If one will read the above carefully over, he will be able to gauge the
intellect of this wonderful statesman fairly well, and measure the sense
of the people who gape at these absurdities. What with political
economy drawn from Isaiah and practical life being ordered by what the
prophet Isaiah said, with a future policy based upon the manufacture of
dynamite in the Transvaal, and the support of the tariffs of the
Netherlands Railway, and the ensuring of a produce market at
Johannesburg by not allowing the people of that city to have electric
trams, the payment of 225,000 pounds a year to keep the forts in order,
and 200,000 pounds interest on the capital expended on the wholly
useless structures, the constant denunciation of the murderer Rhodes,
the squandering of 80,000 pounds a year to spare the Transvaal from
another surprise like the Jameson raid, It appears to the simple
burghers that their President is the only fit man for the office he
holds, and that Kruger is only second to Washington.
And yet both President and people are within reach and close connection
with every possible civilised influence; but the truth is that their
dull, dense, and dark minds are impenetrable to good sense, impervious
to reason, and insensitive to the noble examples we see at Johannesburg.
Though there may be neither rhyme nor reason in anything the
Presidential dotard may say or do, the burgher farmer will cling to him
and make him victor over all rivals for a fourth time.