It Was A Difficult Question, And One In
Answering Which We Find Ourselves In A Region Of Conjecture And
Suspicion Rather Than Of Ascertained Fact.
But the fairest and most
unbiased of historians must confess that there is a large body of
evidence to
Show that into the heads of some of the Dutch leaders,
both in the northern republics and in the Cape, there had entered
the conception of a single Dutch commonwealth, extending from Cape
Town to the Zambesi, in which flag, speech, and law should all be
Dutch. It is in this aspiration that many shrewd and well-informed
judges see the true inner meaning of this persistent arming, of the
constant hostility, of the forming of ties between the two
republics (one of whom had been reconstituted and made a sovereign
independent State by our own act), and finally of that intriguing
which endeavoured to poison the affection and allegiance of our own
Dutch colonists, who had no political grievances whatever. They all
aimed at one end, and that end was the final expulsion of British
power from South Africa and the formation of a single great Dutch
republic. The large sum spent by the Transvaal in secret service
money - a larger sum, I believe, than that which is spent by the
whole British Empire - would give some idea of the subterranean
influences at work. An army of emissaries, agents, and spies,
whatever their mission, were certainly spread over the British
colonies. Newspapers were subsidised also, and considerable sums
spent upon the press in France and Germany.
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