“In the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher of all hearts, and prayerfully waiting on His gracious help and pity, we, burghers of the South African Republic, have solemnly agreed, and we do hereby agree, to make a holy covenant for us, and for our children, which we confirm with a solemn oath. “Fully forty years ago our fathers fled from the Cape Colony in order to become a free and independent people. Those forty years were forty years of pain and suffering. “We established Natal, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic, and three times the English Government has trampled our liberty and dragged to the ground our flag, which our fathers had baptised with their blood and tears. “As by a thief in the night has our Republic been stolen from us. We may nor can endure this. It is God’s will, and is required of us by the unity of our fathers, and by love to our children, that we should hand over intact to our children the legacy of the fathers. For that purpose it is that we here come together and give each other the right hand as men and brethren, solemnly promising to remain faithful to our country and our people, and with our eye fixed on God, to co-operate until death for the restoration of the freedom of our Republic. “So help us Almighty God.” These pious words, side by side with the horrible accounts of the use made by the Boers of their liberty while they had it, strike one as incredibly profane; yet they are hardly more so than part of the speech made by Sir T. Shepstone to the burghers of the Transvaal on the occasion of the annexation. “Do you know,” he asks them, “what has recently happened in Turkey? Because no civilised government was carried on there, the Great Powers interfered and said, ‘Thus far and no farther.’ And if this is done to an Empire, will a little Republic be excused when it misbehaves? Complain to other powers and seek justice there? Yes, thank God! justice is still to be found even for the most insignificant, but it is precisely this justice which will convict us. If we want justice we must be in a position to ask it with unsullied hands.”[67]