Page:The truth about the Transvaal.djvu/7



speech, recently delivered at Birmingham, and containing a defence of the Transvaal policy of the present Government, has been printed for general circulation. A defence of the same policy, by Mr. Craig Sellar, has already been circulated in Scotland, so that what may be called the Boer side of the question is fully before the British public. This being the case, it has been thought desirable that the British side should be also stated clearly and impartially, so that the public may be able to judge for itself whether the Government are really entitled to the praise which they claim for "moral courage" in their abandonment of the Transvaal, and whether "justice" really required that the flag of England should be lowered before insurgent enemies, that British soldiers should be massacred not only unavenged, but without even a word of protest on the part of the British Government, that the plighted word of that Government to loyal colonists should be broken, and the confidence hitherto placed, both by men of white and black descent, in the power and good faith of Great Britain, rudely shaken, if not entirely destroyed. Mr. Sellar, after stating with perfect truth that "the Transvaal is an enormous territory, about the size of England, Scotland, and Ireland in a ring fence," goes on to say that the Boers, "trekking from Cape Colony and Natal to escape from British dominion," crossed the Vaal, occupied this huge territory, considered that they held the Transvaal by the same right by which we hold India Canada, and other possessions, the right, namely, of conquest; and their independence was guaranteed to them by what is called the Sand River Convention, which was agreed to in 1852. With reference to these statements, it should never be forgotten that the main reason which induced the Dutch Boers to "trek" from Cape Colony in 1835 was the abolition of slavery by Great Britain, and their desire to maintain slavery as one of their institutions, which they could not be allowed to do as British subjects. This fact has been often denied by the advocates of the Boers in this country; but even if their simple denial could be accepted against the