CHAPTER X.
THE ORANGE FREE STATE.—ITS EARLY HISTORY.
THE history of the origin of the Orange Free State, as a certain district of South Africa is called, is one which when really written will not I think redound to the credit of England. This I say not intending to accuse any British statesman of injustice,—much less of dishonesty. In all that has been done by the Colonial office in reference to the territory in question the attempt to do right has from first to last been only too anxious and painstaking. But as is generally the case when over anxiety exists in lieu of assured conviction, the right course has not been plainly seen, and the wrong thing has been done and done, perhaps, in a wrong manner.
Our system of government by Cabinets is peculiarly open to such mistakes in reference to Colonial matters. At the Foreign office, as is well known, there is a prescribed course of things and whether Lord Granville be there or Lord Derby the advice given will probably be the same. At the Home office the same course is followed whether the gentleman there be a Liberal or a Conservative, and if one dispenser of the Queen’s prerogative be more prone than another to allow criminals to escape, the course of Government is not impeded by his proclivities. But in looking back at the history of the Colonies during the last fifty years we see the idiosyncrasies of the individual ministers who have held the office of Secretary of State rather than a settled course of British action, and we are made to feel how suddenly the policy of one minister may be made to give way to the conscientious convictions of another. Hence there have come changes each of which may be evidence of dogged obstinacy in the mind of some much respected Statesman, but which seem to be proof of vacillation in the nation.
It would be thought that a colonizing nation like Great Britain,—now the only colonizing nation in existence,—should have a policy of colonization. The Americans of the United States have such a policy, though they do not colonize in our sense. They will not colonize at all beyond their own continent, so that all the citizens of their Republic may be brought into one homogeneous whole. The Spaniards and Dutch who have been great Colonists have a colonial policy,—which has ever consisted in getting what can be got for the mother country. Among ourselves, with all that we have done and all that we are doing, we do not yet know whether it is our intention to limit or to extend our colonial empire; we do not yet know whether we purpose to occupy other lands or to protect in their occupation those who now hold them; we do not yet know whether as a nation we wish our colonial dependants to remain always loyal to the British Crown or whether we desire to see them start for themselves as independent realms. All we do know is that with that general philanthropy and honesty without which a British Cabinet cannot now exist we want to do good and to avoid doing evil. But when we look back, and, taking even three liberal Colonial Secretaries, see the difference of opinion on colonial matters of such men as Lord Glenelg, Lord Grey, and Lord Granville, we have to own that our colonial policy must vacillate.
Are we to extend or are we not to extend our colonial empire? That was a question on which some years ago it did seem that our Statesmen had come to a decision. The task we had taken upon us was thought to be already more than enough for our strength, and we would not stretch our hands any further. If it might be practicable to get rid of some of the least useful of our operations it would be well to do so. That dream of a settled purpose has, however, been very rudely broken. The dreamers have never been able to act upon it as a policy. It will not be necessary to do more than name the Fiji Islands,—not the last but one of the last of our costly acquirements,—to show how unable the Colonial office at home has been to say, “so far will we go but no farther.” Had the Colonial office recognised it as a policy that wherever Englishmen settle themselves in sufficient numbers to make a disturbance if they be not governed, then government must go after them, then the Fiji Islands might have been accepted as a necessity. But there is no such policy even yet;—though the annexation of the Transvaal will go far to convince men that such must be our practice.
It is because of our vacillation in South Africa,—vacillation which has come from the varying convictions of varying Ministers and Governors,—that I say that the history of the Orange Free State will not be creditable to our discernment and statesmanship. Much heavier accusations have been brought against our Colonial office in reference to the same territory by Dutch, American, and by English censors. It has been said that we have been treacherous, tyrannical, and dishonest. To none of these charges do I think that the Colonial office is fairly subject; and though I cannot acquit every Governor of craft,—or perhaps of tyranny,—I think that there has on the whole been an anxious desire on the part of the emissaries from Downing Street to do their duty to their country. But there has been a want of settled purpose as to the nature and extent of the duties which fell upon England when she became mistress of the Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope.
