Papers on the political situation in South Africa, 1885-1895

The papers which make up this book, were written at different times and were of the class that disappears entirely unless some care is taken to preserve them. The author also managed to retrieve the pamphlet entitled 'England in South Africa' which was viewed as lost until discovered accidentally that a lady in Scotland, Mrs Taylor, had preserved a copy, which was then lended to the author. That pamphlet, written from the standpoint of the loyal Cape Colonists is worth preserving as it shows that so far back as 1885, Dutch National aspirations had taken such definite form as to lead to the formation of an English political association - the Empire League - for the maintenance of the English tie. The other papers, too, will be of use to the student of the future. Even the newspaper reports of meetings of the Transvaal National Union, containing as they do, though in crude form, records of the resolutions passed by that body of Uitlanders and of the speeches of its leaders, which must reveal to future writers much that is important and relevant. The terms of the great Petition which was signed by 38, 500 people and contemptuously disregarded by the Volksraad, will forever give the lie to the statement, on the Boer side, that the Uitlanders formulated their 'demands' in such insolent terms as to preclude all possibility of their being granted. The extracts from the address of the Republican Chief Justice, the solemn warnings in the paper written by Mr. J. W. Wessels (now a judge on the Transvaal Bench), and the able analysis of the Republican Constitution by Advocate Auret, printed originally as appendices to my statement for the House of Commons Committee, should be of great value to students of South African history.