Page:The Transvaal war; a lecture delivered in the University of Cambridge on 9th November, 1899.djvu/16

 larger part of civilized mankind. Neither, again, should we look on the Transvaal ideal with contempt on account of the mixed motives with which it may be maintained. Human motives are always mixed. Certainly as long as the great revenues derivable from the gold mines are enjoyed by a small governing class, there must be large gains to be made out of them even without imputing corruption to those men. But, as I say, motives are always mixed, and we cannot condemn a great body of men on account of the motives which may actuate some of them, even the leaders of them. And if there be anything at all sordid in the motives of the oligarchy on one side, that may well pair off with the motives which exist on the other side, the desire to free the mines of the Rand from excessive taxation, and thereby to increase, I will not say only the gains of the capitalists but the gains of those interested in the mines generally, because no doubt if the taxation were reduced there would be a better field for the employment of labour, and labour as well as capital would gain. These motives may pair off.

Before leaving this comparison of the two ideals, I would point out to you two circumstances connected with any ideal. One is that ideals are always propagandist. No ideal seriously and heartily conceived was ever contented to remain entirely within its own limits, and that is true whether the ideal itself is a religious, a political, or a social one. I need not recall the Crusades to your mind. I need hardly recall the revolutionary propagandism of France at the time of her great Revolution, or the absolutist propagandism of the Holy Alliance which followed its overthrow. You may take it as a lesson of history that ideals are always propagandist, and there is another circumstance to be mentioned about them, that they admit of no compromise. There may be a compromise between different measures proposed to be carried out, but between two ideals there is none. The franchise and representation asked for the Uitlanders by