These quotations are not offered in the spirit of ridicule. The Uitlander question is too serious for joking. They are reproduced to enable those who have no knowledge of the Boer--his petty tyrannies and annoying and irritating habits, and the vexatious regulations from which the Uitlander continually suffered--to form an idea of the terrible mental gulf which existed between oppressor and oppressed. As the constant dropping of water will wear away stone, so the constant fret of Boer treatment wore out the patience of their victims! It soon became very difficult for even sons of Uitlanders born in the country to obtain the franchise. The naturalised subject resigned his own nationality, and acquired the duties of the citizen and the liability to be called on for military service, only to find out that he could not even then enjoy the rights of the citizen. He felt much as the dog in the fable, which let drop his piece of meat for the sake of a reflection in the water. New laws and regulations continually came into force for the ostensible purpose of improving the state of the Uitlander--laws which in reality were created to bamboozle him still further. What chicanery failed to accomplish the remissness of officials successfully brought about, and the discomfort of the foreign inhabitants was complete. Beside domestic there were economic grievances. The position in a nutshell is given by one of the unfortunates:-- "The one thing which we must have--not for its own sake, but for the security it offers for obtaining and retaining other reforms--_is_ the franchise. No promise of reform, no reform itself will be worth an hour's purchase unless we have the status of voters to make our influence felt. But, if you want the chief economic grievances, they are--the Netherland Railway concession, the dynamite monopoly, the liquor traffic, and native labour, which, together, constitute an unwarrantable burden of indirect taxation on the industry of _over two and a half millions sterling annually_. We petitioned until we were jeered at; we agitated until we--well--came here (Pretoria Gaol); and we know that we shall get no remedy until we have the vote to enforce it. We are not a political but a working community, and if we were honestly and capably governed, the majority of us would be content to wait for the franchise for a considerable time yet in recognition of the peculiar circumstances and of the feelings of the older inhabitants." Mrs. Lionel Phillips, as the wife of an Uitlander, has also written her plaint. She says:--