There are some who think that we might have confined ourselves to Table Mountain and Simon’s Bay, drawing a rampart across the isthmus which divides the Cape from the mainland,—so as to have kept only a station for the protection of our East India intercourse. But as the Dutch whom we took upon ourselves to govern had already gone far inland when we arrived, that would hardly have been possible, and a restriction so selfish would have been contrary to our instincts. Others would have limited our power at various boundaries,—especially towards the East, where were the Kafir tribes, an evident source of coming trouble, should we meddle with them. The Orange river as a northern boundary did seem to offer a well-defined geographical limit, which would still allow us enormous scope for agricultural and pastoral energy within its southern banks and give sufficient room for every immigrant of whatever nation, and for every Africander who wished to live under British rule, to find a home within its borders.
But, as has been told before, the Dutch fled away across the Orange river as soon as they began to feel the nature of British rule. Then arose the question, which we have never yet been quite able to answer. When they went was it our duty to go after them,—not to hinder them from going but to govern them whither they went? Certainly not; we said, when they went only in such numbers as to cause us no disturbance by their removal. But how was it to be when they threatened, without any consent of ours, to erect a separate nationality on our borders? They tried it first in Natal, threatening us not only with the rivalry of their own proposed Republic, but with the hostile support of Holland. This was not to be allowed and we sent 250 men, very insufficiently, to put down the New Republic. We did, however, put it down at last.
But the Dutch were determined to go out from us. Our ways were not their ways. I am now speaking of a period nearly half a century back and of the following quarter of a century. Our philanthropy disgusted them, and was to their minds absolutely illogical,—not to be reconciled to that custom of our nation of landing here and there and taking the land away from the natives. The custom to them was good enough and seemed to be clearly the intention of God Almighty. It was the purpose of Providence that white men should use the land which was only wasted while in the possession of black men;—and, no doubt, the purpose of Providence also that black men should be made to work. But that attempt to strike down the Native with the right hand and to salve the wound with the left was to the Dutchman simply hypocritical. “Catch the nigger and make him work.” That was the Dutchman’s idea. “Certainly;—if you can agree about wages and other such matters,” said the British Authorities. “Wages,—with this Savage; with this something more but very little more than a monkey! Feed him, and perhaps baptize him; but at any rate get work out of him,” said the Dutchman. Of course the Dutchman was disgusted. And then the slaves had been manumitted. I will not go into all that again; but I think it must be intelligible that the British philanthropical system of government was an hypocritical abomination to the Dutchman who knew very well that in spite of his philanthropy the Englishman still kept taking the land;—land upon land.
It was natural that the Dutchman should go across the Orange River, and natural too that the English governor should not quite know how to treat him when he had gone. But it would have been well if some certain policy of treatment could have been adopted. Many think that had we not interfered with him in Natal, had we never established what was called an Orange River Sovereignty subject to British rule, a Dutch-speaking nation would have been formed between our Cape Colony and the swarming native tribes, which would have been a protecting barrier for us and have ensured the security of our Colony. I myself do not agree with this. I think that a Dutch Republic if strong enough for this, stretching from the confluence of the Vaal and Orange rivers down to the shores of Natal would have been a neighbour more difficult to deal with than Kafir tribes. My opinion on such a subject goes for very little;—and there would at any rate have been a policy. Or, when we had after much hesitation forbidden the Dutch to form a Republic in Natal and had declared that country to be one among Her Majesty’s possessions, we might have clung to the South African theory which was then promulgated. In that case we should have recognized the necessity of treating those wandering warlike patriarchs as British subjects and have acknowledged to ourselves that whither they went thither we must go after them. This, too, would have been a policy. But this we have not done. At first we went after them. Then we abandoned them. And now that they are altogether out of our hands in the Free State we are hankering after them again. It is impossible not to see that the ideas as to Colonial extension entertained by the late Duke of Newcastle are altogether different from those held by Lord Carnarvon;—and that the Colonial office lacks traditions.
In some respects the history of the Orange Free State has been similar to that of the Transvaal. Its fate has been very different,—a difference which has resulted partly from the characters of the men employed, partly from their external circumstances in regard to the native tribes which have been near to them. Mr. Boshof and Mr. Brand have been very superior as Statesmen to Mr. Pretorius and Mr. Burgers, and the Basutos under Moshesh their Chief,—though they almost succeeded in destroying the Orange Republic,—were at last less dangerous, at any rate very much less numerous, than Cetywayo and the Zulus.
