allowed that whatever the nationality or preferences of respective
Uitlanders at that time of day, a rough sense of justice would reconcile
most of them now to the flag of the country, which at enormous sacrifice
of treasure and men has procured their release from the bondage of
Pretoria. It is equally certain, more so in fact, that their acceptance
of the British flag, now and hereafter, is and will be contingent on the
treatment they receive at the hands of the new Government. Already many
voices are heard in the land declaring that, so far from the new
Government having brought relief to the mining industry and to the
Uitlanders--and it must be clearly understood by all Englishmen, however
much they may resent the fact, that upon the prosperity of the mines not
only the welfare of the Transvaal but of all South Africa depends--it
has increased its burdens. The limits of space will not permit any
exhaustive examination into the basis of this complaint. Mr.
Chamberlain, before these lines are in the hands of the public, will
doubtless be on the spot examining into the grounds of the complaint. It
would be clearly impossible for any one to accuse me, of all persons, of
favouring the millionaires, or of holding a brief for their views and
interests. But this is not a millionaires', or a mining question; it is
the question of the to be or not to be of South Africa as a British
dependency. It may be said at once, that if, as Mr. Chamberlain at one
time indicated, the somewhat contradictory and superficial report drawn
up by Sir David Barbour, full of inconsistencies and injustices as it
is, is to be accepted by the British Government, then I would not care
to purchase at any price a seven years' repairing lease--a repairing
lease with a vengeance--of British tenure of South Africa, much less the
freehold of the property. Whether he be a financial expert or not, no
man who possesses a sound working knowledge, personal knowledge, of
South Africa and its affairs can study this report and preserve his
equanimity. It fills one with fear and trembling. Sir David Barbour's
proposals savour of the arbitrary confiscation of mining profits. This
perhaps, standing alone, would not matter much from a South African
point of view, since the loss would mainly fall on the hundreds of
thousands of English and foreign shareholders interested in the mines;
according to the _Statist_, the British public has something like
£250,000,000 invested in the mines. However, it is not with such losses
we are at present concerned. My contention is that if the Transvaal is
taxed out of all proportion to its wealth--its immediate or permanent
prospects even; if the new colonies, despite the heavy losses from the
war, and the serious--for a long time to come it will be serious--dearth
of labour contingent thereon, is burdened with taxation, the incidence
of which is to be double, or in any case greatly in excess of the
monstrous charges levied by Kruger and his advisers; if the Transvaal is
to be saddled with a heavy war debt, then the financial, political, and
economic ruin of South Africa in general, and the Transvaal in
particular, must follow as an inevitable consequence, and this will
happen even should a short respite be given. I have set forth again and
again, in the columns of the _Times_ and _Post_, and in the
Anglo-African journal I formerly conducted, that apart from the
uneconomic and impolitic nature of these suggestions, they are morally
unsound. He who calls the tune must pay the piper. The British people,
by allowing themselves to be ruled and betrayed by men who persisted in
blinding their eyes to the writing on the wall, though there were
Daniels in abundance to interpret it to them; by allowing themselves to
be served by an army wholly inadequate in numbers, and largely composed
of inefficients, are responsible for the cost of a war which never would
have taken place had British pro-consuls and colonists on the spot been
trusted; their counsel listened to here, and their hands freed and
actions upheld yonder.
Moreover, all such heroic schemes of taxation in the interest of the
British taxpayer, of which Sir David Barbour's report is a type, are
based on proleptic statistics of an expansion which after all is
problematical, and which in any case will not become solid fact if
onerous conditions are imposed upon the Rand in advance of that
expansion. The profits from the mines, great as they ought to be if we
do not strangle the goose right away, are ephemeral profits--thirty to
fifty years will see the last of them. Possibly the high-water mark of
production will be reached twenty years hence, and from that time the
decline will begin as in the case of the Australian and Californian
mines. It is obvious, therefore, that a heavy war debt must press
disastrously on the industry during its growth and during its decline.
Taxation seems to have been proposed on the basis of the anticipation,
as if it were already an accomplished fact, of the most prosperous days
possible of attainment by the industry, and in entire obliviousness of
the fact that no sooner is the zenith reached than gradual decline,
ending in extinction, must supervene. Unjust taxation would be a
suicidal policy; it would retard the flow of capital, render all but a
few higher-grade mines unprofitable, with the result that the budgets of
the new colonies would show deficits year after year. Not only would
capital awaiting employment be frightened into other channels, but
schemes of federation would remain sterile schemes; and the hope of a
prosperous and united South Africa would continue a mere day-dream,
impossible of accomplishment.
