St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1900-02-21

|
/. an oligarchy. Their apologists az
NIT it. One of their sturdiest defer
r ders says they have in their govern
). ment no conception Of the principle
s underlying our own unrivalle
4 Declaration of Independence, or tn
e French Bill of Rights OF 1889. Thei
| oligarchs have m aintained for year
7 a corruption fund, substituting news
; papers to continue the infamous praC
tice of instilling poisonous hatret
of England and Der colonial policy
A Georgia cracker, bound for Texas
was asked his reasons for going. Hi.
nearest neighbor, new conner, wa.
seven miles away. He couldn't stanC
it, he said, he was getting crowded
That is a Beers temperament. He
has been nomad, and disposed to
resent control by his own fellows
He had little notion of the state.
His ideas of government were crude.
He was keeper of sheep and cattle,
and led frontiersman's life. He did
not take kindly to new ways. New
corners came in, English, French, Ger
mans, Americans, all nationalities.
The Boer writers admit that the for
eigner was welcomed, for would he
not make market for Boer
products? The newcomer did not,
and could not adapt himself to Boer
ways, and the Boer could not come
up to new standards. There was
friction, and inevitable divergence,
as there always will be under similar
conditions. The Boer taxed the
foreigner without commensurate re-
turns. He refused him except on
onerous conditions what all we'll
regulated commemorative nova.
days offer most experimentation
ship.
The Boer had prototype, in the
seventeenth century, along the Hud-
son river. His governors had some
notions of government quite as rigid
as the Boer. Old Peter Stuyvesant,
peace to his memory, used to conduct
affairs not exactly to the liking of
his own countrymen. One day, one
of them threatened to appeal to the
home government in Holland, "IfI
knew" quoth old Peter, "that you
would appeal to the home govern
ment would hang you in five
minutes to that tree" Appeals are
not always made in such circum-
stances.
Like the ambitious STAKEHOLDER
who avowed his purpose to call the
roll of his slaves in the shadow of
Bunker Hill monument, the Boer
leaders for many years have been
swayed by the ambitious purpose of
all South Africa a great
Dutch combination of states. 1t is
quite evident that England and the
inhabitants of Cape Colony, includ-
ing thousands of people of Dutch
descent, think quite differently, and
will defend their hearthstones from
erinvaders.
1t is enigmatical all this solicit
tude for the Boer. 1t is quite like the
display of sympathy extended to the
South in our great civil war. The
ISSUE then was very like the one in
South Africa, union or separation.
Then as now the most formidable
barrier to consolidation was mems
obstinacy. The advantages of union !
appear to be apprehended only by |
an advanced stage of society. The
same people who combated the North
forty years ago on this question,
then known as States Rights, seem
now to accept of the rational idea as
paramount. So it is neither hopeless
nor visionary to conjecture that the
Transvaal and Free State, a half
century hence, will become as ardent
in their attachment to flag, now
despised, emblem of a most liberal
form OF government, flying over
peoples in permanent consolidation
for mutual welfare and defence. This
comedies with the experience of the
British empire, our own revolution
excepted.
Strangely enough it comes about
that England and America in differ
ent quarters Of the globe, engaged in
the same honorable purpose of carry
ing we'll tried and we'll ordered sys.
TENS Of government to backward
and in many respects willful and
sullen peoples, have met with similar
resistance and distrust. War, the
final arbiter, has been forced upon