The Transvaal from Within | Page 9

picture is from a book published by the late Alfred Aylward, the Fenian, more anti-British than the Boer himself, who was present at the time, and wrote his book in order to enlist sympathy for the movement then (1878) organized to obtain a cancellation of the annexation. The value of Aylward's testimony would not be fairly appreciated without some explanation.
Sir Bartle Frere describes him (and quotes Scotland Yard authorities who knew him well) as one of the party who murdered the policeman at Manchester, and one of the worst and most active of the dynamiting Irishmen--a professional agitator, who boasted of his purpose to promote the Transvaal rebellion. Major Le Caron, too, stated on oath before the Parnell Commission that money was sent by the Irish Rebel Societies, through Aylward, to stir up the Transvaal rebellion. This is what Aylward says:
All South Africa was for the moment at rest, with the exception of the district of Utrecht, where an old-standing grievance with Cetewayo was the cause of some little alarm and excitement (_i.e._, Cetewayo's threatened invasion). Still, the Transvaal was disturbed throughout its whole extent by the expectation of some pending change--a change coming from the outside, which had been invited by an active, discontented party, chiefly foreigners, dwellers in towns, non-producers, place-hunters, deserters, refugees, land-speculators, 'development-men,' and pests of Transvaal society generally, who openly preached resistance to the law, refusal to pay taxes, and contempt of the natural and guaranteed owners of the country in which they lived, in the distinctly expressed hope that foreign intervention would fill the country with British gold, and conduce to their own material prosperity. The Boers, spread over a country larger than France, were stunned into stupor by the demonstrative loudness of the party of discontent. In some districts they (the Boers) were poor, and could not readily pay the taxes imposed upon them by the wars and railway projects of the Government. Their Volksraad was in Session, but its every action was paralyzed by the gloom of impending dissolution.
The Republic owed ��215,000, which it had no immediate means of paying. Its creditors were clamorous; whilst the Executive, turn to which side it would, found itself confronted by threats, reproaches, accusations of slavery and cruelty based upon hearsay, and which, like the annexation that steadily approached, could not be met, because neither of them had yet assumed the evidenced consistency of actual fact. There was no public opinion to support the Government or to save the Republic. The Boers lived far apart from each other, whilst the annexationists and the party of disorder dwelt, in compact communities, in towns and mining villages. Into the midst of this confusion--into the capital of this bewildered State--entered Sir Theophilus Shepstone and his staff. He had not come to seize the country--he had come as 'an adviser, as a helper, and as a friend'; but his advent was a blight--an incubus which rendered additionally powerless the unfortunate President and his Council. The coming of Sir Theophilus Shepstone was, to the minds of nearly all, but too clearly the forerunner of change. In the face of this additional whet to the anticipations of the party of disturbance, something that has been described as anarchy prevailed. Everyone waited; all fell into a state of expectation; no one attempted to save the State, or repel the danger. At the same time, there was no anarchy in the proper sense of the word. Justice sat on her seat; criminals were arrested and brought to trial; actions at law were heard and determined; and in no one place, save the goldfields, was authority, even for a moment, defied. There the law vindicated itself without having used violence or shed one drop of blood. Not one single public outrage, not one unpunished crime, marked this period of suspense, which is described by partizan writers as a time of chaos and anarchy.
Peace was granted to Secocoeni, and the quietness and gloom of the country became even more profound.
Now, had a commission, royal or joint, been opened in Pretoria to inquire into the truth of the allegations made against the Government, history might perhaps be able to record that judgment, followed by justice, had overtaken the Transvaal. No commission was opened. There was a banquet and a ball. The suspense increased in intensity. Understrappers, and agents of the discontented faction, filled the country with rumours of impending annexation, and sometimes of impending conquest. The Boers, the inhabitants of the country, asked day after day what was the mission of the English Commissioner. They visited him in hundreds; but he knew the wonderful advantage to be gathered from the heightening of the mystery, and the intensifying of the excitement. He listened to everyone; but he maintained a gloomy and impassive silence, neither checking the aspirations of