Transvaal (South Africa) -- Politics and government -- 1880-1910
It is sometimes said that when one stands looking down from the edge
of this hill at the great mining camp of Johannesburg stretching
beneath, with its heaps of white sand and debris mountains high,
its mining chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand
Kafirs, and its eighty thousand men and women, white or colored, of all
nationalities gathered here in the space of a few years, on the spot
where fifteen years ago the Boer’s son guided his sheep to the water
and the Boer’s wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch
the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles
on earth. And it is wonderful; but, as we look at it, the thought
always arises within us of something more wonderful yet--the marvelous
manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the
land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men,
have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without
instruction in statecraft, or traditionary rules of policy, have risen
to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavored to meet
them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. Nothing but that
CURIOUS AND WONDERFUL INSTINCT
for statecraft and the organization and arrangement of new social
conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those
peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the northeast of
the continent of Europe, where the English and Dutch peoples alike
took their rise, could have made it possible. We do not say that
the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a
Lycurgus; but it has to-day, among the men guiding its destiny, men of
brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to
deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity
and justice. And, we do again repeat, that the strong sympathy of all
earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England,
should be with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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