THE ORANGE FREE STATE.--PRESENT CONDITION.
Sir George Grey, who was at that time Governor of the Cape of Good Hope
writing to Lord John Russell on 17th November 1855,--Lord John having
then been Secretary of State for the Colonies,--expresses himself in the
following glowing terms as to the region of which I am now writing. “The
territory of the Orange Free State forms one of the finest pastoral
countries I have ever seen. There is no district of country in Australia
which I have visited which throughout so great an extent of territory
affords so uniformly good a pastoral country.” A short time previous to
this, Sir George Clerk, when he was about to deliver the State up to the
Government of the Dutch, declared,--or at any rate is popularly reported
to have declared,--that the land was a “howling wilderness.” I think
that the one colonial authority was quite as far astray as the other.
Sir George Grey had ever a way with him of contending for his point
either by strong language or by strong action. He was at one time
Governor of South Australia, but perhaps never travelled as far north as
the Salt Bush country of that Colony. The Colony in his time was in its
infancy and was not known as far north as the pastoral district in
question. I do not know whether Sir George ever visited the Riverina in
New South Wales, or the Darling Downs in Queensland. Had he done
so,--and had he then become as well acquainted with the pastoral
properties of land as he has since become,--he would hardly with all his
energy have ventured upon such an assertion. It will be only necessary
for any investigator to look at the prices of Australian and South
African wool to enable him to form an opinion on the subject. The
average price in London of medium Australian wool in 1877 was 1s. 6d. a
pound, and that of South African wool of the same class 1s. 1d. a pound.
In both countries it is common to hear that the land should be stocked
at about the rate of 3 sheep to the acre; but in Australia patches of
land which will bear heavier stocking occur much more numerously than in
South Africa. The Orange Free State has not yet arrived at the ponderous
glory of full statistics so that I cannot give the amount of the wool
produced, nor can I divide her wool from that of the Cape Colony,
through which it is sent to England without special record. But I feel
sure that no one who knows the two countries will venture to compare the
flocks of the Free State with those of either of the four great
Australian Colonies, or with the flocks of New Zealand.
But if Sir George Grey spoke too loudly in one direction Sir George
Clerk spoke very much too loudly in the other. He was probably struck by
the desolate and unalluring appearance of the lands to the north of the
Orange. They are not picturesque. They are not well-timbered. They are
not even well-watered. If Sir George Clerk saw them in a drought, as I
did, he certainly did not look upon a lovely country. But it is a
country in which men may earn easy bread by pastoral and agricultural
pursuits; in which with a certain amount of care,--which has to show
itself mainly in irrigation,--the choicest fruits of the earth can be
plenteously produced; in which the earth never refuses her increase if
she be asked for it with many tears. A howling wilderness certainly it
is not. But Sir George Clerk when he described the country was anxious
to excuse the conduct of Great Britain in getting rid of it, while Sir
George Grey was probably desirous of showing how wrong Great Britain had
been on the occasion.
I do not know that I ever travelled across a less attractive country
than the Orange Free State, or one in which there is less to gratify the
visitor who goes to see things and not to see men and women. And the men
and women are far between; for over an area presumed to include 70,000
square miles, a solid block of territory about 300 miles long by 120
miles broad, there are probably not more than 30,000 white people, and
half that number of coloured people. The numbers I know are computed to
be greater by the officials of the Free State itself,--but no census has
been taken, and with customary patriotism they are perhaps disposed to
overestimate their own strength. They, however, do not give much above
half an inhabitant to every square mile. It must be remembered that in
the Free State the land is all occupied;--but that it is occupied at the
rate I have described. I altogether deny that the Free State is a
howling wilderness, but I do not recommend English autumn tourists to
devote their holydays to visiting the land, unless they have become very
tired indeed of their usual resorts.
The farmer in the Orange Free State is generally a Dutch Boer,--but by
no means always so. During my very short visit I came across various
Englishmen who were holding or who had held land there,--Africanders
perhaps, persons who had been born from British parents in the Gape
Colony,--but altogether British as distinguished from Dutch. In the
towns the shopkeepers are I think as generally English as the farmers
are Dutch in the country. We hear of the Republic as an essentially
Dutch country;--but I think that if a man about to live there had to
choose the possession of but one of the two languages, English would be
more serviceable to him of the two. In another twenty years it certainly
will be so.
