# Littell's Living Age/Volume 178/Issue 2308/A Visit to President Brand

Originally published in Fortnightly Review.
One day, nearly a year ago, I made an expedition to a country house which has the rare distinction of being nearly twenty miles distant from a railway. It is perhaps its remoteness which has caused it to be chosen as the summer home of one of the greatest masters of the English language in this century, who had invited me, on the eve of a voyage to the Cape, to gather from his great store of South African knowledge some information and advice for the journey. The drive under a real west-country downpour was a slight foretaste of African experience to come, though there is no resemblance to the high-veldt in the Devonshire lanes which lead to the Start, the last point of English land seen on the horizon by travellers bound for Capetown. Of the many men responsible for the destinies of South Africa, of whom Mr. Froude had much to say of the greatest interest, there were two to whom he specially recommended me; and one of them, of whom he spoke in most affectionate terms of respect, both as a friend of his own and a good friend to England, was John Henry Brand, the president of the Orange River Free States.
Several months later, on a burning, cloudless morning at the end of December, I found myself driving over the flat, treeless plain which stretches from the Diamond Fields to Bloemfontein. The interval after my arrival in Table Bay had been occupied in many hundreds of miles of travel in and about the Old Colony, among the vineyards of the Paarl, the orchards and ostrich-camps of the fertile Oudtshoorn valley, and the bleak desolation of the Great Karroo. I had hunted the zebra with hospitable Boer farmers in the mountains of George, and followed the spoor of the elephant (with indifferent success) in the virgin Knysna forest. I had seen the products of civilization at the Grahamstown Exhibition, and had unwittingly caused the discovery of murder in Pondoland. I had ridden on a Basuto pony through Tembuland, and on the cowcatcher of a railway engine through the Hex River Pass; and now a Cape cart drawn by four wiry horses driven by a Hottentot boy, my only companion, had brought me through the dusty streets of Kimberley and the long lines of one-storied shops and drinking canteens which form the suburbs or townships of Beaconsfield and Du Toit's Pan. The naming of certain quarters of the diamond city after eminent British statesmen is apt to lead strangers into a curious misapprehension. The Kimberley papers on a Saturday announce the hours of divine service at "Gladstone Church," and the traveller who is interested in comparative mythology is disappointed when he realizes that he has not discovered a new cult, but only another instance of the lack of lucidity of the English language.
After the last mining shaft is passed, and the "floors" where the precious blue clay lies to be pulverized by the sun's action, the frontier of the Free State is crossed, and nothing relieves the monotony of the green tableland which lies five thousand feet above the sea level. Twenty years ago the lion used to roam over it, and vast herds of antelope were constantly seen, but though the rolling veldt shows few signs of human habitation it has been entirely denuded of bush, and the covert which was the hiding-place of big game has all been consumed for fuel at the diamond fields. Wild life still exists on these plains in some abundance; there were swarms of a red-legged bird bigger than a plover, which the Hottentot called "kitchies;" and here and there the korann and the pau; dozens of meer-kats, like small monkeys with squirrels' tails, peeped out of their holes, and sometimes a rare springbok or blesbok came in sight. Before sundown a mean inn on the Modder River was reached. A bath had never been heard of, but the storekeeper said that a waterfall was at my disposal; and no pleasanter ending to a hot day's drive in Africa can be conceived than to sit on cool stones beneath a falling stream. Usually darkness falls on Africa with startling rapidity, but on this night the full moon rose amid the crimson afterglow flooding with light the monotonous veldt, which was strewn here and there with blanched bones picked clean by the vultures; the silence of the solitary plains was unbroken, and was a weird contrast to the tumult and the glare of bustling Kimberley.
At four the next morning a brilliant sunrise lit me on my way. The day grew hot at once. Breakfast was prepared at a lonely farmhouse, but it was a Saturday morning, and the preparation for the Dutch Sabbath includes the smearing of the floors with cow-dung, which in its first hours gives forth a deadly odor; so, as there was no other shade, I lay beneath the cart while the horses were outspanned, reclining on an old pillow and smoking a great French pipe (two faithful travelling companions), the latter filled with the excellent tobacco of the Transvaal, concerning the taxing of which by Cape Colony Paul Kruger's wrath has changed the railway policy and possibly the history of South Africa. The sun beat down so fiercely that the merino sheep stood huddled together for the sake of the shade afforded by their neighbors' bodies. On the horizon shimmered the mirage. The quivering vapor is a little like running water, and the darker mass above it might be mistaken for bush, just as an ordinary cloud might be "very like a whale;" but no traveller could be deceived by the mirage, excepting for literary purposes, unless he had been testing the strength of "Cape smoke," or other ardent liquids of the country. For hours no human being came in sight, except an occasional native trekking homewards from the diamond fields with his savings, with which he would purchase oxen, to be bartered in turn for wives. The troops of red-blanketed Kaffirs which enliven the scene in the Transkei have no substitute here.
