On The Other Hand, While She Is No Gainer By
The Change, Most Of The Expense Of It In Blood And In Money Falls
Upon The Home Country.
On the face of it, therefore, Great Britain
had every reason to avoid so formidable a task as the conquest of
the South African Republic.
At the best she had nothing to gain,
and at the worst she had an immense deal to lose. There was no room
for ambition or aggression. It was a case of shirking or fulfilling
a most arduous duty.
There could be no question of a plot for the annexation of the
Transvaal. In a free country the Government cannot move in advance
of public opinion, and public opinion is influenced by and
reflected in the newspapers. One may examine the files of the press
during all the months of negotiations and never find one reputable
opinion in favour of such a course, nor did one in society ever
meet an advocate of such a measure. But a great wrong was being
done, and all that was asked was the minimum change which would set
it right, and restore equality between the white races in Africa.
'Let Kruger only be liberal in the extension of the franchise,'
said the paper which is most representative of the sanest British
opinion, 'and he will find that the power of the republic will
become not weaker, but infinitely more secure. Let him once give
the majority of the resident males of full age the full vote, and
he will have given the republic a stability and power which nothing
else can. If he rejects all pleas of this kind, and persists in his
present policy, he may possibly stave off the evil day, and
preserve his cherished oligarchy for another few years; but the end
will be the same.' The extract reflects the tone of all of the
British press, with the exception of one or two papers which
considered that even the persistent ill usage of our people, and
the fact that we were peculiarly responsible for them in this
State, did not justify us in interfering in the internal affairs of
the republic. It cannot be denied that the Jameson raid and the
incomplete manner in which the circumstances connected with it had
been investigated had weakened the force of those who wished to
interfere energetically on behalf of British subjects. There was a
vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists were
engineering the situation for their own ends. It is difficult to
imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a
state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely
it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances
of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him
would be to remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did
exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the
remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain
was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it
would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 27 of 435
Words from 13619 to 14149
of 225456
