“Out of the facts of the position actually existing in Johannesburg and other gold-mining centers it was utterly impossible for any honest man to manufacture a serious complaint, least of all such a complaint as would in any respect justify a revolution to secure redress. So far from being treated with unfairness or hardship, the foreign residents in the Transvaal have been treated with marked consideration. The interests of the gold industry have been consulted in every possible way. If the government has not in some instances been able to do all it might have wished to do, it has been because the reckless language of a portion of the press and the overbearing attitude of the capitalist agitators have aroused the suspicion and the resentment of the volksraad. “Yet out of this position of things a case had to be got up against the Transvaal government in order to justify the revolutionary movement that had been planned in the interest of the small groups of capitalists who had determined to make themselves as supreme over the gold industry in Johannesburg as they had become over the diamond industry in Kimberley.” It has seemed necessary to quote Mr. Statham thus at length in order that the alleged grievances of the foreigners in the Transvaal, and the Africander answer thereto may be considered side by side. To say the least, Mr. Statham has not dealt in vague generalities. His assertions are specific and his figures can easily be investigated. It is for those who sympathize with the complaints which led to prolonged agitation and finally to war, to show that Mr. Statham was in error. Until they shall have done so charges of “oppressive” and “extortionate” imposts, taxes and tariffs will lie, not against the South African Republic, but against the British administration in Cape Colony, Natal and Rhodesia. Mr. Statham’s contention that the Dutch ought to be the official language of the Transvaal seems well founded. The account he gives of a somewhat tardy provision—made after the raid of December, 1895—for the instruction of English children in the English language evinces a disposition to meet the reasonable demands of the foreigners in that regard; but the delay in doing so is to be regretted. The matter of franchise became the subject of acrimonious diplomatic negotiation and the immediate cause of war, which will be treated of more fully in a later chapter. CHAPTER XIV. CAUSES OF THE AFRICANDERS’ SECOND WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.—CONTINUED. The foreigners’ Reform Association, sometimes called the National Union, was organized at Johannesburg in 1893. Its professed object was to secure redress of grievances. This is always allowable in a free country; but it is matter of record that the spirit and methods of this particular association were not calculated to propitiate the people to whom they must look for any relief from the sufferings of which they complained.