At last a Cape cart was seen approaching, when still miles away. From it jumped down a young man of pleasant countenance, who introduced himself as the president's son. As we drove on together he pointed to where Bloemfontein lay hidden behind some randjes, as the stony knolls are called which, save for an occasional table mountain, are the only break in the flatness of the high plateau which forms the Free State. Suddenly the capital came in sight, a veritable oasis in the middle of the wilderness, a compact little town of Continental appearance, well planted with trees, and looking as if it were surrounded by a wall. Conspicuous among the buildings was seen the Presidency, a massive modern edifice, the government offices like a substantial Hôtel de Ville, and the twin spires of the Dutch Reformed Church resembling those of the cathedral of Châlons. The interior of the town is not disappointing. The quiet, verdant streets have a certain decorous picturesqueness, branching from a vast place, in the centre of which stands a square-towered market-house. Not many years ago it was no unusual occurrence for the market to be interrupted by the rush of a herd of springbok though the town.
The Presidency is approached through rural, irregular streets, lined with garden walls, over which hang fruit-laden branches. At intervals the footpath runs across a little wooden bridge, beneath which no water is flowing, or only a tiny streamlet, but after a few hours' rain a raging, foaming torrent sweeps through it, and death by drowning has not been unknown as an incident of driving out to dinner at Bloemfontein. Hence it happened that one evening during my visit, when kind Sir John Brand had invited a large party of his chief people to meet me at dinner, a third of the guests never appeared at all, as a thunderstorm with a deluge of rain swept over the town, and the flooded streets were impassable. The official residence of the president is an inornate edifice of good proportions, which looks like a denuded French château. The reason for its bald appearance is that it was built at a time of retrenchment, when even the members of the Volksraad cut down their allowances, and this fit of economy cost the Presidency its balconies and its stoep, or verandah, without which no Africander can be perfectly happy. For all that it is by far the best, in fact, the only good, house in South Africa, containing a fine suite of apartments, which includes a handsome ballroom; and the housing of the president of the Free State is in the highest degree creditable to its government when compared with the straitened dwellings of our governors at the Cape and Natal.
The interior of the Presidency was simply that of a refined English home, with the exception that the door was opened by a black maiden, whose bare feet moved noiselessly over the tiled floor of the hall. Many visitors from Europe to Bloemfontein have carried away in their memories a pleasant picture of courtly old Sir John Brand sitting amid his charming family, now, alas! in mourning for their head. There is really no reason why he should be described as old, especially in this epoch of old men when battered politicians of fifty are looked upon as youths of promise, for the president was only sixty-five when he died the other day. Perhaps his flowing white beard gave him a venerable appearance; there certainly was no symptom of feebleness evident, but he gave the impression of a well preserved man of seventy, who had the robustness of ten years fewer. Very remarkable was the contrast presented by rugged Paul Kruger and his surroundings as he sat with his vrouw on the Presidency stoep at Pretoria puffing his pipe and sipping his coffee while he grunted a sententious Dutch epigram at his guests.
In the spacious dining-room hangs a portrait of Sir Christoffil Brand, speaker of the Cape House of Assembly. The president's father is represented in full masonic regalia, and it is said that the Freemasons at the Cape provided for the education of John Brand in Holland and at the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar by that society in 1849, an eventful year for the "Orange River Sovereignty," to use the phrase of Sir Harry Smith's proclamation subsequent to the Battle of Boomplaats, the previous year. The trekking across the Orange River of the emigrant farmers had taken place in 1835, but it was thirteen years later when the territory was declared British. The gallant and eccentric governor of the Cape, in issuing the first proclamation, was confident in his influence with the Boers, whom he called his children. The emigrants, however, resisted, and the battle took place, which Sir Harry Smith, who had been fighting all his life in the Peninsula, in Kaffirland, and in India, described as "one of the severest skirmishes that had ever been witnessed." The battle-field lay on my way back to the colony, but only the graves of the English slain are shown, as the Dutch spirited away their dead, always denying that any of their men fell. In 1854, as is well known, the country was handed back to the Boers, but at that time Mr. Brand was practising at the Cape, where he remained till he was elected in 1864 for the first time president of the Orange Free State, in succession to M. W. Pretorius, the third president.
