The Johannesburghers are not merely disfranchised; they are, by a vengeful and grasping minority, excluded from the right to protect themselves in persons and property. It is a great fault in them that they did not arm themselves and march to Pretoria to receive and reinforce the Jameson raiders as deliverers. They are justly punished for this sin of omission. The statistician of the United States Treasury Department says: The gold mines are now the most productive in the world, and have already turned out gold to the value of more than $300,000,000, and, according to the estimate of experts, have still $3,500,000,000 'in sight.' The commerce of the South African Republic, while naturally great because of the large number of people employed by the mining industries, cannot be as accurately stated as that of states or divisions whose imports are all received through a given port or ports. Foreign goods for the South African Republic reach it through several ports--Cape Colony, Natal, Lourenco Marquez, and in smaller quantities from other ports on the coast. The total imports of 1897 are estimated at £21,515,000, of which £17,012,000 were from Great Britain, £2,747,000 from the United States, £1,054,226 from Germany, and the remainder from Belgium, Holland and France." All this does not help the Boer as a politician. He is devoted to the rule of the minority and the exercise of his will in commanding others, native and foreign, black and white, and trampling them into the place he has assigned them. This he calls liberty, and for that sort of liberty he has a portentous passion that he is absolutely sure is sanctified. Mr. Howard C. Hillegas, in his book "Oom Paul's People," D. Appleton & Co., holds the Boers to be a nation, and his pages are full of highly colored partiality for their cause. The diamond mines, he says, "have yielded more than four hundred million dollars worth of diamonds since the Free State conceded them to England for less than half a million dollars." He does not condescend to consider the proposition that if the cession had not been made, the find of diamonds would not have occurred, or if it had, and the Boers undertaken to work the mines, their success would have been small in comparison with the remarkable results produced by the Uitlanders. Mr. Hillegas in his story of the gold mines sheds light upon the character of the people of the Orange State as well as the Transvaal. He says: "In 1854, a Dutchman named John Marais, who had a short time before returned from the Australian gold fields, prospected in the Transvaal, and found many evidences of gold. The Boers fearing, that their land would be overrun with gold seekers, paid £500 to Marais and sent him home after extracting a promise that he would not reveal his secret to any one.