The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-10-03
THE BOERS COMPARED WITH
THE EARLY NEW NGLANDERS
From the Springfield Republican.

From the Springfield Republican.
Nowhere else has there been a colon
ization more similar in essential char
acteristics to the puritan colonization
of New England than the Dutch settle
ment of South Africa. For natural
causes incident to the flow of the worlds
commerce and white population New
England and North America developed
far more rapidly than did South Africa,
and with the interesting result that
these Dutch communities at present
focusing the attention of the world
bear some striking resemblances to the
New England of years gone by. Our
orators on New England anniversary
occasions are fond of expatiating on
the sterling virtues of the early Puri-
tan commonwealth With all their
faults, our ancestors, we are accus-
toned to think, laid the foundations OF
one of the greatest of nations. II mar
row in their theology, they possessed
rugged qualities in family and political
life which were grandly Roman in their
combined simplicity and power. Now
adays we bewail the loss Of many OF
those cardinal features of our earlier
life-the absence of luxury, the rellg-
ious devotion, the pure home relations,
the large families. Instead of them we
note the immense growth of material
ease, the decline of religion. the loose
ness of the matrimonial tie and the de-
clining birth rate among the cultivated
and wealthy. Our modern civilization
is far more splendid, yet there is hardly
a clergyman in New England to-day
who would say that in intrinsic power
and raw material for future develop
ment this section compares with the
New England of seventy-five years ago.
Now, the Dutch of South Africa pos
sess many of the faults and many of
the virtues which distinguished our
own Puritan fathers.
The nervous energies CT a great ma
ton are originally stored up in the peo-
pie devoted to the cultivation of the
soil. These Dutch are farmers, like
most New Englanders two or three
genera lions back. Hence they form the
best possible foundation for a state to
be built upon. The South African
Dutch are very much devoted to the
Calvinistic religion. Probably no Pro-
testant people in the world are such
constant anu ulWedTyluS Cllul SASoSlS
as they are, and here again they are
strikingly like our New England an
cestors. Modern thought may sheer at
the Anticipated theology Of the Beers,
yet it is the same theology that helped
build up New England.
The South African Dutch, moreover,
are pure in their domestic relations.
Froude saw in their home life an ODE
dience to parents las strict as among
the ancient Sadness" and he might also
have likened it to the rigor of the pa
rental authority among the earlier in
habitants of New England. The Beers,
too,j are very prolife, raising large fam
lilies, like the New Englanders, and this
is a source of great strength to people
of their position in the wilderness. In
their stubborn and unquenchable love
OF independence and their remarkable
aptitude for statecraft and diplomacy
President Kruger, mere Dutch peas
ant" has no superior in diplomatic
fence in the present British cabinet
the South African Dutch, finally, are
most impressively like that race of
Yankee farmers which produced the
Adamses, the Hancocks. the Shermans