It was my privilege to have several conversations with Sir John Brand at the Presidency and at the public offices, where (as at the Vatican) all the departments of the State are gathered under one roof. The heads of departments are all permanent officials. The Executive Council consists of the president, the landdrost of Bloemfontein, and the state secretary, together with three unofficial members of the Volksraad. The Council met, he informed me, at frequent intervals, but he was not bound by its decisions; he would not consent to be president on the terms of being continually out-voted by his own Council. The president's bureau was hung with excellent maps of Cape Colony, the Free State, and the Transvaal, and he entered into the vexed railway question and the question of the conference at Cape Town, then on the eve of meeting. He spoke with some feeling of the anti-railway policy of President Kruger, but strongly expressed his belief that the development of a complete South African system would only be a matter of time, pointing out that the flat level of the Free State and consequent absence of engineering difficulties would make its construction cheap, and he anticipated that it would pay good interest. As to his forecast of the future of South Africa he emphatically believed in the coming union of all the States, but he would not give an opinion under what flag this union would take place. Though a thorough Africander in sentiment to the extent of constantly talking Dutch with Lady Brand and his daughters in the home circle, he did not approve of the position of the Africander Bund in his dominion; he looked upon the branches of it established there as a somewhat meddlesome organization which attempted to establish an imperium in imperio. In reply to my question whether he did not think that the introduction of the Dutch language into the Cape Assembly might have a retrograde effect as discouraging education, he agreed in a modified sense that it was open to that objection, but he added that there were instances of eloquent and influential Dutchmen not skilled in English sufficient to justify the change. As to the native question, he minimized its importance. He took the old-fashioned view that disturbances must from time to time occur, and the putting of them down by armed force would by degrees reduce the black population — an opinion which did not agree with my observation elsewhere. In the Free State, where the white and colored population are almost equal, he had no fear of any native rising; but he saw dangers ahead across his frontier in Basutoland o the death of the paramount chief, when the small British garrison would not fail to have trouble with the claims of pretenders. The general tenor of his sentiments was that of cheerful optimism; he seemed to hope that his life would be spared till many of the great South African problems had been solved, and this probably accounted for the après moi le déluge view he appeared to take of things.
The quiet days of my short visit at Bloemfontein, passed in almost hourly association with the president's family and his friends, were quite an education in some of the best phases of Africander life, social and political. Mr. James Brand, who had met me outside the city, helped me to see all that it contained. He is an official in the department of the state attorney, a very youthful functionary for the post, which corresponds to that of attorney-general in the colonies. He told me that when he goes on circuit he takes a tent with him, as many of the assize towns afford no accommodation. There are no less than seventeen of these provincial capitals in this dominion of seventy-two thousand square miles, each having its own gaol, and when necessary its own executions, which take place on the open veldt. For all that, there is no work for lawyers in the Free State; only two causes were down for hearing at the next sitting of the Supreme Court, and the bar has trekked to the Transvaal gold-fields. In this department is the registry of deeds; the transfer of land is very simple and the titles are secure, but the fees seemed high, five per cent. on the purchase money in addition to agent's costs and certain fines. All land is held by one tenure, a quit-rent paid to government, which is one of the chief sources of public revenue. Sub-letting is almost unknown, and the class of tenant farmer scarcely exists.
The Volksraad sits in a modest apartment in the public buildings. The members, who are all Boer farmers, call themselves Liberal and Conservative, but really there are no party divisions, and they sit how and where they please. The house meets in May, the session lasting rarely more than a month, the hours being from nine to twelve, and from two to five o'clock, with an occasional evening sitting. The Supreme Court uses the hall of the Volksraad. Chief Justice Reitz was spoken of as a possible successor of Sir John Brand in the distant future; of the other judges, one is a brother of the distinguished chief justice of the Cape, Sir Henry de Villiers (here pronounced Filjee), and the other is of Polish origin, and consequently not averse to the lash. In the Dutch republics, flogging is administered on native offenders with considerable severity. The mail-contractor told me that one of his boys had that week failed to be ready with the relay of horses for the post-cart at an outspanning place; the landdrost, before whom he was summoned, decided that the cause of his negligence was drunkenness, and sentenced him to two months' imprisonment with fifteen lashes. The contractor, a German from Hamburg, said he did not think the punishment excessive, as the failure of the relay might delay the mails to Europe for a week, but he did complain that had the neglect been caused by a white groom he could only have proceeded against him by civil action.