I have put this question of the taxation of the Transvaal in the
forefront of this paper, because it is of pressing importance and
immediate interest. Scarcely less important, though the subject will
probably be dealt with more fully by another pen, is the question of
land settlement. We are approaching this matter too parochially and
timidly. If the land companies and burghers will not part with suitable
land to settlers on reasonable terms, they must be made to do so. The
example of New Zealand must be followed. It is absolutely essential that
we should plant out settlers on a large scale; especially is it
essential in view of the fact that the loyalty of the dwellers in
Johannesburg and other mining centres is not to be counted on
confidently. With these men commercial considerations are certain to be
dominant. Even if they are not given the solid reasons for discontent
already foreshadowed, reasons, real and imaginary, in plenty are certain
to crop up. Hence their loyalty will not be a matter of sentiment, but
one of calculation. Further, every help and encouragement must be given
to the right kind of settlers; the country which spent over two hundred
millions sterling in making South Africa a possible place for Englishmen
to live in, should not grudge another ten, twenty, or if necessary
thirty millions to make the conditions of life sufficiently attractive
to the emigrating English agriculturist. The conditions underlying land
settlement have been carefully studied by Mr. Arnold Forster's Land
Commission, and they were lucidly set forth in the report of that
Commission. It remains for the Imperial Government to make them
operative, by coming to the country for generous support. I can do no
more here than record my absolute conviction, for what it may be worth,
that if land settlement in the new colonies is to find its own level, so
to speak; if we are trusting to men with the necessary capital, some
£300 or more, to come forward in anything like sufficient numbers to
affect appreciably the question of British _versus_ Boer in favour of
the British, or the problem of self-seeking Cosmopolitanism (purely
commercial interests) _versus_ sentimental and patriotic Imperialism, we
are building our hopes on sand. The drawbacks to farming in Africa are
many: absence of transport (and obviously without well-devised and
speedily carried out railway schemes the internal development of South
Africa is impossible); absence of navigable rivers; recurrent droughts
(here again I may say that nothing less can avail than grand schemes of
organised irrigation such as those favoured by Mr. Hedger Wallace and by
Mr. Willcocks in his luminous report); cattle disease and locusts. The
_ignis fatuus_ of the Rand, it must always be remembered, is ever
present to lure away the settler when he has once been induced to
settle. To the Englishman the love of isolation is not generally the
strongly developed vice or virtue it is with the Boer. Consequently, we
must go before the settler and prepare the way for him. Large and
well-organised schemes of planting families on communal principles,
freely scattered over the land in the midst of the Boers, both from an
economic and political point of view, are absolutely necessary if we are
to retain our hold on the country, or ensure its permanent prosperity.
Under proper conditions and safeguards, generous schemes of female
immigration must be initiated. It has been said, and I do not gainsay
it, that South Africa requires almost immediately 70,000 more women.
Also the Children of the State, the waifs and strays, the foundlings,
those who are physically and morally fit, of course, should be sent out
to South Africa, there to be carefully prepared in proper establishments
for colonial life. In this matter we may well learn wisdom from the
early Dutch settlers, who, under an arrangement with the Amsterdam
authorities, received into their midst a number of foundlings. From
these the present race of sturdy burghers has sprung. The subject is too
vast for detailed treatment here; else much might be said about the
policy of obliging all male settlers to bind themselves to a course of
military training and contingent service, and as to the expediency of
encouraging a respectable number of Canadians and Australians to make
their home in South Africa. It is, in any case, obvious that no
tentative tinkering with the question of land settlement can avail.
The sooner we face this necessity the better; since the sooner it is in
a fair way to being faced, mastered, and provided for, the sooner can
those electoral and legislative concessions we have promised the Boers,
and which honour, justice, and expediency oblige us to grant at the
earliest possible date, be granted. As things now are, we have a British
autocracy in power, alternating in turn between the desire to repress
the clamant demands of the one great industry of South Africa--the gold
mines, and dread of that powerful confederacy--the Rand magnates. The
methods and example of the great financial corporations and financial
princes are not, to write temperately, conducive to the elevation of
public morals; nor do they tend to give to the public life of a colony a
high or healthy tone. Students of Mr. Cecil Rhodes' career cannot fail
to notice the disintegrating effect on that great patriot's manners, and
on his public and private procedure, which resulted from his close
association with, and inexplicable reliance on, men, most of whom (it
would be invidious to specialise the exceptions) lived and moved and had
their being on a plane infinitely lower than Rhodes' natural one. The
destinies of the new colonies are for the moment nominally in the hands
of British officials. These officials have practically nobody to go to
for counsel but the mining and financial experts. This is not as it
should be. The sooner there is a free play of interests and opinions
between the Boers, British settlers, and Johannesburgers the better.
These divergent classes, all colonial, however antagonistic their
interests and prejudices, must fight out their differences among
themselves as best they may. The British official, excellent as he is in
dealing with subject races, is not seen at his best in controlling men
of his own flesh and blood--men, I should say, of his own colour--when
these men are in a position of political inferiority to himself.
