A BOOK THAT EVERYONE SHOULD READ.

Evening Star, Issue 11251, 26 May 1900, Page 8

A BOOK THAT EVERYONE SHOULD READ.

‘The Transvaal from Within.’ By J. P. Fitzpatrick. Heinneman and Co., London (per WhUoombo and Tombs). Fitzpatrick's ‘Transvaal from Within’ is ■ that ought to • have been on tho shelves of every athenaeum, mechanics’ inatitute, and public library in tho country immediately after the commencement of hostilities in South Africa, even though its cost then had been four times what is now charged for It. It is the book of tho war, and it more than any other publication relating to the South African trouble will help tho devout searcher after truth to coma to a conscience-satisfying conclusion as to whether or not this war is a just one from a British standpoint. Mr Chamberlain, when a constituent complained that no printed defence of tne Imperial Government’s policy in the Transvaal had appeared, tersely referred his questioner to this book, whilst Lord Rosebery, in one of his famous speeches, passed this eulogium on it: “If you wish fo read a history of the internal economy of the Transvaal, I would simply suggest that you should procure a book called‘The Transvaal from Within’ . . . a book which seems to me to bear on every page and in every sentence tho mark of truth, and which gives you wholesale and in detail an extraordinary and, I think I may say, au appalling record of the way in which the government of the Transvaal was carried on and the subjection to which It reduced our fellow-countrymen there.” There is surely warranty enough in these quotations for commending the book ; but after perusing and repei using it, we have no hesitation in declaring that it is the timeliest and weightiest contribution to the literature of the South African trouble that has come into our hands.

Who is its author, and why has ho been so long silent? Mr J. P, Fitzpatrick is a South African by birth; ho resided in the Transvaal from 1894 till after the Jameson Raid ; he was secretary to the Reform Movement in Johannesburg, and therefore knows as much ■ as any man living of the aspirations of the men who were in the forefront of that organisation : ho was part and parcel of tho inner circle of the Uitlanders, and when tho Jameson fiasco came about he was among those proscribed by the Transvaal Executive. H* was among the batch who, before they were released from Pretoria Gaol and the tender mercies of that infamous gaoler Du Plcsfis, were-required “to enter into a bond for the term of three years, from May ,‘iO, l>9(i neither directly nor indirectly to meddle in the internal or external politics of the South African Republic.” The term of proscription expired at the ond of May, 1599, and the very nest month tho book, the materials for which were collected and prepared for publication before he was thrown into prison, was issued privately when he found himself once more under the protection of the British flag in Cape Colony. So crashing an indictment of the Boer oligarchy aa this book contains could not with safely have been published while ha remained on Transvaal soil ; and the dinability of his three years’ ban cmply excuses its apparent tardy appearance. Better lute than never, and if it. gets into general circulation, as it deserves, it will do a vast deal through the author’s calm, almost judicial, arguments, and his formidable array of facts —many of them brought into the light of day for the first time, and based on incontrovertible testimony, “ to dispel the mists of race prejudice and misunderstanding ” which are at present obscuring the judgments of many Englishmen and woman. When one rises from a study of this book, and realises what MrFitzpatrick and his, 00-agitators have suffered pecuniarily, mentally, and physically by their advocacy of the fulfilment of the spirit of the Conventions of 1881 and 1884, under which the Britisher was guaranteed equal rights in all things with the Boer burgher, he cannot fail 'to be struck with profound astonishment at the studious moderation displayed by the author when discussing Boer methods of government in the earlier stages of the Transvaal’s history, and at his admiration of the stalwart republicanism of the founders of the Boer State. But with clear-sighted judgment he points nut that the real causes of the great trek of 1837 were the Boers’ dislike of all law, and of British law in particnlar, and their fierce determination, which has never been subdued under the refining influences religion or civilisation, to treat the Native races as their prescriptive slaves. Mr Fitzpatrick acknowledges that those early Dutch settlers had real grievances against those appointed to rule over them; hut these mistakes of government applied equally to and were suffered by their fellow-European settlers. The case of the patriarchal Boer is thus stated by Mr Fitzpatrick:— They fought, and worked, and starved, and died in their land of promise, where they mi'-ht hope to be alone, like-the simple people of their own Book, where they might never know the hated British rule | where 11 1 -■ y nught never experience the forms and trammels, the restlessness and changes, the worries, the necessities or benefits of progressing civilisation. Theirquarrel had been with the anuses and blunders of one Government but a narrow experience moved them all hut their own pastoral, patriarchal way, moulded on the records of the Bible, and to regard the evidences of progress as warnings of coming oppression and curtailment of liberty, and a departure from the simple and ideal way.

Though a new order of things arose, despite advantages accruing from the British connection, which everywhere else have produced peace and solid prosperity, in the Transvaal after gaining a large measure of independence, the Boer made precious little advance in civilisation before the discovery of gold transformed the entire face of the land, and brought into the country the elements that in their quest for gold were destined slowly but surely to drive the non-progressive, stolid, fatuous Dutchman to the wall, even bad there been no Jameson raidor any dream of a South African Federation by the ardent spirits who set up the Afrikander Bond. Anyone who follows with an open mind the narrative of events from the Great Trek to the period ol annexation mast come to the conclusion that the Aot of taking over this bankrupt State had at the time the approval of tho great majority of the Boers. Why disaffection remained, and eventually grew into fiat rebellion, was well told, with full knowledge of all the circumstances, by Mr A. W. Baker the South African missionary, when he was amongst ns a few weeks ago, and it is noteworthy that ho 1b borne ont to the very letter by Mr Fiiapatriek, who details the causes that mode np the sum of Boer disappointment.

