Branches of the Bund, within a few years, were established all over Cape Colony and the Free State, and, by 1888, the slow-moving mind of the Cape Dutch had grasped the racial idea thus presented with sufficient popular strength to warrant the holding of a large and general Congress. In his opening address the President spoke of a "United South Africa under the British flag;" but at the meeting held on March 4, 1889, at Middleburg, while much was said about the future Afrikander union, references to Britain and the flag were conveniently omitted. The platform, as finally and formally enunciated at this gathering, included the following paragraphs: "1. The Afrikander National Party acknowledge the guidance of Providence in the affairs of both lands and peoples. 2. They include, under the guidance of Providence, the formation of a _pure nationality_ and the preparation of our people for the establishment of a United South Africa. 3. To this they consider belong-- _a_. The establishment of a firm union between all the different European nationalities in South Africa. _b_. The promotion of South Africa's _independence_." [Sidenote: Dutch and English not Harmonious] There was also a clause of gratuitous impertinence towards the Imperial country--through whose grant of absolute self-government in 1872 the Bund was now beginning to aim, with practical effort, at the racial control of the Colony--in the declaration that "outside interference with the domestic concerns of South Africa shall be opposed." Under the general principles of the platform these "domestic concerns" meant, of course, the relation of the different States toward each other, and the growing rivalry of Dutch and English in matters of Colonial Government, as well as the old-time question of native control and the newer one of territorial extension on the part of Cape Colony. So long as President Brand lived and ruled at Bloemfontein there remained, however, some check upon the Bund as well as upon President Kruger. If he had opposed the Bund actively, as he certainly did in a passive and deprecatory sense, the result might have been a serious hindrance to its progress. Brand's policy was to, indirectly and quietly, keep the Cape Colony and the Free State in harmonious and gradually closer co-operation instead of promoting that closer union of the two republics which was one of the ideals of the Bund leaders. He refused to accept Kruger's proposal of isolating their countries from the British possessions, and thus promoting the policy which, without doubt, had, since 1881, been shaping itself in the latter's mind. But, in 1888, Sir John Brand died, and was succeeded by F. W. Reitz. The influence of the new régime became at once visible in the platform above quoted, and in the whole succeeding policy of the Free State. It now assumed a more and more intimate alliance with the Transvaal, and frequently, during these years, the question of a union of the two