I travelled from the Diamond Fields to Bloemfontein and thence through
Smithfield to the Orange River at Aliwal North. I also made a short
excursion from Bloemfontein. In this way I did not see the best district
of the country which is that which was taken from the Basutos,--where
the town of Ladybrand now is,--which is good agricultural land, capable
of being sown and reaped without artificial irrigation. The normal Dutch
farmer of the Republic, such as I saw him, depends chiefly upon his
flocks which are very small as compared with those in Australia,--three
or four thousand sheep being a respectable pastoral undertaking for one
man. He deals in agriculture also, not largely, but much more generally
than his Australian brother. In Australia the squatter usually despises
agriculture, looking upon it as the fitting employment for a little
free-selector,--who is but a mean fellow in his estimation. He grows no
more than he will use about his place for his own cattle. The flour to
be consumed by himself and his men he buys. And as his horses are not
often corn-fed a very few acres of ploughed land suffices for his
purpose. The Dutch patriarch makes his own bread from the wheat he has
himself produced. The bread is not white, but it is so sweet that I am
inclined to say I have never eaten better. And he sells his
produce,--anything which he can grow and does not eat himself. The
Australian woolgrower sells nothing but wool. The Dutch Boer will send
peas twenty miles to market, and will sell a bundle of forage,--hay made
out of unripened oats or barley,--to any one who will call at his place
and ask for it.
A strong Boer will probably have thirty, forty or perhaps fifty acres of
cultivated land round his house,--including his garden. And he will
assuredly have a dam for holding and husbanding his rain water. He would
almost better be without a house than without a dam. Some spot is chosen
as near to his homestead as may be,--towards which there is something,
be it ever so slight, of a fall of ground. Here a curved wall or stoned
bank is made underlying the fall of ground, and above it the earth is
hollowed out,--as is done with a haha fence, only here it is on larger
and broader dimensions,--and into this artificial pond when it is so
made the rain water is led by slight watercourses along the ground
above. From the dam, by other watercourses, the contents are led hither
and thither on to the land and garden as required,--or into the house.
It is the Boer’s great object thus to save enough water to last him
through any period of drought that may come;--an object which he
generally attains as far as his sheep, and cattle, and himself are
concerned;--but in which he occasionally fails in reference to his
ground. I saw more than one dam nearly dry as I passed through the
country, and heard it asserted more than once that half a day’s rain
would be worth a hundred pounds to the speaker.
The Boer’s house consists of a large middle chamber in which the family
live and eat and work,--but do not cook. There is not usually even a
fireplace in the room. It is very seldom floored. I do not know that I
ever saw a Boer’s house floored in the Free State. As the planks would
have had to be brought up four hundred miles by oxen, this is not
wonderful. The Boer is contented with the natural hard earth as it has
been made for him. The furniture of his room is good enough for all
domestic purposes. There are probably two spacious tables, and settees
along the walls of which the seats are made of ox-riems, and open
cupboards in the corners filled not sparingly with crockery. And there
is always a pile of books in a corner of the room,--among which there is
never one not of a religious tendency. There is a large Dutch Bible, and
generally half a dozen Dutch hymn-books, with a smaller Bible or two,
and not improbably an English prayer-book and English hymn-book if any
of the younger people are affecting the English language. The younger
members of the family generally are learning English and seem to be very
much better off in regard to education than are their relations in the
Transvaal.
Opening out of the living room there are generally bedrooms to the right
and left,--probably two at one end and one at the other,--of which the
best will be surrendered to the use of any respectable stranger who may
want such accommodation. It matters not who may be the normal occupant
of the room. He or she,--or more probably they,--make way for the
stranger, thinking no more of surrendering a bedroom than we do of
giving up a chair. The bedroom is probably close and disagreeable,
lacking fresh air, with dark suspicious corners of which the stranger
would not on any account unravel the mysteries. Behind the centre
chamber there is a kitchen to which the stranger does not probably
penetrate. I have however been within the kitchen of a Dutch Boeress and
have found that as I was to eat what came out of it, I had better not
have penetrated so far. It will be understood that a Dutch Boer’s house
never has an upper storey.
The young men are large strapping youths, and well made though awkward
in their gait. The girls can hardly be said to be good-looking though
there is often a healthy bloom about them. One would be inclined to say
that they marry and have children too young were it not that they have
so many children, and afterwards become such stout old matrons. Surely
no people ever attended less to the fripperies and frivolities of dress.
