Chapter 66 - Page 2

Johannesburg it was claimed that the
Uitlanders (strangers, foreigners) paid thirteen-fifteenths of the
Transvaal taxes, yet got little or nothing for it. Their city had no
charter; it had no municipal government; it could levy no taxes for
drainage, water-supply, paving, cleaning, sanitation, policing. There
was a police force, but it was composed of Boers, it was furnished by the
State Government, and the city had no control over it. Mining was very
costly; the government enormously increased the cost by putting
burdensome taxes upon the mines, the output, the machinery, the
buildings; by burdensome imposts upon incoming materials; by burdensome
railway-freight-charges. Hardest of all to bear, the government reserved
to itself a monopoly in that essential thing, dynamite, and burdened it
with an extravagant price. The detested Hollander from over the water
held all the public offices. The government was rank with corruption.
The Uitlander had no vote, and must live in the State ten or twelve years
before he could get one. He was not represented in the Raad
(legislature) that oppressed him and fleeced him. Religion was not free.
There were no schools where the teaching was in English, yet the great
majority of the white population of the State knew no tongue but that.
The State would not pass a liquor law; but allowed a great trade in cheap
vile brandy among the blacks, with the result that 25 per cent. of the
50,000 blacks employed in the mines were usually drunk and incapable of
working.

There--it was plain enough that the reasons for wanting some changes made
were abundant and reasonable, if this statement of the existing
grievances was correct.

What the Uitlanders wanted was reform--under the existing Republic.

What they proposed to do was to secure these reforms by, prayer,
petition, and persuasion.

They did petition. Also, they issued a Manifesto, whose very first note
is a bugle-blast of loyalty: "We want the establishment of this Republic
as a true Republic."

Could anything be clearer than the Uitlander's statement of the
grievances and oppressions under which they were suffering? Could
anything be more legal and citizen-like and law-respecting than their
attitude as expressed by their Manifesto? No. Those things were
perfectly clear, perfectly comprehensible.

But at this point the puzzles and riddles and confusions begin to flock
in. You have arrived at a place which you cannot quite understand.

For you find that as a preparation for this loyal, lawful, and in every
way unexceptionable attempt to persuade the government to right their
grievances, the Uitlanders had smuggled a Maxim gun or two and 1,500
muskets into the town, concealed in oil tanks