BOER OLIGARCHY.
Dr. Kuyper, who has juggled with these facts, enumerates with a sort of
amazed frankness the reproaches addressed to the Transvaal Government:
The relations between legislative and judicial authority give rise
to comments which cannot be considered groundless.... It has been
called scandalous that the Chief Justice of the High Court should
have been deposed. But, in 1839, President Johnson, of the United
States, met the difficulty by making a majority of nine in the High
Court, thus assuring to himself a compliant majority.
There is a mis-print in the Article in the _Revue de Deux Mondes_. The
date should be 1869 not 1839; and truly Dr. Kuyper has lighted upon a
good example in his selection of President Johnson; the only President
of the United States who has been impeached!
I know that sort of argument generally employed by people who are in the
wrong and especially employed by people whom Dr. Kuyper can scarcely
bring forward as models. "All very well, but what of that little slip of
yours." ... Dr. Kuyper might as reasonably invoke _la loi de
dessaisissement_ voted by the French Chamber last year. Our answer to
him is that the violation of the most elementary principles of justice
in one country, does not justify it in another. He proceeds:
"The Boer Government is said to be an oligarchy. And yet every
citizen has his vote--Throughout the land there are juries...."
Really Dr. Kuyper affects too great _naïveté_. The Boers may have
created a democracy among themselves; with regard to natives and
Uitlanders they are an oligarchy.
"Every citizen has his vote": But Mr. Krüger's argument for refusing the
franchise to Uitlanders is that they numbered 70,000, while the Burghers
were only 30,000. Here we have a minority governing the majority; what
else is an oligarchy?
"Throughout the land there are juries"; yes, but juries made up of Boers
who try Uitlanders, treat them as enemies, and find that the policeman
Jones acted rightly in killing Edgar. That way of constituting a jury is
a certainty of injustice to the Uitlanders, and not a guarantee of
justice.
President Krüger promised to do something for the municipal organisation
of Johannesburg; this is how he keeps his promise. Each division of that
town elects two members, a Burgher and an Uitlander; according to the
last census, the burghers living in Johannesburg, numbered 1,039; the
Uitlanders 23,503; thus 1,039 burghers had as many representatives in
the municipal Corporation as the 23,503 Uitlanders. The Mayor, who was
nominated by the Government, had the right of absolute veto.
In modern law there exists a principle introduced by England, which is
the true basis of representative Government: "no representation, no
taxation." It is the right of every citizen who contributes to the taxes
to approve of them and to control the use of them.
In autocratic governments, he has no such right. In oligarchic
governments, the governing class imposes burdens upon those it governs.
This is the case in the Transvaal.
In an oligarchy, taxes are not levied with a view to the general good of
the community, but for the benefit of the ruling class; and this is the
political conception of the Boers.
Dr. Kuyper says, in speaking of the Uitlanders:
"No one invited them here; they came of their own accord."
Therefore they possess the right to be taxed, but nothing else.
Dr. Kuyper's assertion is not strictly correct; for he forgets the
invitation addressed by Mr. Krüger, in London in 1884, to all who were
willing to take their abilities and their capital to the Transvaal, in
which he promised them rights of citizenship and assured them of his
protection.
But the matter of invitation is of little account. Let us allow that
there was no invitation. Neither did Fra Diavolo invite the travellers
he despoiled; _ergo._, according to Dr. Kuyper, he had the right to
despoil them. The Uitlanders are travellers, at whose expense the
government of Pretoria has the right to live, and to support the Boers.
Such is plainly the idea of Mr. Krüger and of the majority of the 29
members of the Volksraad, and we shall see that that idea underlies the
whole of its political economy.
Mr. Krüger was, however, in error in supposing that he could practise
this system indefinitely in these times of ours, and with respect to the
citizens of a country which represents the modern conception of
industrial civilization.
Professor Bryce, a strong opponent of the present policy of England,
says in his _Impressions of South Africa_ (p. 470):
"A country must after all take its character from the large
majority of its inhabitants, especially when those who form that
majority are the wealthiest, most educated, and most enterprising
part of the population."
Mr. Krüger has aimed at realizing this paradox: the oppression and
plunder of the most enterprising, most educated, the richest and most
numerous portion of the population by the poorest, most ignorant, most
indolent of minorities.