The real mistakes of the British Government began after the annexation. The failure to fulfil promises; the deviations from old ways of government; the appointment of unsuitable oliielals, who did not understand the people or their language ; the neglect to convene the Volksraad, or to bold fresh elections, as definitely promised ; the establishment of personal rule by military men, who treated the Boers with harshness and contempt, and would make no allowances for their simple, old-fashioned ways, their deepseated prejudices, and, if you like, their stupid Eitton to modern ideas-these things and s caused great dissatisfaction, and gave ample material for tho nucleus of irreconcilables to work with.

So grew discontent 5 matters went from bad to worse, and the small anti-British faction gathered numbers and strength till they became the dominant party. Notwithstanding all this there was, according to Sir Battle Frere, hope of a pacific solution, if the well disposed Boers had been assured that England meant to hold thk country and would allow the Dutch to manage their own internal affairs. In a memorable letter to his wife Sir Bartle, fresh from the great Conference at Bloemfontein on April 20 1879, when ho thought all the trouble had blown over, wrote this historic passage It was clear to me that It was not the annexation m much as the neglect to fulfil the promises and the expectations held out hy Shepatone when he took over the Government that has stirred up the great moss of Boers and given a handle to azitators. “

Therein, in a nutshell, was the whole position, says Mr Fitzpatrick, who declares that nine out of every ten men who have been reared on South African soil believe in their hearts that the war of 1880 was due not to the annexation, but to England's failure to fulfil the terms of that act. There is no occasion to follow our author through the history of that war, the leading incidents of which we recounted in our issue of Thursday. We “ scuttled *’ out of the Transvaal j the Boers gained their independence, subject to British suzerainty, under the Convention of 1881, which professed to secure equal rights to all present and future inhabitants of the Transvaal. Then came the great discoveries of gold on the Band, from which grew the

cosmopolitan City of Johannesburg—the San Francisco of So'uth Airica ; but the pureblooded Boor, true to the traditions of his forbears, avoided the city, farmed his holding, coveted the rich adjoining lands of J.he Zulus, whose military power had been broken by England, and silently but surely trafficked for an outlet to the sea. As the Transvaal—thanks to English, American, and foreign enterprise—prospered, the wily Boer heaped on the backs of theUitlandor—as the, foreign element has ever since been called—-three-fojirths of the taxation of the country, while practically denying to him any representation whatever. True there were at times offers made to give the Uitlander the franchise, but the gift was hedged with impossible conditions, and the bona fides of the Boers were in consequence always doubted. , When their cup of bitterness was full to overflowing, and the Uitlanders had the temerity to ask for the restitution of the rights accorded to all freemen under the two Conventions, did not President Kruger, oa the eve of the Raid, turn them wnuhfully away from the Executive mansion at Pretoria with this outrageous answer : “ Their rights ! Yes, they’ll get them—over my dead body ?” And the policy ol the Boer oligarchy, who maintained Kruger in office for that express purpose, has been from first to last to keep the Transvaal for the Dutch burgher?and to treat, the Briton as a pariah in the land which ho preserved to them. Our author gives a succinct account of the Jameson Raid, and tells for the first time a good deal of the secret history of that misguided and wholly indefensible movement. 1 He is most iffdctive, we think, in the chapters where lie essays to prove that the Boer Executive deliberately plotted to goad the [lnlanders into raising the standard of rebellion, and he is crushing in his indictment of Boer chicanery, oppression, and corruption. Let a few figures servo to point a moial. In IS7I, In fore the advent of the hated Uttlander, the Transvaal revenue was £lO SOS, in 18S5 (ifler the amended (.1 'oveetton was siyoe. it ruse to .£177,557. The subjoins.'! figures relating :o ilia period covered 1)V the High wattr mark of the Republic’s prosperity help to explain how Krug-r aid ..is colleagues have attained the wealth they are generally credited with :

In 1899 the Filialy b'll «as Uven y-f. nr •nuee greater than it was win u the Uit- ' '-cu.ir,, began to coma into tho Trans wal ; n numbers, or nearly live times os much as 'ho Vital rt venue thru amounted to. “It is now sufficient, if iquady dislribut.fi, to pay £lO per head per year” in the total Boer male f opulation <■{ tuc country 1 In the face of such stupendous figures can it be wondered tha T , Kruger is now included among tho world’s mtil'.jna’ro ?

Inhere are men and women in this community who having a superficial or distorted knowledge of what has happened in the Transvaal since 1331 afr ct, to h.-lieve tha the Baers are a much-mul gued and persecuted race, and, viewing them through S-oH.I -r.tovd Hnrcta.'l-’S. lire m-xi.-us to endow them with the virtues of Cromwell’s R 'Undueada. Such L.'.-opio arc quite oblivions of the Boers’ dealings wth the Natives they have brought under their role, or who have from time to time been their neighbors, and are wilfully blind to the persistent misgovern merit and tyrauny practised by r.o Boors during a long course of years. We ure aware that it is finite useless to expect such partisans to calmly study the records of tho Transvaal or to weigh the testimony tf thousands, of men drawn from every rank and profession in South Afr.ci, who have lived most of their lives among the Boers and know him port what hi; :s In this category are Garrett (the eminent Cape Town journalist) and Fitzpatrick, and we venture to assort that no unprejudiced man or woman who reads the former’s history of ‘The -South African Crisis,’ together \vi;h the latter’s ‘Transvaal from Within,’cun avoid coming to tho eonc'usion that tho wees which have befallen the Tra:. svr.il are the outcome of a toi tuous, Machiavelian policy which aimed at the deposition of the British aud the substitution of the Afrikander aithe dominant power in South-Africa.

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