The old men wear strong loose brown clothes well bestained with work.
The old women do the same. And so do the young men, and so do the young
women. There seems to be extant among them no taste whatever for
smartness. None at any rate is exhibited about their own homesteads.
There are always coloured people about, living in adjacent huts,--very
probably within the precincts of the same courtyard. For with the white
children there are always to be seen black children playing. Nor does
there seem to be any feeling of repugnance at such intercourse on the
part of any one concerned. As such children grow up no doubt they are
required to work, but I have never seen among the Dutch any instance of
personal cruelty to a coloured person;--nor, during my travels in South
Africa, did any story of such cruelty reach my ear. The Dutchman would I
think fain have the black man for his slave,--and, could he have his way
in this, would not probably be over tender. But the feeling that the
black man is not to be personally ill-used has I think made its way so
far, that at any rate in the Orange Free State such ill-usage is
uncommon.
In regard to the question of work, I found that in the Free State as in
all the other provinces and districts of the country so much of the work
as is done for wages is invariably done by coloured people. On a farm I
have seen four young men working together,--as far as I could see on
equal terms,--and two have been white and two black; but the white lads
were the Boer’s sons, while the others were his paid servants. Looking
out of a window in a quiet dreary little town in the Free State I saw
opposite to me two men engaged on the plastering of a wall. One was a
Kafir and the other probably was a west coast Negro. Two or three passed
by with loads on their shoulders. They were Bechuanas or Bastard
Hottentots. I strolled out of the village to a country house where a
Fingo was gardener and a Bushman was working under him. Out in the
street the two men who had driven the coach were loafing round it. They
were Cape Boys as they are called,--a coloured people who came from St.
Helena and have white blood in their veins. I had dined lately and had
been waited upon by a Coolie. Away in the square I could see bales of
wool being handled by three Basutos. A couple of Korannas were
pretending to drive oxen through the street but were apparently going
where the oxen led them. Then came another Hottentot with a yoke and
pair of buckets on his shoulder. I had little else to do and watched the
while that I was there;--but I did not see a single white man at work. I
heard their voices,--some Dutch, though chiefly English; but the voices
were the voices of masters and not of men. Then I walked round the place
with the object of seeing, and nowhere could I find a white man working
as a labourer. And yet the Orange Free State is supposed to be the one
South African territory from which the black man has been expelled. The
independent black man who owned the land has been expelled,--but the
working black man has taken his place, allured by wages and diet.
The Dutch Boer does not love to pay wages,--does not love to spend money
in any way,--not believing in a return which is to come, or possibly may
come, from an outlay of capital in that direction. He prefers to keep
what he has and to do what can be done by family labour. He will,
however, generally have a couple of black men about his place, whose
services he secures at the lowest possible rate. Every shilling so paid
is grudged. He has in his heart an idea that a nigger ought to be made
to work without wages.
In the Free State as in the Transvaal I found every Boer with whom I
came in contact, and every member of a Boer’s family, to be courteous
and kind. I never entered a house at which my hand was not grasped at
going in and coming out. This may be a bore, when there are a dozen in
family all shaking hands on both occasions; but it is conclusive
evidence that the Boer is not a churl. He admits freedoms which in more
civilized countries would be at once resented. If you are hungry or
thirsty you say so, and hurry on the dinner or the cup of tea. You
require to be called at four in the morning and suggest that there shall
be hot coffee at that hour. And he is equally familiar. He asks your
age, and is very anxious to know how many children you have and what is
their condition in the world. He generally boasts that he has more than
you have,--and, if you yourself be so far advanced in age, that he has
had grandchildren at a younger age than you. “You won’t have a baby born
to you when you are 67 years old,” an old Boer said to me exulting. When
I expressed a hope that I might be saved from such a fate, he chuckled
and shook his head, clearly expressing an opinion that I would fain have
a dozen children if Juno and the other celestials concerned would only
be so good to me. His young wife sat by and laughed as it was all
explained to her by the daughter of a former marriage who understood
English. This was customary Boer pleasantness intended by the host for
the delectation of his guest.
I was never more convinced of anything than that those people, the Dutch
Boers of the Free State, are contented with their present condition and
do not desire to place themselves again under the dominion of England.