The chief features of Bloemfontein are the churches. There is an Anglican cathedral whose bishop includes in his see the diamond mines in British territory. At Kimberley I had gazed with admiration on the archdeacon's costume, which was orthodox as to breeches and gaiters at the extremities, but for the rest consisted of a white helmet and a clerical coat of the same color. There is a Roman Catholic cathedral next door, a Lutheran church for the Germans, and chapels of various Enolish sects. The amazing part of this diversity of churches is that of the sixty-two thousand white inhabitants of the Free State, five-sixths belong to the Dutch Reformed Church. The president, with the courteous generosity which was his characteristic, on New Year's eve attended the watch-night ceremony at the English Wesleyan church. The new year was ushered in with the firing of cannon from the fort, constructed during the "Sovereignty." From its summit the town lies like a map, and beyond the native reserve stretches the Free State plain to the mountains of Basutoland. The standing army housed in the barracks below consists of forty-five artillerymen commanded by a German officer. The German element is prominent in Bloemfontein, and even the leader of the Africander Bund is a smart journalist from Westphalia. The appearance of the town, however, suggests France rather than Germany, the great square being especially like the chief place in a French provincial city. Though it was comparatively deserted, as the first days of the year are a public holiday, yet the shops and houses had quite a gay appearance compared with the sluggishness which pervades many towns of South Africa. One day we drove out to Tempe, a lovely old farmstead lying in a sheltered valley five miles away, embowered in an orange grove which bears fruit all the year round, and side by side were hanging ripe yellow fruit and green berries and orange blossom. Beyond the grove lay an orchard where peaches, nectarines, naatjes, and figs grew, all ripening or ripe in great abundance.
The time arrived too soon for me to say farewell to the president and his family. They playfully tried to dissuade me from a then contemplated expedition to the Upper Zambesi, which afterwards unluckily was given up. "If you go," they said, "we shall never see you again except in Madame Tussaud's with poor Dr. Livingstone," for the president was full of anticipations of another visit to England, and also to Holland to see his oldest college friend. The last words of his speech to the Volksraad in May referred to his projected tour, and they have a pathetic interest now in showing that he was full of hope that more years were in store for for him. He said,: —
    On the 9th May, 1889, the time for which I was sworn in will expire. Grateful for the goodwill and affection constantly bestowed upon me by you and the burghers, and desirous of fulfilling my pledged word, I am prepared, should I be preserved in health and strength, to continue in office until that time, at my stipulated salary. To do this advantageously it is desirable that I should have some rest and relaxation, and therefore I would gladly receive from you three or four months' leave of absence, with retention of full salary, at a convenient time.
The last request was a very modest one, as his full stipend was less than our Colonial Office gives to any but its humblest governors.
Sir John Brand was due to start on his northern tour in the early days of January, and it is now a matter of deep regret to me not to have asked him to permit me to accompany him; but my time was limited, and my route had been planned so as to allow me to see the country over which the projected railway into Cape Colony would run. Consequently my way lay through Reddersberg, the headquarters of the short-jacketed, longhaired sect of Doppers, and so to a squalid German mission station which profanes the name of Bethany. Thence by many a Dutch farm, at one of which corn was being threshed in ancient style — trodden by fifty horses galloping round in a circular enclosure; while at another peaches were being gathered by two handsome girls who bear one of the noblest names of France; past Jägersfontein, the Free State diamond fields, and its neighbor, Fauresmith (named after the missionary Faure and Sir Harry Smith), which the mining town has ruined, and so by Philipolis, across the Orange River, and into Cape Colony, over a bridge which will have to be altered for the railway, when it comes. The president set out in the opposite direction in his cart, drawn by a span of mules, and reports reached me on my subsequent wanderings of his patriarchal progress among his people, of the enthusiasm of the burghers in the Free State towns, decked out with the orange flag, while the national hymn was intoned in the peculiar Dutch method. Then addresses were read to him, and it required all his tact to answer them. At Harrismith the burghers complained bitterly that they were being ruined by the immigration of Asiatic traders, and went on to denounce the idea as monstrous that colored people of any race or shade should be on equality with those of European descent, and the president, with all his enlightenment, had to frame a skilful phrase which would not offend Boer prejudices. Mitis sapientia used to be described as the characteristic of a much-loved English statesman not long passed away, and the expression precisely connotes Sir John Brand's conspicuous quality, which he shared with the other, whom he somewhat resembled both in appearance and in courteous manner.
