“With our sister republic we are not only bound by ties of blood, of sympathy and of common interests, but also by formal treaty which has been necessitated by circumstances. This treaty demands of us that we assist her if she should be unjustly attacked, which we unfortunately for a long time have had too much reason to expect. We therefore cannot passively look on while injustice is done her, and while also our own dearly bought freedom is endangered, but are called as men to resist, trusting the Almighty, firmly believing that He will never permit injustice and unrighteousness to triumph. “Now that we thus resist a powerful enemy, with whom it has always been our highest desire to live in friendship, notwithstanding injustice and wrong done by him to us in the past, we solemnly declare in the presence of the Almighty God that we are compelled thereto by the injustice done to our kinsmen and by the consciousness that the end of their independence will make our existence as an independent state of no significance, and that their fate, should they be obliged to bend under an overwhelming power, will also soon after be our own fate. “Solemn treaties have not protected our sister republic against annexation, against conspiracy, against the claim of an abolished suzerainty, against continuous oppression and interference, and now against a renewed attack which aims only at her downfall. “Our own unfortunate experiences in the past have also made it sufficiently clear to us that we cannot rely on the most solemn promises and agreements of Great Britain, when she has at her helm a government prepared to trample on treaties, to look for feigned pretexts for every violation of good faith by her committed. This is proved among other things by the unjust and unlawful British intervention, after we had overcome an armed and barbarous black tribe on our eastern frontier, as also by the forcible appropriation of the dominion over part of our territory where the discovery of diamonds had caused the desire for this appropriation, although contrary to existing treaties. The desire and intention to trample on our rights as an independent and sovereign nation, notwithstanding a solemn convention existing between this state and Great Britain, have also been more than once and are now again shown by the present government, by giving expressions in public documents to an unfounded claim of paramountcy over the whole of South Africa, and therefore also over this state.