The Dutch when they first crossed the Orange River asked whether they might go, and were then told that the law offered no impediment. “I am not aware,” said Lieutenant Governor Stockenstrom in answer to a deputation which appealed to him on the subject, “of any law which prevents any of His Majesty’s subjects from leaving his dominions and settling in another country; and such a law, if it did exist, would be tyrannical and oppressive.” That was in 1835. It was in 1837 that the migration across the river really began, when many of the wanderers first found their way down to Natal. Some however settled directly across the Orange River, where however they soon fell into difficulties requiring government. While there was fighting with hostile tribes far north across the Vaal, and while Dingaan was endeavouring to exterminate the white men in Natal, the farmers across the Orange quarrelled in a milder way with the bastard Hottentots and Griquas whom they found there. But there were many troubles. When the Dutch declared themselves to be supreme,—in reference to the Natives rather than the British,—there came a British judge across the river, who happened then to be on circuit in the neighbourhood, and told them that they were all British subjects. But his assertion was very soon repudiated by the Governor, Sir George Napier,—for at that time the idea was prevalent at the Colonial office that England’s hands should be stretched no further. This, however, did not stand long, and the next Governor, Sir Peregrine Maitland, found himself compelled by growing troubles to exercise authority across the rivers. He did not take possession of the country, but established a resident at the little town of Bloemfontein. The resident was to keep the peace between the Dutch and the various tribes;—but had no commission to govern the country. The British had found it impossible to allow the Dutch to drive the Natives from their land,—and equally impossible to allow the Natives to slaughter the Dutch. But yet we were very loth to declare the country British territory.
It was in 1848 that Sir Harry Smith, who was then in Natal, whither he had gone intending if possible to conciliate the Dutch would-be Republicans in that country, at last found himself compelled to claim for the mother country sovereignty over the region between the Orange and the Vaal rivers, and this proclamation he had to support by arms. Pretorius, who had become the leader of the Dutch in Natal, and who on account of personal slights to himself was peculiarly hostile to the English, came over the Drakenburg mountains, and put himself at the head of his countrymen between the rivers. He gathered together an army,—a commando, as it was then called in South African language,—and coming near to Bloemfontein ordered Major Warden, the British Resident, to move himself off into the Cape Colony south of the river with all that he had about him of soldiers and officials. This the Major did, and then Pretorius prepared himself to encounter with his Boers the offended majesty of Great Britain in arms. The reader will perhaps remember that the Dutch had done the same thing in Natal,—and had at first been successful.
Then, on 29th August, 1848, was fought the battle of Boom Plats half-way between the Orange River and Bloemfontein. Sir Harry Smith, the Governor, had come himself with six or seven hundred English soldiers and were joined by a small body of Griquas,—who were as a matter of course hostile to the Dutch. There were collected together about a thousand Dutch farmers all mounted. They were farmers, ready enough to fight, but not trained soldiers. More English were killed or wounded than Dutch. A dozen Dutchmen fell, and about four times that number of English. But the English beat the Dutch. This decided the fate of that territory for a short time,—and it became British under the name of the Orange River Sovereignty. Pretorius with his friends trekked away north, crossed the Vaal River, and there founded the Transvaal Republic,—as has been told elsewhere. A reward of £2,000 was offered for his apprehension;—an offer which might have been spared and which was happily made in vain.
Major Warden was reinstated as governing Resident, and the British power was supposed to be so well consolidated that many colonists who had hitherto remained contented on the south of the river now crossed it to occupy the lands which the followers of Pretorius had been compelled to desert. But the British were not very strong. The Basutos, a tribe of Natives who have now for some years lived in the odour of loyal sanctity and are supposed to be a pattern to all other Natives, harassed the Europeans continually. War had to be proclaimed against them. Basuto Land will be found in the map lying to the north of Kafraria, to the south east of the Orange Free State, south west of Natal, and north-east of the Cape Colony,—to which it is bound only by a narrow neck, and of which it now forms a part. How it became British shall be told hereafter;—but at the time of which I am now writing, about 1850, it was very Anti-British, and gave poor Major Warden and the Dutchmen who were living under his rule a great deal of trouble.