This is not the place to record the history of his life, and a word must suffice to refer to his attitude to England during the troublesome settlement of the Griqualand West question. The rush to the diamond fields had begun in 1870. There is no doubt about it that the British authorities "jumped" (to use a colonial expression) the territory after it had been for some time under President Brand's dominion, on pretence of a title derived from one Waterboer. The president, with great patience and dignity, continued to state and re-state his grievance until 1876, when Lord Carnarvon sent for him to London, and he agreed, for the consideration of £ 90,000 to allow the claim of the British sovereignty over the diamond fields. Probably the Free State would have never been able to keep in order the turbulent population, hot all who are conversant with the early history of Kimberley know well what would have resulted had President Brand's influence been hostile to British interests. Lord Carnarvon, who was secretary of state for the colonies, was at that period intimately associated with the president, writes to me as follows: "At any time I should have heard of Sir John Brand's death with great concern, but at the present critical conjuncture of affairs in South Africa I look upon it as a great calamity. His straightforwardness and loyalty of character, his steadiness of purpose, and his wide experience, gave him an influence which he well deserved, and I greatly deplore the untimely loss of one who can ill be spared."
In the disastrous days of the Transvaal trouble in 1881, the one bright spot in the gloomy story is President Brand's attitude. During the whole of the month of misfortune, and before and after it, he was daily in telegraphic communication with London, with the Cape, and with Generals Colley and Wood. Had he been a philanthropic member of the Society of Friends sent out from England on a peace-making mission his efforts could not have been more active, whereas he was the head of a State allied by every tie of race-feeling to their neighbors across the Vaal in arms against us. Before the fatal day of Laing's Nek he issued a proclamation enjoining strict neutrality on the burghers and inhabitants of the Free State. Not a word in his despatches shows the slightest bias in favor of the Boers. Sir Evelyn Wood telegraphs to him, "I gratefully acknowledge your honor's continuous efforts in the cause of peace;" and a few days after Majuba, in a message to the president, he refers to the unfortunate Sir George Colley as "our common friend." President Brand not only telegraphed and wrote, but afterwards undertook perilous journeys through the floods in the same cause; and in consequence of Sir Evelyn Wood's representations the imperial government requested him to be present, as the delegate of a friendly State, at the sittings of the Royal Commission for the settlement of the Transvaal territory.
In 1882 he had conferred upon him the honorary grand cross of St. Michael and St. George, as an acknowledgment of his services to England. The president would have received his knight hood the previous year after the conclusion of the Transvaal Convention, but for a curious accident. An influential member of the English ministry, who appreciated his assistance, wrote on a piece of paper," Brand ought to be knighted," put the suggestion into a despatch-box, and sent it to 10 Downing Street. What happened there is not within my knowledge, but a Gazette appeared some time afterwards containing, not the name of President Brand, but an announcement that the grand cross of the Bath had been conferred on the speaker of the House of Commons. An honor so appropriately bestowed could not in any sense be described as a knighthood by mistake, though it was John Brand of Bloemfontein who was in the minister's mind when he wrote his terse memorandum.
Though he rarely wore the grand cordon of the order, as President Kruger occasionally sports the Legion of Honor and the Portuguese Order of Christ, the ruler of the Dutch Republic of the Orange River will probably be known most usually in days to come, throughout South Africa, by the essentially English appellation of Sir John. His mother's name is perpetuated in the Free State town of Ladybrand.
The last year of the good president's life was not uneventful, and included a most hearty celebration of her Majesty's jubilee. For a whole week Bloemfontein made holiday with a succession of banquets, fêtes, balls, and processions — a probably unprecedented proceeding on the part of a foreign State, however friendly. Bloemfontein, indeed, is a foreign capital where, in spite of Dutch origin, of German elements, and of French appearance, English influence predominates. The excellent shops are thoroughly British, the British coinage is the only currency, and newspapers, both friendly and Anglophobe, are published in English. When the railway reaches Bloemfontein, it will possibly become a great health resort for English people, as its climate has a wonderfully beneficial effect on consumptives who can survive the shaking of the present means of conveyance; and invalids who succeed in arriving find something which is a rare curiosity in South Africa, and which does not exist in the Old Colony from Cape Town to Kimberley — a decent inn.
