There is one other matter to be mentioned,--that delicate matter to which I have alluded. A report has been spread all through South Africa that the late President of the South African Republic is to be gratified by a pension of £750 per annum out of the revenues of Great Britain. I trust for every one’s sake that that report may not be true. The late President was the chief officer of his country when the annexation was made, and I cannot think that it would be compatible with his honour to receive a pension from the Government of the country which has annihilated the Republic over which he had been called on to preside. When he says that he yielded and remonstrated he takes a highly honourable position and one which cannot be tarnished by any incapability for ruling which he may have shown. But were he to live after that as a pensioner on English bounty,--the bounty of the country which had annihilated his own,--then I think that he had better at least live far away from the Transvaal, and from the hearing of the sound of a Dutchman’s voice. And why should we pay such a pension? Is it necessary that we should silence Mr. Burgers? Have we done him an injustice that we should pay him a compensation for the loss of his office? It is said that we pay dethroned Indian Princes. But we take the revenues of dethroned Indian Princes,--revenues which have become their own by hereditary descent. Mr. Burgers had a month or two more of his Presidency to enjoy, with but little chance of re-election to an office the stipend of which could not have been paid for want of means. But this argument ought not to be required. An expensive and disagreeable duty was forced upon us by a country which could not rule itself, and certainly we should not convict ourselves of an injustice by giving a pension to the man whose incompetence imposed upon us the task. I trust that the rumour though very general has been untrue. CHAPTER IV. THE TRANSVAAL.--PRETORIA.