The question is one of considerable importance at the present moment as
the permissive bill for the suggested Confederation of the South African
districts has become law, and as that Confederation can hardly take
place unless the Free State will accept it. The Free State is an
isolated district in South Africa, now surrounded on all sides by
British territory, by no means rich, not populous, in which the Dutch
and English languages prevail perhaps equally, and also Dutch and
English habits of life. It would appear therefore at first sight to be
natural that the large English Colonies should swallow up and assimilate
the little Dutch Republic. But a close view of the place and of the
people,--and of the circumstances as they now exist and would exist
under Dutch rule,--have tended to convince me that such a result is
improbable for at any rate some years to come.
In the Orange Free State the Volksraad or Parliament is
plenipotentiary,--more so if it be possible than our Parliament is with
us because there is but one Chamber and because the President has no
veto upon any decision to which that Chamber may come. The Volksraad is
elected almost exclusively by the rural interest. There are 54 members,
who are returned, one for each chief town in a district, and one for
each Field-Cornetcy,--the Field-Cornetcies being the divisions into
which the rural districts are divided for police and military purposes.
Of these towns, such as they are, there are 13, and from them, if from
any part of the State, would come a desire for English rule. But they,
with the exception of the capital, can hardly be said to be more than
rural villages. It is in the towns that the English language is taught
and spoken,--that English tradesmen live, and that English modes of life
prevail. The visitor to Bloemfontein, the capital, will no doubt feel
that Bloemfontein is more English than Dutch. But Bloemfontein returns
but one member to the Yolksraad. From the rural districts there are 41
members, all of whom are either Boers or have been returned by Boers.
Were the question extended to the division even of the 13 town members I
do not doubt but that the present state of things would be
maintained,--so general is the feeling in favour of the independence of
the Republic. But seeing that the question rests in truth with the
country members, that the country is essentially a farmer’s country, a
country which for all purposes is in the hands of the Dutch Boers, it
seems to me to be quite out of the question that the change should be
voted by the legislature of the country.
An Englishman, or an Africander with an English name and an English
tongue, is under the constitution as capable of being elected as a
Dutchman. A very large proportion of the wealth of the country is in
English hands. The large shopkeepers are generally English; and I think
that I am right in saying that the Banks are supported by English, or at
any rate, by Colonial capital. And yet, looking through the names of the
present Volksraad, I find but two that are English,--and the owner of
one of them I believe to be a Dutchman. How can it be possible that
such a House should vote away its own independence? It is so impossible
that there can be no other way of even bringing the question before the
House than that of calling upon it for a unanimous assertion of its will
in answer to the demand, or request, or suggestion now made by Great
Britain.
Nor can I conceive any reason why the Volksraad should consent to the
proposed change. To a nationality labouring under debt, oppressed by
external enemies, or unable to make the property of its citizens secure
because of external disorders, the idea of annexing itself to a strong
power might be acceptable. To have its debts paid, its frontiers
defended, and its rebels controlled might be compensation for the loss
of that self-rule which is as pleasant to communities as it is to
individuals. Such I believe is felt to be the case by the most Dutch of
the Dutch Boers in the Transvaal. But the Orange Free State does not owe
a penny. Some years since it had been so impoverished by Basuto wars
that it was reduced to the enforced use of paper money which sank to
half its nominal value. Had England then talked of annexation the Boers
might have listened to her offer. But the enormous trade produced by the
sudden influx of population into the Diamond Fields created a wealth
which has cured this evil. The bluebacks,--as the Orange Free State
banknotes were called,--have been redeemed at par, and the Revenue of
the country is amply sufficient for its modest wants. Enemies it has
none, and from its position can have none,--unless it be England. Its
own internal affairs are so quiet and easily regulated that it is hardly
necessary to lock a door. No annexation could make a Boer more secure
in the possession of his own land and his own chattels than he is at
present.
It may of course be alleged that if the State were to join her lot with
that of the Cape Colony or of a wide South African Confederation, she
would increase her own wealth by sharing that of the larger nationality
of which she would become a part,--and that the increase of national
wealth would increase the means of the individuals forming the nation.
