reconcile. Ancestors of the Boers had more than once acted in a similar manner towards the Dutch East India Company when dissatisfied with their administration, and unwilling to pay their taxes. But Pro-Boers have a curious habit of magnifying things. One would imagine, to hear them speak, that every Boer in the Cape had packed wife, children, and goods into ox-wagons and had trekked north. As a matter of fact, the greater proportion remained behind, and their descendants formed the majority of the 376,000 whites enumerated in the census of 1891. The Great Trek was really composed of various detachments which started one after another in 1836. Statistics of the numbers of trekkers vary from 5,000 to 10,000. I have not been able to trace whether these figures refer only to adult males, or whether they include the women and children. In any case, when discussing South African affairs, we must always bear in mind the small number of persons concerned, in comparison with the vast extent of the area in question.

Not only these trekkers, but all who, from the period of the seventeenth century onwards, had had the tendency to wander from the Cape, belonged to the most adventurous and warlike portion of the population. They had spread themselves over an enormous tract of country, and were in close touch with kaffirs and bushmen, cattle-lifters using poisoned arrows. Living in isolated families, they acquired, in the course of their unceasing struggle with their savage neighbours, not only their qualities of daring and warlike skill, but habits of cruelty and cunning as well.

3.—Essentially a Man of War and Politics.

Between the Dutchman of Amsterdam, Haarlem, the Hague, or Rotterdam, installed in his comfortable dwelling, cultivating his tulips, priding himself upon his pictures, and drinking his beer, and the Boer, pure and simple, there is not the slightest analogy.

This Dr. Kuyper acknowledges. The Boer population is a compound of Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Hugenots, Germans and Scotchmen. Krüger and Reitz are of German, Joubert and Cronje, of French origin. Here is what Dr. Kuyper, himself, says of the Boers:—

Here we have the true Boer, and not the idyllic "small farmer" pictured to us by a contributor to Le Temps. He is essentially the "man of war and politics," the counterpart of an Arab chief, the sole difference being that the Boer is not a polygamist and has no tribe under him; on the contrary, the Boers swarm off in isolated groups or families. Their conception of life is, however, the same. I quote here from my treatise on The Evolution of Property (p. 46) on the subject of Pastoral Tribes:—

At the end of that Chapter I spoke of the Boers, according to Levaillant, "the most carniverous of men," as having turned out of their possessions the nomadic Hottentot and Kaffir shepherds. The Boers represent that form of warlike and political civilisation in which production is indirect, and obtained by utilising the labour of others. It is a type of that ancient pillaging civilisation which we call war-like, when its methods have been reduced to rules. In this stage politics mean the organisation of pillage. Mr. Kuyper is right. "The Boer is essentially a man of war and politics." He has employed his talents at the expense of Hottentots and Kaffirs; he has continued to employ them to the detriment of the Uitlanders; and he thought the time had come to realise his programme of February 17th, 1881, formulated by Dr. Reitz at the end of his official pamphlet,[4] "Africa for the Africanders from the Zambesi to Simon's Bay." We have seen what view, according to his apologist, "the man of war and politics" takes of his relations with the natives; we shall now see how he regards his relations with the whites.

CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH AND BOERS.[5]

1.—The Ideal of the Boers.

No French Pro-Boer has reproduced the portrait I have published, as given by Dr. Kuyper. It disturbs the conception presented to their readers by journalists, whose dishonesty is only equalled by their ignorance. Quoting his own statements, I have shown Boer relations with the natives; I will now proceed to show their relations with the English.

In addition to Dr. Kuyper's evidence, I will avail myself of a document from Boer sources: The Petition of Rights, addressed to the President of the Orange Free State, February 17th, 1881, and bearing Krüger's name at the head of the list of signatures. This document clearly shows not only the manner in which Boers write history, but also that, five years before the discovery of the Gold Mines, they cherished as their ideal, not only the preservation of their independence, but the driving out of the English from all South Africa: "From the Zambesi to Simon's Bay, Africa for the Afrikanders!" This is the rallying cry with which the document ends, and we find it repeated by Dr. Reitz, as the concluding words of his pamphlet, "A Century of Injustice."

2.—The English in South Africa.

Dr. Kuyper cannot forgive the English their occupation of the Cape. Yet, they had only followed the example of the Dutch who, during their war with Spain, 1568-1648, had seized the greater portion of the Portuguese colonies, because Portugal had been an ally of Spain. Holland had been forced into an alliance with France, and in exactly the same way, in 1794 and 1806, England seized the Cape. In 1814 she bought it from the Prince of Orange. Dr. Kuyper does not deny that the price was paid, but remarks that it did not replenish the coffers of the prince. Be that as it may, the treaty is none the less valid, and the "Petition of Rights" begins by protesting against "the action of the King of Holland who, in 1814,