Oom Paul's People: A Narrative of the British-Boer Troubles in South Africa, with a History of the Boers, the Country, and Its InstitutionsHillegas, Howard Clemens
History
Oom Paul's People: A Narrative of the British-Boer Troubles in South Africa, with a History of the Boers, the Country, and Its Institutions
Hillegas, Howard Clemens
Afrikaners -- History; Kruger, Paul, 1825-1904; Transvaal (South Africa) -- History -- 1880-1910
residents have made many appeals for a fuller representation in the
Government, but no reforms have been inaugurated or promised.
The few grievances which the Uitlanders had before the Jameson raid have
been multiplied a hundredfold and no epithet is too venomous for them to
apply to the Boers. The letters in the home newspapers have allied the
name of the Boers with every vilifying adjective in the English
dictionary, and returning politicians have never failed to supply the
others that do not appear in the book.
Petitions with thousands of names, some real, but many non-existent,
have been forwarded to the Colonial Office and to every other office in
London where they would be received, and these have recited grievances
that even the patient Boer Volksraad had never heard about. It has been
a propaganda of petitions and letters the like of which has no parallel
in the history of politics. It has been successful in arousing
sentiment favourable to the Uitlanders, and at this time there is hardly
a handful of persons in England who are not willing to testify to the
utter degradation of the Boers.
Another branch of the propaganda operated through the Stock Exchange,
and its results were probably more practical than those of the literary
branch. It is easier to reach the English masses through the Stock
Exchange than by any other means. Whenever one of the "Kaffir" or
Transvaal companies failed to make both ends meet in a manner which
pleased the stockholders, it was only necessary to blame the Boer
Government for having impeded the digging of gold, and the stockholders
promptly outlined to the Colonial Office the policy it should pursue
toward the Boers.
The impressions that are formed in watching the tide of events in the
Transvaal are that the Boer Government is not greatly inferior to the
Government of Lord Salisbury and Secretary Chamberlain. The only
appreciable difference between the two is that the Boers are fighting
the cause of the masses against the classes, while the English are
fighting that of the classes against the masses. In England, where the
rich have the power, the poor pay the taxes, while in the Transvaal the
poor have the power and compel the rich to pay the taxes. If the
Transvaal taxes were of such serious proportions as to be almost
unbearable, there might be a cause for interference by the Uitlander
capitalists who own the mines, but there no injustice is shown to any
one. The only taxes that the Uitlanders are compelled to pay are the
annual poll tax of less than four dollars and a half, mining taxes of a
dollar and a quarter a month for each claim for prospecting licenses,
and five dollars a claim for diggers’ licenses. Boer and Uitlander are
compelled to pay these taxes without distinction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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