President Kruger's Government--accounted corrupt and irradical in those days, but now regarded by comparison throughout the Transvaal and Orange River Colony by both English and Dutchmen alike as most benevolent and beneficent--refused to sanction a system which would not only have been in opposition to the Conventions with Great Britain of 1852, 1854, and 1884, but would have been opposed to the spirit of humanity that should exist among all civilized communities. Then came the war. The Boer Government was swept away. Two hundred and fifty millions and 21,000 English lives was the price exacted for planting the Union Jack in Pretoria and Bloemfontein. During the war the magnates, with a persistence worthy of a better cause, kept before them those objects which I have enumerated. The consulting engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields reported to a meeting of mining representatives at Cape Town that dividends could be increased by two and a half millions by reducing Kaffir wages, and it was agreed that on the opening of the mines Kaffirs' wages should be reduced by 33 per cent. When peace came it was found that the Kaffirs were not prepared to work on these terms. They had grown rich during the war, and in the independence of their new-found wealth they refused to be treated as so much human machinery. It was bad enough for them to work at their original wages in the Rand mines, without their consenting to such a large reduction in their wages. The rate of mortality in the Rand mines was seventy per thousand per annum; the rate of mortality in the De Beers mines was only thirty per thousand per annum. The De Beers never had any difficulty in obtaining what native labour they required, because they treated their men well, looked after their interests, did not sweat them, and admitted that a black man, although black, was still a man. But even under these circumstances, had the magnates of the Rand offered the scale of wages that pertained before the war, they would have found black labour in abundance. But even with a black man a minimum of 30s. and a maximum of 35s. a month with food is hardly tempting enough to draw him from his kraal. The alternative of white labour was, of course, never seriously considered. The mere Englishman who had fought for the country was not to be allowed to settle in the country or to work in the country. The Angots, the Beits, the Ecksteins, the Hanaus, the Kuchenmeisters, the Rosenheims, the Schencks, the Taubs, the Wernhers, and the rest of the gentlemen delighting in similar grand old English names were determined not to permit it. The foolish Englishman would want to vote; would have ideas about personal liberty and personal freedom; would have ridiculous notions about Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights; would, in short, think that the nation that had spilt its blood and spent its money for the Rand was entitled to a vote in its management.