A Century of Wrong | Page 2

of knowing that if any of the
movements which I defended had succeeded, the present crisis would
never have arisen, and the independence of the South African Republic
would have been established on an unassailable basis. But with such a
record it is obvious that I was almost the last man in the Empire who
could be regarded as an authorised exponent of the case of the Boers.
That in these last months I have been forced to protest against the
attempt to stifle their independence is due to a very simple cause. To
seek to reform the Transvaal, even by the rough and ready means of a
legitimate revolution, is one thing. To conspire to stifle the Republic in
order to add its territory to the Empire is a very different thing. The
difference may be illustrated by an instance in our own history. Several

years ago I wrote a popular history of the House of Lords, in which I
showed, at least to my own satisfaction, that for fifty years our
"pig-headed oligarchs"--to borrow a phrase much in favour with the
War Party--had inflicted infinite mischief upon the United Kingdom by
the way in which they had abused their power to thwart the will of the
elected representatives of the people. I am firmly of opinion that our
hereditary Chamber has done a thousand times more injury to the
subjects of the Queen than President Kruger has ever inflicted upon the
aggrieved Uitlanders. I look forward with a certain grim satisfaction to
assisting, in the near future, in a semi-revolutionary agitation against
the Peers, in which some of our most potent arguments will be those
which the War Party has employed to inflame public sentiment against
the Boers. But, notwithstanding all this, if a conspiracy of Invincibles
were to be formed for the purpose of ending the House of Lords by
assassinating its members, or by blowing up the Gilded Chamber and
all its occupants with dynamite, I should protest against such an outrage
as vehemently as I have protested against the more heinous crime that
is now in course of perpetration in South Africa. And the very
vehemence with which I had in times past pleaded the cause of the
People against the Peers would intensify the earnestness with which I
would endeavour to avert the exploitation of a legitimate desire to end
the Second Chamber by the unscrupulous conspirators of assassination
and of dynamite. Hence it is that I seize every opportunity afforded me
of enabling the doomed Dutch to plead their case before the tribunal
which has condemned them, virtually unheard.
In introducing A Century of Wrong to the British public, I carefully
disassociate myself from assuming any responsibility for all or any of
the statements which it contains. My imprimatur was not sought, nor is
it extended to the history contained in A Century of Wrong, excepting
in so far as relates to its authenticity as an exposition of what our
brothers the Boers think of the way in which we have dealt with them
for the last hundred years.
That is much more important than the endorsement by any Englishman
as to the historical accuracy of the statements which it contains. For
what every judicial tribunal desires, first of all, is to hear witnesses at

first hand. Hitherto the British public has chiefly been condemned to
second-hand testimony. In the pages of A Century of Wrong it will, at
least, have an opportunity of hearing the Dutch of South Africa speak
for themselves.
There is no question as to the qualifications of Mr. F.W. Reitz to speak
on behalf of the Dutch Africander. Although at this moment State
Secretary for President Kruger, he was for nearly ten years Chief
Justice and then President of the Orange Free State, and he began his
life in the Cape Colony. The family is of German origin, but his
ancestors migrated to Holland in the seventeenth century and became
Dutch. His grandfather emigrated from Holland to the Cape, and
founded one of the Africander families. His father was a sheep farmer;
one of his uncles was a lieutenant in the British Navy.
Mr. Reitz is now in his fifty-sixth year, and received a good English
education. After graduating at the South African College he came to the
United Kingdom, and finished his studies at Edinburgh University, and
afterwards at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the Bar in 1868.
He then returned to the Cape, and, after practising as a barrister in the
Cape courts for six years, was appointed Chief Justice of the Orange
Free State, a post which he held for fifteen years. He was then elected
and re-elected as President of the Orange Free State. In 1893 he paid a
lengthy visit to Europe