Impressions of South Africa | Page 8

for weakness, and that the credit of Britain was being lowered all over the world, and even among the peoples of India, by her forbearance towards the Transvaal. Absurd as this notion may appear, it was believed by heated partizans on the spot. But outside Africa, and especially in Europe, the forbearance of one of the four greatest Powers in the world towards a community of seventy thousand people was in no danger of being misunderstood.
Whether the force of these considerations, obvious to every unbiased mind which had some knowledge of South Africa, was fully realized by those who directed British policy, or whether, having realized their force, they nevertheless judged war the better alternative, is a question on which we are still in the dark. It is possible--and some of the language used by the British authorities may appear to suggest this explanation--that they entered on the negotiations which ended in war in the belief that an attitude of menace would suffice to extort submission, and being unable to recede from that attitude, found themselves drawn on to a result which they had neither desired nor contemplated. Be this as it may, the considerations above stated prescribed the use of prudent and (as far as possible) conciliatory methods in their diplomacy, as well as care in selecting a position which would supply a legal justification for war, should war be found the only issue.
This was the more necessary because the Boers were known to be intensely suspicious. Every weak power trying to resist a stronger one must needs take refuge in evasive and dilatory tactics. Such had been, such were sure to be, the tactics of the Boers. But the Boers were also very distrustful of the English Government, believing it to aim at nothing less than the annexation of their country. It may seem strange to Englishmen that the purity of their motives and the disinterestedness of their efforts to spread good government and raise others to their own level should be doubted. But the fact is--and this goes to the root of the matter--that the Boers have regarded the policy of Britain towards them as a policy of violence and duplicity. They recall how Natal was conquered from them in 1842, after they had conquered it from the Zulus; how their country was annexed in 1877, how the promises made at the time of that annexation were broken. They were not appeased by the retrocession of 1881, which they ascribed solely to British fear of a civil war in South Africa. It should moreover be remembered,--and this is a point which few people in England do remember--that they hold the annexation to have been an act of high-handed lawlessness done in time of peace, and have deemed themselves entitled to be replaced in the position their republic held before 1877, under the Sand River Convention of 1852. Since the invasion of December 1895, they have been more suspicious than ever, for they believe the British Government to have had a hand in that attempt, and they think that influential capitalists have been sedulously scheming against them. Their passion for independence is something which we in modern Europe find it hard to realise. It recalls the long struggle of the Swiss for freedom in the fourteenth century, or the fierce tenacity which the Scotch showed in the same age in their resistance to the claim of England to be their "Suzerain Power." This passion was backed by two other sentiments, an exaggerated estimate of their own strength and a reliance on the protecting hand of Providence, fitter for the days of the Maccabees or of Cromwell than for our own time, but which will appear less strange if the perils through which their nation had passed be remembered.
These were the rocks among which the bark of British diplomacy had to be steered. They were, however, rocks above water, so it might be hoped that war could be avoided and some valuable concession secured. To be landed in war would obviously be as great a failure as to secure no concession.
Instead of demanding the removal of the specific grievances whereof the Uitlanders complained, the British Government resolved to endeavour to obtain for them an easier acquisition of the electoral franchise and an ampler representation in the legislature. There was much to be said for this course. It would avoid the tedious and vexatious controversies that must have arisen over the details of the grievances. It would (in the long run) secure reform in the best way, viz., by the action of public spirit and enlightenment within the legislature. It would furnish a basis for union between the immigrants and the friends of good government among the burghers themselves, and so conduce to the future peace of the community. There