In September, Sir Henry Holland (Lord Knutsford) transmitted the thanks of the imperial government to Sir John Brand for the assistance his authorities had given in maintaining peace and stopping the drink traffic in Basutoland. Previously to this a deputation was sent by the Volksraad to Pretoria, to confer with the Transvaal government on matters of common interest. A secret session was subsequently held, and a resolution passed by twenty-seven votes to twenty-five, which the president declared he should regard as a vote of censure. General consternation was the result, and public deputations urged the president to withdraw his resignation. The Volksraad then, by forty-nine votes to one, passed a resolution that the previous vote never intended to censure the president. The scene was described to me as having been most impressive when the vote was tendered to the president, and, amid great enthusiasm, he withdrew his resignation. The incident is of importance as showing the immense hold this good friend of England had over his faithful burghers. The session closed with a resolution authorizing the president to enter into negotiations with Cape Colony on railway questions, which was thought to be a blow to the party who had practically censured Sir John Brand. In October the Volksraad was called together again, and the president announced that his policy was the construction of a line from Cape Colony to the Free State in connection with the projected Delagoa Bay Pretoria line.
President Kruger then came to Bloemfontein at the head of a deputation which had for its aim an alliance between the two republics, binding the Free-State burghers to aid the Transvaal government in the case of any disturbance with the diggers, and binding the Free State government for ten years not to allow the colonies to construct a line through their territory to the Transvaal. Though he offered a subsidy of £20,000 a year for that period, his terms were rejected, and the negotiations on these points fell through, President Kruger returning to Pretoria with the belief that South African union was impracticable for the present. It is easy to mark the significance of the respective policies of the two presidents throughout the negotiations.
The Cape Conference met in January last, being attended by delegates from the two colonies and the Free State, but the Transvaal was practically unrepresented. The recognition of the principle that the Free State is entitled to a share of the customs' dues levied by the colonies on goods imported through the seaports for consumption in the State gave great satisfaction to the president and to his people. Sir John Brand was during the spring seized with a serious illness. He, however, was sufficiently recovered to open the Volksraad in person on May 7th, and commenced his speech with a touching reference to his health. In an exhaustive address he repeated his gratification at the result of the conference on the subject of a customs union, and his succeeding words on the railway question are of sufficient importance to be quoted —
    It can be readily understood that the progress and prosperity of the Orange Free State lie near my heart, and that the nearer my term of office draws to a period the stronger is my desire to apply and advise every means by which the great interest of the State can he advanced, and I should accuse myself of being unfaithful to my duty did I not urge again, with all the earnestness and emphasis the subject demands, how necessary, yes, how indispensable is the construction of railways for this State. I hope that we shall accept the principle of the construction of a trunk line from the Orange River as much as possible in a direct line from Bloemfontein to the Vaal River, with a connection with Natal vice Harrismith, and if for the present only so much of that scheme is carried out that a line is constructed from Cape Colony to Bloemfontein, and from Natal to Harrismith, then our State would immediately be brought into connection with the colonies, and a prospect opened of a connection afterwards with the lines of the South African Republic and their line to Delagoa Bay. Thus, step by step, the colonies and states of South Africa would be drawn closer to each other and gradually prepared for the realization of the bright ideal that smiles upon us in the future, a United South Africa.
Three weeks later a discussion took place in the Volksraad on the question of union with the Transvaal, which seemed to show that there was grave uncertainty among the members as to the meaning of a federal union or of an offensive or defensive treaty and after two days' debate a rather vague resolution was passed by thirty-five votes to eighteen in favor of a federal union according to the recommendation of the commission of last year.