This, however, is an argument which, even though it were believed, would
have but little effect on the minds of a class of men who are peculiarly
fond of self-government but are by no means desirous of a luxurious mode
of life. It is often said that the Boer is fond of money. He is
certainly averse to spending it and will grasp at it when it comes
absolutely in his way; but he is the last man in the world to trust to
its coming to him from a speculative measure of which he sees the
certain immediate evil much more clearly than the possible future
advantage.
There is one source of public wealth from which the Orange Free State is
at present debarred by the peculiarity of its position, and of which it
would enjoy its share were it annexed to the Cape Colony or joined in
some federation with it. But I hope that no British or Colonial
Statesman has trusted to force the Republic to sacrifice herself for the
sake of obtaining justice in this respect. If, as I think, wrong is
being done to the Orange Free State in this matter that wrong should be
remedied for the sake of justice, and not maintained as a weapon to
enforce the self-annihilation of a weak neighbour. On whatever produce
from the world at large the Free State consumes, the Free State receives
no Custom duties. The duties paid are levied by the Cape Colony, and are
spent by it as a portion of its own revenues. The Free State has no
seaboard and therefore no port.[13] Her sugar, and tea, and whisky come
to her through Capetown, or Fort Elizabeth, or East London, and there
the Custom duties are collected,--and retained. I need hardly point out
to English readers that the Custom duties of a country form probably the
greatest and perhaps the least objectionable portion of its revenue. It
will be admitted, at any rate, that to such extent as a country chooses
to subject its people to an increased price of goods by the addition of
Custom duties to the cost of production, to that extent the revenue of
the consuming country should be enriched. If I, an individual in
England, have to pay a shilling on the bottle of French wine which I
drink, as an Englishman I am entitled to my share of the public
advantage coming from that shilling. But the Republican of the Orange
Free State pays the shilling while the Colonist of the Cape has the
spending of it. I hope, I say, that we on the south side of the Orange
River do not cling to this prey with any notion that by doing so we can
keep a whip hand over our little neighbour the Republic.
Two allegations are made in defence of the course pursued. It is said
that the goods are brought to the ports of the Colony by Colonial
merchants and are resold by them to the traders of the Orange Free
State, so as to make it impossible for the Colony to know what is
consumed within her own borders and what beyond. Goods could not
therefore be passed through in bond even if the Cape Government would
permit it. They go in broken parcels, and any duties collected must
therefore be collected at the ports whence the goods are distributed.
But this little difficulty has been got over in the intercourse between
Victoria and New South Wales. A considerable portion of the latter
Colony is supplied with its seaborne goods from Melbourne, which is the
Capital and seaport of Victoria. Victoria collects the duties on those
goods, and, having computed their annual amount, pays a certain lump sum
to New South Wales in lieu of the actual duties collected. Why should
not the Cape Colony settle with the Orange Republic in the same way?
The other reason put forward for withholding the amount strikes me as
being--almost mean. I have heard it put forward only in conversation,
and I am bringing no charge against any Statesman in the Cape Colony by
saying this. I trust that the argument has had no weight with any
Statesman at the Cape. The Cape Colony makes the roads over which the
goods are carried up to the Free State. She does do so,--and the
railroads. But she collects toll on the former, and charges for carriage
on the latter. And she enjoys all the money made by the continued
traffic through her territory. And she levies the port duties, which no
one begrudges her. I felt it to be a new thing to be informed that a
country was so impoverished by being made the vehicle for traffic from
the sea to the interior that it found itself compelled to reimburse
itself by filching Custom Duties.[14] England might just as well claim
the customs of the Cape Colony because she protects the seas over which
the goods are carried.
But the Orange Free State can carry on her little business even without
the aid of Custom Duties, and will certainly not be driven back into the
arms of the mother who once repudiated her by the want of them. She can
pay her modest way; and while she can do so the Boer of the Volksraad
will certainly not be induced to give up the natural delight which he
takes in ruling his own country. The Free State might send perhaps six
members to the central Congress of a South African Federation, where
they would be called upon to hear debates, which they would be unable to
share or even to understand because spoken in a foreign language. They
would be far from their farms and compelled to live in a manner
altogether uncomfortable to them. Is it probable that for this privilege
they will rob themselves of the honour and joy they now have in their
own Parliament? In his own Parliament the Boer is close, phlegmatic, by
no means eloquent, but very firm. The two parliamentary ideas most
prominent in his mind are that he will vote away neither his
independence nor his money. It is very hard to get from him a sanction
for any increased expenditure. It would I think be impossible to get
from him sanction for a measure which would put all control over
expenditure out of his own hands. “We will guard as our choicest
privilege that independence which Her Majesty some years since was
pleased to bestow upon us.” It is thus that the Boer declares
himself,--somewhat sarcastically,--when he is asked whether he does not
wish to avail himself of the benefit of British citizenship.
