Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/636

 212 STATE PAPERS— TKANSVAAL. [1899.

" 239. (President).— Before annexation, had British subjects complete freedom of trade throughout the Transvaal; were they on the same footing as citizens of the Transvaal ?

" 240. (Mr. Kruger).— They were on the same footing as the burghers ; there was not the slightest difference in accordance with the Sand River Convention.

"241. (President).— I presume you will not object to that continuing ?

"242. (Mr. Kruger).— No; there will be equal protection for every- body.

"243. (Sir E. Wood).— And equal privileges?

" 244. (Mr. Kruger.— We make no difference so far as burgher rights are concerned. There may, perhaps, be some slight difference in the case of a young person who has just come into the country."

At the conference of May 26, 1881, at Newcastle, there were present Sir Hercules Robinson (president), Sir E. Wood Sir J. H. de Villiers, her Majesty's Commissioners ; and, as representatives of the Boers, Mr. Kruger, Mr. J. S. Joubert, Dr. Jorissen, Mr. Pretorius, Mr. Buskes and Mr. de Villiers.

At this meeting the subject of the assurances was again alluded to as thus reported : —

" 1,037. (Dr. Jorissen).— At No. 244 the question was : ' Is there any distinction in regard to the privileges or rights of Englishmen in the Transvaal ?' And Mr. Kruger answered : * No, there is no difference ; * and then he added, ' There may be some slight difference in the case of a young person just coming into the country.' I wish to say that that might give rise to a wrong impression. What Mr. Kruger intended to convey was this: According to our law a new-comer has not his burgher rights immediately. The words * young person ' do not refer to age, but to the time of residence in the republic. According to our old Grondwet (Constitution) you had to reside a year in the country."

In spite of these positive assurances, all the laws which have caused the grievances under which the Outlanders labour, and all the restric- tions as to franchise and individual liberty under which they suffer, have been brought into existence subsequently to the Conventions of Pretoria or London. Not only has the letter of the Convention of 1884 been repeatedly broken, but the whole spirit of that Convention has been disregarded by this complete reversal of the conditions of equality between the white inhabitants of the Transvaal which subsisted, and which, relying on the assurances of the Boer leaders, her Majesty be- lieved would continue to subsist, when she granted to it internal in- dependence in the preamble of the Convention of 1881 and when she consented to substitute the articles of the Convention of 1884 for those of the previous Convention.

The responsibility of her Majesty's Government for the treatment of the alien inhabitants of the Transvaal is further increased by the fact that it was at the request of her Majesty's High Commissioner that the people of Johannesburg, who in December, 1895, had taken up arms against the Government of the South African Republic to recover those equal rights and privileges of which they had been unwarrantably deprived, permitted themselves to be disarmed in January, 1896. The