THE EXPLOSION IN THE TRANSVAAL. T HE sudden outbreak of the
fire so long smouldering in the Transvaal, is singularly inopportune. Great Britain commences the year loaded down with disputes, and there is now added to them a small civil war which, though it cannot increase our foreign complications, for it is war within the Queen's dominions, will, whatever its re- sult, greatly increase the bitterness of those who are jealous of British prosperity. If in the long-run the Boers defeat the English settlers in the Transvaal, we may be compelled to intervene, if only to prevent a native rising in our own provinces, while if the English defeat the Boers the world will accuse us of "grabbing" another auriferous province. As a matter of fact the Boers have brought the struggle on themselves by their own want of political wisdom. When the British, having discovered gold, began to swarm into the State, the Boers, who found their finances set straight, themselves enormously enriched by the pacific invasion, and their strength as against a Zulu rising indefinitely increased, should have welcomed the "in- truders," who on their part were perfectly willing that the separateness of the Transvaal should be preserved. They did not want British law, but a voice in the making of their own laws. The Boers, however, deluded by their victory on Majuba Hill, full of contempt for the new- comers, whom they considered "soft," and irritated by what they believed to be British arrogance, proceeded to govern in the most absolute way, placed the whole burden of taxation on the incomers, leaving their own farms untaxed, and virtually refused them the franchise. That is to say, they demanded fourteen years' residence and the grant of a personal certificate from the Execu- tive as conditions of an effective vote, that is, as we understand the matter, of a vote for the Council which really rules. The immigrants found themselves absolutely powerless even over the education of their own children. Though intensely disgusted, they bore this for some years, but at last, as taxation grew heavier and their own numbers larger, they formed organisations, refused to submit to a conscription, and, as an ultimatum, demanded an equal franchise and independent Judges. This is, we believe, the irreducible minimum of their requests, and it was, we presume, decided in the secret councils of the Boers to refuse it and to defend their right to govern "their own territory" if necessary by force of arms. At least it seems to be on the face of things certain that the immigrants must have believed some such decision to be coming, for they commenced arming themselves, sent away their women and children from Johannesburg and from the mines, and finally appealed for aid to Dr. Jameson, the astute and capable ruler of Matabeleland, on behalf of the Chartered Company. Their public appeal has been published, but it only recapitulates their grievances, and was probably accompanied by a much more urgent private appeal, with reasons ; for Dr. Jameson suddenly put himself at the head of his armed Police, a splendid body of seven hundred mounted and armed men, with six Maxim-guns, and rode towards Johan- nesburg. The Boer Commander-in-Chief, General Joubert, accepted the challenge, and called out his Burgher force, some five- thousand strong, to repel what he described as a foreign invasion. Dr. Jameson, a man of extreme tenacity of purpose, held on, the forces met on New Year's Day, and apparently, after many hours' fighting, the Chartered Company's Police, hopelessly outnumbered and surrounded, surrendered to the Boers, who will now believe that God is with them, and that they are irresistible. Dr. Jameson has done terrible mischief.
All instinctive sympathies will go with our countrymen, but it is impossible for just-minded men or cool politicians to decide that they are in the right. Whether the Boers are independent or not—and their claim to be so as against the Queen's Government seems to us wholly untenable— they clearly hold by treaty the right to govern the Trans- vaal, and the British settlers, in taking up arms to destroy that right, are manifestly insurgents. They mayor may not have complete moral justification ; but in either case their movement is an insurrection, and it does not yet appear that the insurrection had sufficient grounds. It may have had, for we do not yet know what the Boers were threatening to do ; but on the face of present information the Boers were at least technically within their legal right. The mere fact that the British immigrants were in a majority gave them no rights. Every country has been governed at some period of its history by a limited class ; nor, had the unenfranchised at home risen in arms in 1831, could their movement have been described as other than an insurrection. It is not an insurrection justifying severity, and General Joubert will be mad if he takes life except upon the field ; but still his right to put down an insurrection remains techni- cally complete. We cannot, for instance, with any decency punish his employer, Mr. Kruger, President of the Trans- vaal, if he imprisons any insurgent ringleaders, or if he compels the whole body of settlers to pay the expenses of the rising. That is clearly within the limits of his dele- gated authority, even if he and all other Boers in the Trans- vaal are subjects of the Queen, which is, and for the present must remain, a doubtful question. About Mr. Jameson the case is at least equally clear. He was not authorised to put down Boer oppression by force, and in entering the Boer territory he was guilty of a violent breach of well- known law. He may be able to plead circumstances as yet unknown, such as the imminence of an impending mas- sacre, as his moral justification ; but if he is not, he is a filibuster, and nothing better. No Empire in the world could endure if its satraps claimed the rights of private war, and Mr. Chamberlain, in ordering him to retire within his own province, was not only in the right, but was fulfilling an unmistakable duty. We cannot see how this can be contested, even if we declare war on the Transvaal to-morrow for illtreating British citizens, unless indeed we are prepared to allow any Colonial Governor, the Governor of British Guiana, for example, to settle all quarrels with his neighbours without instructions from home. Nothing prevented Dr. Jameson from communi- cating with the Colonial Office ; and nothing in his position, except conceivably secret knowledge that a massacre was intended, justified his acting independently. It may be said that if he had been summoned to aid Johannesburg against a native raid he would have been held to have acted rightly ; but that argument really gives up the case, for the underlying fact, whenever natives attack white men, is that immediate massacre is intended.
We cannot see that the ill-temper of the Germans and French in any way affects the position, except of course by increasing the embarrassments of the Home Govern- ment. Neither people have anything whatever to do with the matter. The Transvaal is either British territory entrusted by the Sovereign, under a Convention, to the care of its Boer settlers, or it is an independent Republic. In the former case the Continental Powers are trying to dictate to a first-class Power what it shall do with its own territory ; in the latter case they are interfering with the internal government of an independent State which is an ally of Great Britain, and occupies an enclave within her dominion. The French pretension that, if the Transvaal were British, the Portuguese could no longer hold Delagoa Bay, and that Delagoa Bay, if British, might threaten Madagascar, is positively ludicrous, and would justify them in interfering in Natal or Zanzibar ; while the German pretension, that they have a right to intervene because Germans make much money in the Transvaal, is absolutely indefensible. How much do they make in London and Manchester ? Of course if the French or German statesmen think that the British are acquiring too much of Africa for their interests, they have a right to speak and to act accordingly ; but then they must avow their true ground of action—that is, jealousy—and not vamp up foolish pleas which impress no one. The French, at least, ought to remember that we have not interfered with their conquest of Madagascar, and to understand that a Protectorate may be defended as zealously as if it included also internal dominion. As yet, however, we have taken no steps to intervene, and it will be time enough to discuss our general policy in South Africa when we know whether Mr. Kruger still keeps his position in the face of the angry settlers, or whether his destiny, like that of so many others, has snapped because it crossed that of the British Empire.
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