Somewhat sarcastically;--for he is well aware that when England
repudiated him,--declaring that she would have nothing to do with him
across the Orange River, she did so with contempt and almost with
aversion. And he is as well aware that England now wants to get him back
again. The double consciousness is of a nature likely to beget sarcasm.
“You thought nothing of me when I came here a poor wanderer, daring all
dangers in order that I might escape from your weaknesses, your
absurdities, your mock philanthropies,--when I shook off from the sole
of my foot the dust of a country in which the black Savage was preferred
to the white Colonist; but now,--now that I have established myself
successfully,--you would fain have me back again so that your broad
borders may be extended, and your widened circle made complete. But, by
the Providence of God, after many difficulties we are well as we
are;--and therefore we are able to decline your offers.” That is the
gist of what the Boer is saying when he tells us of the independence
bestowed upon him by Her Majesty.
Thinking as I do that Great Britain was wrong when she repudiated the
Orange Free State in 1854, believing that there was then a lack of
patience at the Colonial Office and that we should have been better
advised had we borne longer with the ways of the Dutch, I must still
acknowledge here that they were a provoking people, and one hard to
manage. Omitting small details and some few individual instances of
misrule, I feel that when the Dutch complained of us they complained of
what was good in our ways and not of what was evil. It was with this
conviction that we repudiated both the Transvaal and the other younger
but more stable Republic. Good excuses can be made for what we did,--not
the worst of which is the fact that a people whom we desired to rule
themselves, have ruled themselves well. But we did repudiate them, and I
do not know with what face we can ask them to return to us. If the offer
came from them of course we could assent; but that offer will hardly be
made.
We could certainly annex the Republic by force,--as we have done the
Transvaal. If we were to send a High Commissioner to Bloemfontein with
thirty policemen and an order that the country should be given up to us,
I do not know that President Brand and the Volksraad could do better
than comply,--with such loudest remonstrance as they might make. “The
Republic cannot fight Great Britain,” President Brand might say, as
President Burgers said when he apologised for the easy surrender of his
Republic. But there are things which a nation can not do and hold up its
head, and this would be one of them. There could be no excuse for such
spoliation. It is not easy to justify what we have done in the
Transvaal. If there be any laws of right and wrong by which nations
should govern themselves in their dealings with other nations it is hard
to find the law in conformity with which that act was done. But for that
act expediency can be pleaded. We have taken the Transvaal not that we
might strengthen our own hands, not that we might round our own borders,
not that we might thus be enabled to carry out the policy of our own
Cabinet,--but because by doing so we have enabled Englishmen, Dutchmen!
and natives to live one with another in comfort. There does seem to have
been at any rate expedience to justify us in the Transvaal. But no such
plea can be put forward in reference to the Free State. There a quiet
people are being governed after their own fashion. There a modest people
are contented with the fruition of their own moderate wealth. There a
secure and well ordered people are able to live without fear. I cannot
see any reason for annexing them;--or any other excuse beyond that
spirit of spoliation which has so often armed the strong against the
weak, but which England among the strong nations has surely repudiated.
The Legislature of the Orange Republic consists, as I have said, of a
single House called the Volksraad, which is elected for four years, of
which one half goes out at the end of every two years, so that the
change is not made all at once as with us, half the House being
dissolved at the end of one period of two years, and half at the end of
another. The members are paid 20s. a day while the House is sitting. The
House elects its own Speaker, at the right hand of whom the President
has a chair. This he may occupy or not as he pleases; but when he is
not there it is expected that his place shall be filled by the
Government Secretary. The President can speak when he likes but cannot
vote. The House can, if it please, desire him to withdraw, but, I was
informed, had never yet exercised its privilege in this respect.
