"You think Mr Rhodes has perhaps overlooked the advantage of putting
forward these considerations?"
"Not only Mr Rhodes, but all the politicians of the Cape Colony and
Natal. The best work the British Government ever did was in sending
those five thousand English people to South-East Africa in the early
part of this century. The experiment unfortunately has never been
repeated. There is a different kind of population going out now. When
they go to the Cape, they begin to spread themselves over every part of
South Africa as far as Salisbury. It seems to me that there ought to be
three or four hundred families going out every week to settle in new
homes. There is a great political question in the background, and if
Englishmen are not awake to it they must be instructed. The Boers, not
alluding to any political party such as the Afrikander Bond, or the
Krugerites, or the Republicans of the Orange Free State and the
Transvaal, but judging by their general conduct and the tone of their
public utterances, seem to have determined to keep Englishmen out of
South Africa in order to maintain the balance of power in their own
favour. Their whole action tends to that. Supposing the Cape Colony
had a grievance against the British Empire, and chose to form a Republic
of its own, it would be a Boer Republic, because the Boers are more
numerous than the English. It would be an addition to the Orange Free
State and the Transvaal. Some great absorbing question might arise at
any time; yet no one seems to have done anything to prepare for such a
contingency, or to maintain the balance of power in favour of the
English. The Dutch would naturally take sides with one another, as they
did in the Jameson raid affair. Then all the Dutch population veered
round in favour of the Transvaal, whereas before that, as in the Drifts
question, the Cape Dutch rather thought that the Transvaal was wrong.
The unjustifiable attack upon the Transvaal, so unexpected, like a bolt
from the blue, gave the Dutch an impression that the British Government
were at the back of the raiders, or if not the British Government, at
least the British nation. They said to themselves, `the British people
are ever hostile to us, and are determined to have this country English,
and under the thumb of the British Government. We refuse to have the
British Government vex us now as it has done in the past. They drove
the Transvaal Dutch from the Cape Colony; and they may drive us away if
we are not united in opposing this constant British hostility or
meddlesomeness with our peculiar habits, principles, and ideas.'"
"It is perhaps more correct to say that the Dutch retired before the
advance of the English rather than that the English drove them away by
persecution."