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 in regard to what they considered their territorial rights, and in the interval between the signing of the Sand River Convention and the death of Pretorius an incident occurred significant alike of their claims to jurisdiction over enormous areas and of their manner of treating the natives. Within a few weeks of the signing of the convention Pretorius had asked the British authorities to close the “lower road” to the interior, that is the route through Bechuanaland, opened up by Moffat, Livingstone and other missionaries. Pretorius alleged that by this means the natives were obtaining firearms. At the same time the Transvaal Boers claimed that all the Bechuana country belonged to them, a claim which the British government of that day did not think it worth while to contest. No boundary westward had been indicated in the Sand River Convention. The Barolong, Bakwena and other Bechuana tribes, through whose lands the “lower road” ran, claimed however to be independent, among them Sechele (otherwise Setyeli), at whose chief kraal—Kolobeng—Livingstone was then stationed. Sechele was regarded by the Boers as owing them allegiance, and in August 1852 Pretorius sent against him a commando (in which Paul Kruger served as a field cornet), alleging that the Bakwena were harbouring a Bakatla chief who had looted cattle belonging to Boer farmers. It was in this expedition that Livingstone’s house was looted. There was little fighting, but the commando carried off between two and three hundred native women and children—some of whom were redeemed by their friends, and some escaped, while many of the children were apprenticed to farmers. Sechele's power was not broken, and he appealed for British protection, which was not then granted. The incident was, however, but the first step in the struggle for the possession of that country (see ). It served to strengthen the unfavourable impression formed in England of the Transvaal Boers with regard to their treatment of the natives; an impression which was deepened by tidings of terrible chastisement of tribes in the Zoutpansberg, and by the Apprentice Law passed by the volksraad in 1856—a law denounced in many quarters as practically legalizing slavery.

On the death of Andries Pretorius his son (q.v.) had been appointed his successor, and to the younger Pretorius was due the first efforts to end the discord and confusion which prevailed among the burghers—a discord heightened by ecclesiastical strife, the points at issue being questions not of faith but of church government. In 1856 a series of public meetings, summoned by Pretorius, was held at different districts in the Transvaal for the purpose of discussing and deciding whether the time had not arrived for substituting a strong central government in place of the petty district governments which had hitherto existed. The result was a representative assembly of delegates was elected, empowered to draft a constitution. In December this assembly met at Potchefstroom, and for three weeks was engaged in modelling the constitution of the country. The name “South African Republic” was adopted as the title of the state, and the new constitution made provision for a volksraad to which members were to be elected by the people for a period of two years, and in which the legislative function was vested. The administrative authority was to be vested in a president, aided by an executive council. It was stipulated that members both of the volksraad and council should be members of the Dutch Reformed Church, and of European blood. No equality of coloured people with the white inhabitants would be tolerated either in church or state. In reviewing an incident so important in the history of the Transvaal as the appointment of the Potchefstroom assembly it is of interest to note the gist of the complaint among the Boers which led to this revolution in the government of the country as it had previously existed. In his History of South Africa Theal says: “The community of Lydenburg was accused of attempting to domineer over the whole country, without any other right to pre-eminence than that of being composed of the earliest inhabitants, a fight which it had forfeited by its opposition to the general weal.” In later years this complaint was precisely that of the Uitlanders at Johannesburg. To conciliate the Boers of Zoutpansberg the new-born assembly at Potchefstroom appointed Stephanus Schoeman, the commandant general of the Zoutpansberg district, commandant-general of the whole country. This offer was, however, declined by Schoeman, and both Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg indignantly repudiated the new assembly and its constitution. The executive council, which had been appointed by the Potchefstroom assembly, with Pretorius as president, now took up a bolder attitude: they deposed Schoeman from all authority, declared Zoutpansberg in a state of blockade, and denounced the Boers of the two northern districts as rebels.

Further to strengthen their position, Pretorius and his party unsuccessfully endeavoured to bring about a union with the Orange Free State. Peaceful overtures having failed, Pretorius and Paul Kruger placed themselves at the head of a commando which crossed the Vaal with the object of enforcing union, but the Free State compelled their withdrawal (see ). Within the Transvaal the forces making for union gained strength notwithstanding these events, and by the year 1860 Zoutpansberg and Lydenburg had become incorporated with the republic. Pretoria, newly founded, and named in honour of the elder Pretorius, was made the seat of government and capital of the country. The ecclesiastical efforts at unity had not been equally successful. The Separatist Reformed Church of Holland had sent out a young expositor of its doctrines named Postma, who, in November 1858, became minister of Rustenburg. In the following year a general church assembly endeavoured to unite all the congregations in a common government, but Postma’s consistory rejected these overtures, and from that date the Separatist (or Dopper) Church has had an independent existence (see ante, § Religion). Paul Kruger, who lived near Rustenburg, became a strong adherent of the new church.

Pretorius, while still president of the Transvaal, had been elected, through the efforts of his partisans, president of the Orange Free State. He thereupon (in February 1860) obtained six months’ leave of absence and repaired to Bloemfontein, in the hope of peacefully bringing about a union between the two republics. He had no sooner left the Transvaal than the old Lydenburg party, headed by Cornelis Potgieter, landdrost of Lydenburg, protested that the union would be much more beneficial to the Free State than to the people of Lydenburg, and followed this up with the contention that it was illegal for any one to be president of the South African Republic and the Free State at the same time. At the end of the six months Pretorius, after a stormy meeting of the volksraad, apparently in disgust at the whole situation, resigned the presidency of the Transvaal. J. H. Grobelaar, who had been appointed president during the temporary absence of Pretorius, was requested to remain in office. The immediate followers of Pretorius now became extremely incensed at the action of the Lydenburg party, and a mass meeting was held at Potchefstroom (October 1860), where it was resolved that: (a) the volksraad no longer enjoyed its confidence; (b) that Pretorius should remain president of the South African Republic, and have a year's leave of absence to bring about union with the Free State; (c) that Schoeman should act as president during the absence of Pretorius; (d) that before the return of Pretorius to resume his duties a new volksraad should be elected.

If at this stage of their existence the real ambition of the Transvaal Boers was to found a strong and compact republican state, their conduct in opposing a scheme of union with the Orange Free State was foolish to a degree. The events of the year 1860, as well as of all the years that followed down to British annexation in 1877, show that licence rather than liberty, a narrow spirit of faction rather than patriotism, were the dominant instincts of the Boer. Had the fusion of the two little republics which Pretorius sought to bring about, and from which apparently the Free State was not averse, actually been accomplished in 1860, it is more than probable that a republican state on liberal