Then, in 1851, the Sovereignty was declared to be to all intents and purposes a separate Colony,—such as is the Transvaal at this moment. A Lieutenant Governor was appointed, who with the assistance of a council was empowered to make laws,—but with a proviso that such laws should not be binding upon Natives. To speak sooth British laws are not absolutely binding upon the Natives in any of the South African Colonies. In the Cape Colony or in Natal a Native may buy a wife,—or ten wives. There has always been the acknowledged impossibility of enforcing Africans to live at once after European habits. But here, in this new Colony which we had at last adopted, there was to be something peculiarly mild in our dealings with the black men. There was to be no interference with acts done within the limits of the jurisdiction of any native Chief. The Lieutenant Governor or “Resident was instructed to maintain the government of the native Chiefs over their people and lands in the utmost integrity.”[11] It is odd enough that from this territory, on which the British Governor or British Colonial Secretary of the day was so peculiarly anxious to defend the Natives from any touch of European tyranny, all the native tribes have been abolished, and here alone in South Africa the European master is fettered by no native difficulty;—is simply served by native servants. The native locations were to be peculiarly sacred;—but every Native has been scared away. The servants and workmen are foreigners who have come into the land in search of wages and food. The remarkable settlement at Thaba ’Ncho, of which I shall speak in a following chapter, is no contradiction to this statement, as the territory of the Baralongs of which Thaba ’Ncho is the capital is not a portion of the Orange Free State.
But with all our philanthropy we could not make things run smoothly in our new Colony. Moshesh and the Basutos would have grievances and would fight. The Governor of the Cape, who should have had no trouble with a little Colony which had a Governor of its own, and a Council, and instructions of a peculiarly philanthropic nature in regard to the Natives, was obliged to fight with these Basutos on behalf of the little Colony. This cost money,—of which the people in England heard the facts. It was really too much that after all that we had done we should be called upon to pay more money for an uncomfortable internal Province in South Africa which was not of the slightest use to us, which added no prestige to our name, and of which we had struggled hard to avoid the possession. There was nothing attractive about it. It was neither fertile nor pretty,—nor did it possess a precious metal of any kind as far as we knew. It was inhabited by Dutch who disliked us,—and by a most ungrateful horde of fighting Natives. Why,—why should we be compelled to go rushing up to the Equator, crossing river after river, in a simple endeavour to do good, when the very people whom we wanted to serve continually quarrelled with us,—and made us pay through the nose for all their quarrels?
It seems to have been forgotten then,—it seems often to have been forgotten,—that the good people and the peaceable people have to pay for the bad people and the quarrelsome people. There would appear to be a hardship in this;—but if any one will look into it he will see that after all the good people and the peaceable have much the best of it, and that the very money which they are called upon to pay in this way is not altogether badly invested. They obtain the blessing of security and the feeling, not injurious to their peace of mind, of having obtained that security by their own exertions.
But the idea of paying money and getting nothing for it does create irritation. At home in England the new Colony was not regarded with favour. In 1853 we had quite enough of fighting in hand without having to fight the Basutos in defence of the Dutch, or the Dutch in defence of the Basutos. The Colonial Secretary of that time was also War minister and may well have had his hands full. It was decided that the Orange Free State should be abandoned. We had claimed the Dutch as our subjects when they attempted to start for themselves in Natal, and had subjugated them by force of arms. Then we had repudiated them in the nearer region across the Orange. Then again we had claimed them and had again subjugated them by force of arms. Now we again repudiated them. In 1854 we executed, and forced them to accept, a convention by which we handed over the Government of the country to them,—to be carried on after their own fashion. But yet it was not to be carried on exactly as they pleased. There was to be no Slavery. They were to be an independent people, living under a Republic; but they were not to be allowed to force labour from the Natives. To see that this stipulation was carried out it would have been necessary for us to maintain magistrates all over the country;—or spies rather than magistrates, as such magistrates could have had no jurisdiction. The Republic, however, assented to a treaty containing this clause in regard to slavery.