The mention of this subject reminds me, that one of the most effective
arguments in favour of granting representative institutions to the new
colonies as quickly as may be is to be found in the native question. In
this matter, as indeed in every matter, colonial opinion asserting
itself through the necessarily imperfect, but only possible, system of
parliamentary institutions, must be respected. As to the native
question, an enormous majority of British South Africans, though it may
reprobate certain tendencies to undue harshness, brutality even, still
observable in the conduct of Boers of the baser sort, is nevertheless
convinced that the Dutch attitude toward the native is, in its essence,
the only possible or safe one. There is not the smallest fear that
anything in the shape of compulsory labour will be sanctioned by any
legislature in South Africa. But that the principles and provisions of
that most statesmanlike Act, the Glen Grey Act, will be further extended
there can be no doubt.
That the labour question throughout South Africa, and especially as it
affects the mining industry, is among the more difficult problems of the
future, most persons are aware. It is said that in five years' time
320,000 natives will be required at Johannesburg to work the mines,
irrespective of enormous domestic requirements there. To this total we
must add the hundreds of thousands needed for industrial and household
work throughout South Africa. It is estimated that in five years' time
there will be no more than 600,000 working Kaffirs south of the
Zambesi. It is obvious that under the most favourable computation the
supply is certain to continue to be totally inadequate to the demand.
This is the more apparent when it is remembered, that it is only
possible to get a small proportion of able-bodied Kaffirs to work at
all, and that the average service of these willing ones is not more than
four months a year, taking one year with another. Doubtless the new laws
as to capitation tax, and the modifications in the direction of greater
stringency in the hut tax, alterations which must have the effect of
reducing the economic evil of polygamy, will effect some amelioration in
the conditions now obtaining. But the lowering of wages and the
prohibition of the liquor sale have retarded the immediate supply. I
have had to listen before now to arguments in favour of the unrestricted
sale of liquor to the natives, and in advocacy of establishing drinking
booths from one end to the other of the Rand. This would be as suicidal,
politically and socially, and in the long run as uneconomic a policy as
could well be devised, to say nothing as to its cynical immorality. Of
course, when schemes of organisation are perfected, and labour is
largely drawn from Central Africa, the employers will enjoy some measure
of relief; but in the end, unless relief comes from that highly
debatable source--the importation of coolie labour--the prejudice
against white labour in Africa will have to break down: a way out, I am
sure, always provided the whites can be differentiated and segregated
from the blacks, which cannot but be fraught with results of lasting
benefit to the country, in procuring for it a solid substratum of
Caucasian settlers who will become the industrial backbone of the
country. The indirect advantages of such an innovation cannot be reaped,
however, if schemes of heavy taxation are to be sanctioned. The margin
between loss and profit in working most of the mines--they are what are
called in city slang "low-grade propositions"--is so small, that a
slight increase even in the price of labour would often make mining
unprofitable.
The employment of white labour would have the effect of disabusing the
minds of the natives of the growing conviction that they are necessary
to our well-being and existence. The truth is not so far short of this;
but we must not make it apparent: we must try to make it less true than
it is. During the war the native, spoiled by the military, did not gain
respect for the Englishman. He is a shrewd fellow, and although our arms
were victorious in the end, he cherished no delusions. Man for man, he
has seen for himself how much more effective as a fighter the Boer was
than the Briton. Enjoying special advantages--his knowledge of the
country and his control over the Kaffirs--the Boer was enabled to make
the best use of his superior marksmanship, tactics, and mobility; with
the result that it was easy for him to inflict much greater damage on
his opponents than that opponent, with all his courage and spirit, could
inflict in return. The native has seen our men lying in ghastly,
mutilated masses. He has seen few such spectacles on the Boer side. The
native is no sentimentalist. He is much like a prevalent type of modern
young woman--fond of laughing, enjoyment, gew-gaws and sweets, while
viewing everything from the standpoint of self-interest. In brief,
despite his jollity he is as hard as nails. It is perfectly right that
we should show him some consideration as the descendant of tribes who
conquered the land some century or so earlier than we conquered it; for,
except so far as being an inhabitant of the continent is concerned, it
is absurd to talk of the existing South African tribes as aborigines.
But if the "nigger" will not work, he must in the long run give place to
men who will, to British and Continental labourers and to other British
subjects--the coolies of India, for instance--men who will work, and who
are now starving, or are on the brink of starvation, for the want of it.
That this step is not to be taken lightly I am free to admit. It is
fraught with grave difficulties and dangers--political, economic, and
ethnical--considerations which are by no means to be minimised even if
for a larger good--South Africa cannot be allowed to languish for lack
of labour--they will have to be ignored.