The President is elected for a term of five years and may, under the
present Constitution, be re-elected for any number of terms. The present
President has now nearly served his third term, and will no doubt be
re-elected next year. But there is a bill now before the Volksraad by
which the renewal of the President’s term is to be confined to a single
reappointment. One re-election only will be allowed. This change has
received all the sanction which one Session can give it. The period of
the term is also to be curtailed from five to four years. It is
necessary however that such a change in the Constitution shall be passed
by the House in three consecutive Sessions, and on each occasion by a
three-fourth majority. It is understood also that the bill if passed
will not debar the existing President from one re-election after the
change. President Brand therefore will be enabled to serve for five
terms, and should he live to do so will thus have been the Head of the
Executive of the Free State for a period of twenty-four years,--which is
much longer than the average reign of hereditary monarchs. His last term
will in this case have been shortened one year by the new law. It would
be I think impossible to overrate the value of his services to the
country which adopted him. He was a member of Assembly in the Cape
Colony when he was elected, of which House his father was then Speaker.
A better choice could hardly have been made. It is to his patience, his
good sense, his exact appreciation of both the highness and the lowness
of the place which he has been called on to occupy, that the Republic
has owed its security. I have expressed an opinion as to the
qualifications of President Burgers for a similar position. It is
because President Brand has been exactly the reverse of President
Burgers, that he is now trusted by the Volksraad and loved by the
people. It would be hard to find a case in which a man has shewn himself
better able to suit himself to peculiar duties than has been done by the
President of this little Republic.
The right of voting in the Free State belongs to the burghers, and the
burghers are as follows;--
1. All white male persons born in the State.
2. All white male persons who have resided one year in the State,
and are registered owners of property to the value of £150.
3. All white male persons who have lived for three consecutive
years in the State.
Those however who are included in the 2nd and 3rd clauses will not be
recognized as burghers unless they produce to the State President a
certificate of good conduct from the authorities of their last place of
abode and a written promise of allegiance to the State.
Burghers who have attained the age of 16, and all who at a later age
shall have acquired citizenship are bound to enrol themselves under
their respective field-cornets and to be liable to burgher duty,--which
means fighting,--till they be 60 years old.
Burghers of 18 are entitled to vote for Field Cornets and Field
Commandants. To vote for a member of the Volksraad or for the President
a burgher must be 21, must have been born in the State,--when no
property qualification is necessary,--or must be the registered owner of
property to the value of £150, or be the lessor of a property worth £36
per annum; or have a yearly income of £200, or possess moveable property
worth £300.
From this it will be seen that the parliamentary system of the Republic
is protected from a supposed evil by a measure of precaution which would
be altogether inadmissible in any Constitution requiring the sanction of
the British Crown. No coloured person can vote for a Member of
Parliament. However expedient it may be thought by Englishmen to exclude
Kafirs or Zulus from voting till such changes shall have been made in
their habits as to make them fit for the privilege, the restrictions
made for that purpose must with us be common both to the coloured and to
the white population. We all feel that no class legislation as to the
privilege of voting should be adopted and that in giving or withholding
qualification no allusion should be made to race or colour. But the
Dutch of the Free State have no such scruple. They at once proclaim that
this privilege shall be confined to those in whose veins European blood
runs pure. I will here say nothing as to the comparative merits of
British latitude or of Dutch restraint, but I will ask my readers to
consider whether it be probable that a people who have not scrupled to
make for themselves such a law of exclusion will willingly join
themselves to a nationality which is absolutely and vehemently opposed
to any exclusion based on colour.
In the Free State the executive power is in the hands of the President
in which he is assisted by a Council of five, of whom two are official.
There is now a bench of three judges who go circuit, and there is a
magistrate or Landroost sitting in each of the thirteen districts and
deciding both civil and criminal cases to a certain extent. The religion
and education of the State will both require a few words from me, but
they will come better when I am speaking of Bloemfontein, the capital.
The Revenue of the country is something over £100,000 a year, and the
expenditure has for many years been kept within the Revenue. It has been
very fluctuating, having sunk below £60,000 in 1859 when the war with
the Basutos had crippled all the industries of the country and had
forced the burghers to spend their time in fighting instead of
cultivating their lands and looking after their sheep. There is nothing,
however, that the Boer hates so much as debt, and the Boer of the
Volksraad has been very careful to free his country from that incubus.
Land in the Orange Free State is very cheap, an evil condition of things
which has been produced by the large grants of land which were made to
the original claimants. The average value throughout the State may now
be fixed at about 5s. an acre. It is said that in the whole State there
are between six and seven thousand farms.