and measures have been weightily discussed for forcibly excluding them,
it will assuredly be clear, to all impartial and truth loving minds,
that the problem which the Transvaal Republic has suddenly had to deal
with is one of transcendent complexity and difficulty. We put it to all
generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether
the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, the sympathy which
wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems,
where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path--and
whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it
should be in that large, impartial, truth-seeking spirit, in which
humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and
questions?
We put it further to such intelligent minds as have impartially watched
the action and endeavors of the little Republic in dealing with its
great problems, whether, when all the many sides and complex conditions
are considered, it has not manfully and wonderfully endeavored to solve
them?
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