One often wonders how it comes to pass that people so demonstratively religious prove in so many cases conspicuously devoid of truth and honour and common honesty; but various explanations, each setting forth some partial contributory cause, may easily be conceived. As among Britons, so among Boers, there are, as a matter of course, varying degrees of loyalty to the moral law, and of sincerity in religious profession. It is therefore manifestly unfair to condemn a whole people because of individual immoralities. The outrageous deeds just described may well have been in large part the work of "lewd fellows of the baser sort," a sort of which the Transvaal has unfortunately no monopoly, and of which the better type of Boer scorns to become the apologist. Moreover, Johannesburg drew to itself with a rush a huge number not only of honourable adventurers, but also of wastrels, representing every class and clime under heaven. Many of these were commandeered or volunteered for service on the Boer side when war broke out, and by their lawlessnesses proved almost as great a terror to their friends as to their foes. Young Cordua was of foreign birth, and there were few genuine Boers among the Johannesburg conspirators; but it was the Transvaal they blindly sought to serve; and so on the shoulders of the whole Transvaal community is laid, none too justly, the entire blame for such mistakes. Then too, however mistakenly, I cannot but think the peculiar type of piety cherished by the Boers is largely responsible for the moral obliquity of which, justly or unjustly, I heard complaints continually from those who professed to know them well. These sons of the Huguenots and of the Dutch refugees who fled from the persecuting zeal of Alva have all sprung from an exceptionally religious stock, and with dogged conservatism still cling to the rigid traditions and narrow beliefs of a bygone age. The country-bred Boer resembles not remotely our own Puritans and Covenanters. He and his are God's Elect, and the Elect of the Lord have ever seemed prone to take liberties with the law of the Lord. They deem themselves a chosen race to whom a new Canaan has been divinely given, and in defence of whom Jehovah Himself is bound to fight. At the commencement of the campaign it was common talk that "they had commandeered the Almighty." Their piety and practice are largely modelled on Old Testament lines. They used God's name and quoted Scripture _ad nauseam_ even in State correspondence. Their President was also their High Priest; yet in business transactions they were reputed to be as slim as Jacob in his dealings with Laban; and a lack of loyalty to the exact truth, some of their own clergy say, had become almost a national characteristic. "The bond-slave of my mere word I will never be" has often been quoted as a Boer proverb; and those that had lived long in the land assured me that proverb and practice too commonly keep company.