upon the gold fields, he paid it only three visits in nine years.
This settled animosity was deplorable, but not unnatural. A man imbued
with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book save the one
which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected to have learned
the historical lessons of the advantages which a State reaps from a
liberal policy. To him it was as if the Ammonites and Moabites had
demanded admission into the twelve tribes. He mistook an agitation
against the exclusive policy of the State for one against the existence
of the State itself. A wide franchise would have made his republic
firm-based and permanent. It was a small minority of the Uitlanders who
had any desire to come into the British system. They were a cosmopolitan
crowd, only united by the bond of a common injustice. But when every
other method had failed, and their petition for the rights of freemen
had been flung back at them, it was natural that their eyes should
turn to that flag which waved to the north, the west, and the south of
them--the flag which means purity of government with equal rights and
equal duties for all men. Constitutional agitation was laid aside, arms
were smuggled in, and everything prepared for an organised rising.
The events which followed at the beginning of 1896 have been so thrashed
out that there is, perhaps, nothing left to tell--except the truth. So
far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their action was most
natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to exculpate themselves
for rising against such oppression as no men of our race have ever been
submitted to. Had they trusted only to themselves and the justice of
their cause, their moral and even their material position would have
been infinitely stronger. But unfortunately there were forces behind
them which were more questionable, the nature and extent of which have
never yet, in spite of two commissions of investigation, been properly
revealed. That there should have been any attempt at misleading inquiry,
or suppressing documents in order to shelter individuals, is deplorable,
for the impression left--I believe an entirely false one--must be that
the British Government connived at an expedition which was as immoral as
it was disastrous.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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