[Illustration: LORD MILNER
By Mortimer Menpes.
From "War Impressions," by arrangement with Messrs A. & C. Black,
London.]
There can many, indeed in most directions, the civil administration of
the new colonies, so far as it has been provided, is highly creditable
to Lord Milner and the able men associated with him. So excellent and so
thorough is the work accomplished--in education, in replacing the
machinery of the higher civil administration throughout the
colonies--that, without hyperbole, it may be said to fill one with
admiration and wonder. If one could always be sure of getting such a man
as Joseph Chamberlain at the Colonial Office, and such a man as Alfred
Milner as High Commissioner, one would be strongly in favour of
retaining permanently as much power as possible in the hands of the
holders of these two offices. But it is not possible to count upon a
succession of such ministers. It is noteworthy, and I would especially
emphasise the point in view of what is to follow, that the appointment
of Lord Milner and Mr. Chamberlain to their respective offices may be
said to have been in defiance of precedent. Since the institution of the
Colonial Secretaryship half-a-century ago, ministers appointed to the
office have almost invariably been noblemen of little or no importance.
Again, Lord Milner's earliest career was not official. He was quite out
of the groove in which the men who become colonial governors usually
run. It is regrettable, that the success of these two statesmen does
not give the Government heart of grace to put appointments in the new
colonies more largely into the hands of men of proved initiative and
originality--men who have not had any good which may have been in them
strangled by red tape and flummery in the public offices. The complaint
as to the appointments made in the Transvaal--appointments of untried
striplings and callow fledglings from the universities, is doubtless
exaggerated; but it is well to remember that putting power into the
hands of the "curled darlings of the nation" was one of the chief
causes, among many contributory causes, of the failure of Sir Theophilus
Shepstone's policy; the reason why the annexation of the Transvaal, with
the tacit consent and approval of the majority of its people, was
subsequently repudiated by them.
However that may be, it is extremely regrettable that a country,
possessing so many good men, men in every way indicated by their
abilities and achievements as successful administrators _in posse_, is
constantly at a deadlock for the lack of suitable public servants. I
could mention spontaneously, without having time for reflection and for
selection, a round dozen, probably a score, men of parts full of the
sense of our imperial responsibilities, and certain to be able and
zealous in the Empire's service: men accustomed to positions in which
initiative and sound judgment are demanded of them, who, pining to be
men of action, to play their part, however humble, in affairs of State,
affairs of which they possess a firm grip, are condemned to enforced
inactivity, buried away in country houses, or, let us say, wasting their
energies in mere constructive synthesis or destructive criticism, for
which, alas! no one is much the better. These men, the born
administrators of our over-seas dominions, are lost to the Empire,
because of the red-tape exclusiveness and jealousy of the ruling classes
of this country.
I have been betrayed for the moment into an academic consideration, and
let me say here that I sorrowfully endorse--I might add that in a large
measure I have publicly anticipated--most of the strictures on our
system of misgovernment, corruption, and panoplied vice set forth in the
letters of that sturdy Africander signing himself by his true initials
"P. S." Under these abuses we groan, and it is difficult to continue to
hope that we shall escape from their tyranny, and rise again to that
full manhood of our race asserted in the spacious days of Elizabeth, and
again when Napoleon threatened our shores. Our grand old country is
sinking deeper and deeper into the morass of spiritual and intellectual
indifferentism, sordid materialism, and time-serving opportunism. One
sees scant justification for optimism, unless, indeed, Judgment should
descend upon us and beneficently scourge us back to our nobler past.
It is not, however, with these larger issues I am at this moment
directly concerned. Despite the constant drains upon our best and most
vital manhood the possession--protection and administration--of the most
extensive empire of this or any age impose upon the United Kingdom,
upon, that is to say, a small and no longer rapidly increasing nation, I
do not believe that there would be any ground for the fear that we have
annexed more territory than we can effectively administer, or that we
have incurred greater responsibilities than we can sustain, if we had
the presence of mind, the initiative and sense to utilise those latent
sources of unexhausted supply we now wilfully neglect. The immediate
bearing of these remarks reveals itself when the serious problem of the
_personnel_ of the magistracy of the new colonies is mentioned. Every
one knows that the landdrosts under the old régime, men for the most
part rough and unlettered, were habitually underpaid and habitually
corrupt. The inadequate salaries paid to these men are, it seems, now
being continued to the new magistracy, and this despite the enormous
increase in the cost of living, with the result that men of quite
inferior parts are mainly available for the positions; while, when from
stress of life and circumstance, men of the right stamp, men to whom
Boer and Kaffir can look up as their natural superiors, chance to fill
these offices, they are unable, by reason of their poverty, to live in a
way or to comport themselves in a manner consistent with the dignity of
their offices.