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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 41 of 842
Words from 10809 to 11080
of 225456
