Their One Supreme Interest Is
That The Various States There Should Live In Concord And
Prosperity, And That There Should Be No Need For The Presence Of A
British Redcoat Within The Whole Great Peninsula.
Our foreign
critics, with their misapprehension of the British colonial system,
can never realise that whether the four-coloured
Flag of the
Transvaal or the Union Jack of a self-governing colony waved over
the gold mines would not make the difference of one shilling to the
revenue of Great Britain. The Transvaal as a British province would
have its own legislature, its own revenue, its own expenditure, and
its own tariff against the mother country, as well as against the
rest of the world, and England be none the richer for the change.
This is so obvious to a Briton that he has ceased to insist upon
it, and it is for that reason perhaps that it is so universally
misunderstood abroad. 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.
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