The somewhat dry narration of these recent events is necessary in order to understand the situation at the moment of Sir John Brand's ill-timed death, and it is necessary also to refer briefly to affairs in the Transvaal. I have recently, in another place, dealt with President Kruger's railway policy and its bearing on the Delagoa Bay question. Things in South Africa are in a transition state, and it is impossible to make a forecast six months ahead. A few weeks ago I should have said that the three most important factors in the future of the country were the permanence of Transvaal gold discovery, the development of the railway system, and the duration of President Brand's life. The president's death has greatly increased the importance of the situation in the Transvaal. At the time of my visit to the marvellous town of Johannisberg early in the year, soon after the first anniversary of its foundation, the attitude of the mining population to the Transvaal government was very different from what had been anticipated. It had been confidently prophesied that the sudden establishment of an enterprising and rapidly increasing community, mainly of Englishmen, would speedily revolutionize the republic, and undoing the effect of all our blunders and disasters in the Transvaal, would bring back the country to British rule. The prudent policy adopted by Paul Kruger towards the diggers was for the moment falsifying these predictions, and the English-speaking population, far from expressing a desire either to be united to Cape Colony, or to be administered independently from Downing Street, so much appreciated the liberality of the Transvaal administration that they were, on the whole, contented with the Boer government, and were willing to wait for the franchise and other reforms, believing that by degrees the Dutch would be peacefully ousted by the growth of mining centres, and that the Transvaal was destined to become an English-speaking republic. Sir John Brand inclined to the contrary view that the Dutch would absorb the permanent settlers; that some of those who made fortunes would leave the country, while those who remained would in their sons and descendants become Africanders. He instanced to me the sons of the Grahamstown settlers, who have assimilated with the Dutch, and also the old story of the absorption of the Huguenots; but the analogies are imperfect; the English settlers of 1820 adopted the pastoral life of the Boers, and it is precisely the application of the policy enforced on the French immigrants of the compulsory use of the Dutch language, which has been within the last month or two undoing the effects of Paul Kruger's conciliatory policy.
The president of the South African Republic, with all his uncouthness, is an extremely astute person, and the line taken by the Boer deputies at Pretoria has probably been forced upon him. It cannot he doubted that the death of President Brand will strengthen the hands of the retrograde party in the Transvaal, who will now look for support to the section in the Free State which was kept in order by his personal influence. The Dutch farmers in South Africa, especially those who live far from the coast, are as a body opposed to railways. As Sir John Brand expressed it to me, "They are aristocratic, and cling to a life connected with the soil, shrinking from modern commercial enterprise." The telegrams from the Cape seem to show that almost daily changes are taking place in the phases of the railway policy of the continent.
Happily the day is past when it was the fashion to characterize the Africander party and population in Cape Colony as enemies of the empire. The strong feeling among the Cape Dutch against President Kruger's railway policy shows that without giving up any of their Africander sentiment, they will not allow it to interfere with the progress and interests of the colony. President Brand's life was one that the welfare of the British empire could ill spare, and his disappearance at this moment, it cannot be denied, makes the situation in South Africa one of gravity. Fortunately, however, the men who in recent days have had chief influence at the Cape believe that the only possible policy is one of complete co-operation with the Boers. Among imperial officials there is Sir Hercules Robinson, who succeeded to the government of the colony at a time of unparalleled difficulty, and whose highly successful administration has been in great measure due to his sagacious dealings with the Dutch party. Sir Henry Torrens, who has been lately called to govern another dependency, and during his command of the forces in South Africa had temporarily to administer the Cape government at a crisis which his tact prevented from becoming serious, also appreciated the necessity of an understanding with the Dutch. Of active politicians the greatest power in South Africa is Mr. Hofmeyr, the leader of the Dutch party, and none who know him can doubt his loyalty and devotion to the empire which the death of Sir John Brand has made all the more valuable. The two chief members of the present ministry, Sir Gordon Sprigg and Sir Thomas Upington, are closely allied with the Dutch party. Mr. Rhodes of Kimberley, perhaps the most influential public man in South Africa of English birth, is also in complete sympathy with them, and from correspondence and conversation I have had with Mr. Merriman and Mr. Leonard, two distinguished leaders of the opposition, I venture to think that their sentiments are the reverse of anti-Dutch. Sir David Tennant, the doyen of speakers, may be added to the list, and Sir Henry de Villiers, probably the most eminent of all our colonial judges, is the ideal of loyal Africanderism. If he could be the successor of his friend, Sir John Brand, it would be a happy arrangement for South Africa. The president's death at the present moment seems to be an almost irreparable misfortune; but there are not wanting men devoted to the British empire, who in the past worked with him, and who are ready to persevere in working for the principle which he laid down in a letter to the administrator of the Cape on the eve of the disasters of 1881, "To promote good-will and the cordial co-operation of all parts of South Africa for the general welfare."
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