brothers, but that we by our own act have made
them strangers to the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal
sentiments were combated by members who asserted that the
signatures could not belong to law-abiding citizens, since they
were actually agitating against the law of the franchise, and
others whose intolerance was expressed by the defiance of the
member already quoted, who challenged the Uitlanders to come out
and fight. The champions of exclusiveness and racial hatred won the
day. The memorial was rejected by sixteen votes to eight, and the
franchise law was, on the initiative of the President, actually
made more stringent than ever, being framed in such a way that
during the fourteen years of probation the applicant should give up
his previous nationality, so that for that period he would really
belong to no country at all. No hopes were held out that any
possible attitude upon the part of the Uitlanders would soften the
determination of the President and his burghers. One who
remonstrated was led outside the State buildings by the President,
who pointed up at the national flag. 'You see that flag?' said he.
'If I grant the franchise, I may as well pull it down.' His
animosity against the immigrants was bitter. 'Burghers, friends,
thieves, murderers, newcomers, and others,' is the conciliatory
opening of one of his public addresses. Though Johannesburg is only
thirty-two miles from Pretoria, and though the State of which he
was the head depended for its revenue upon the gold fields, he paid
it only three visits in nine years.