In 1854 we got rid of our Orange River Sovereignty, Sir George Clerk having been sent over from England to make the transfer;—and we congratulated ourselves that we had now two independent Republics between us and the swarming hordes of the north. I cannot say how soon there came upon Downing Street a desire to resume the territory, but during the following troubles with the Basutos such a feeling must, one would say, have arisen. When the Diamond Fields were discovered it is manifest that the independence of the Orange Free State was very much in our way. When we were compelled by the run of circumstances to have dealings with native tribes which in 1854 seemed to us to be too remote from our borders to need thought, we must have regretted a certain clause in the convention by which,—we did not indeed bind ourselves to have no dealings with natives north of the Vaal river, but in which we declared that we had no “wish or intention” to enter into such treaties. No doubt that clause was intended to imply only that we had at that time no hidden notion of interference with the doings of the proposed Republic by arrangements with its native neighbours,—no notion of which it was to be kept in the dark. To think the contrary would be to suppose that the occupants of the Colonial Office at home were ignorant of language and destitute of honesty. But there soon came troubles from the clause which must have caused many regrets in the bosoms of Secretaries and Under Secretaries. Now at any rate we are all sure that Downing Street must repent her liberality, and wish,—ah, so fruitlessly,—that Sir George Clerk had never been sent upon that expedition. With a Permissive South Africa Confederation Bill carried after infinite trouble, and an independent State in the middle of South Africa very little inclined to Confederation, the present holder of the Colonial seals[12] cannot admire much the peculiar virtue which in 1854 induced his predecessor to surrender the Orange territory to the Dutch in opposition to the wish of all the then inhabitants of the country.
For the surrender was not made to please the people of the country. Down in Natal the Dutch had wanted a Republic. Up in the Sovereignty, as it was then called, they also had wanted a Republic when old Pretorius was at their head. But since that time there had come troubles with the Basutos,—troubles which were by no means ended,—and the Dutch were now willing enough to put up with dependence and British protection. The Dutch have been so cross-grained that the peculiar colonial virtue of the day has never been able to take their side. “We have come here only because you have undertaken to govern us and protect us,” said those of the Dutch who had followed and not preceded us across the Orange. And it was impossible to contradict them. I do not think that any body could now dispassionately inquire into the circumstances of South Africa without calling in question the wisdom of the Government at home in abandoning the control of the territory north of the Orange River.
But the Republic was established. For some years it had a most troubled life. Mr. Boshof was elected the first President and retained that office till 1859. He seems to have been a man of firmness and wisdom, but to have found his neighbours the Basutos to be almost too much for him. There was war with this tribe more or less during his whole time. There was a branch of the tribe of the Basutos living on a territory in the Free State,—a people whom I will describe more at length in a following chapter,—over whom and over whose property Moshesh the Chief of the Basutos claimed sovereignty; but it was impossible for the Free State to admit the claim as it could itself only exist by dictating boundaries and terms to the Baralongs,—which they were willing enough to receive as being a protection against their enemies the Basutos.
In 1860 Mr. Pretorius became President of the Free State,—the son of the man who had been the first President of the Transvaal,—and the man himself who was President of the Transvaal before Mr. Burgers. But the difficulties were altogether beyond his power, and in 1863 he resigned. Then Mr. Brand was appointed, the gentleman who now holds the office and who will hold it probably, if he lives, for many years to come. His present condition, which is one of complete calm, is very much at variance with the early years of his Presidency. I should hardly interest my reader if I were to attempt to involve them in the details of this struggle. It was a matter of life and death to the young Republic in which national death seemed always to be more probable than national life. The State had no army and could depend only on the efforts of its burghers and volunteers,—men who were very good for a commando or a spasmodic struggle, men who were well used to sharp skirmishes in which they had to contend in the proportion of one to ten against their black enemies. But this war was maintained for four years, and the burghers and volunteers who were mostly married men could not long remain absent from home. And when a peace was made at the instance of the Governor of the Cape Colony and boundaries established to which Moshesh agreed, the sons of Moshesh broke out in another place, and everything was as bad as before. All the available means of the Free State were spent. Blue-backs as they were called were printed, and the bankers issued little scraps of paper,—“good-fors,” as they were called,—representing minute sums of money. Trade there was none and the farmers had to fight the Basutos instead of cultivating their land. At that time the condition of the Free State was very bad indeed. I think I may say that its preservation was chiefly due to the firmness of Mr. Brand.
At length the Basutos were so crushed that they were driven to escape the wrath of their Dutch enemies by imploring the British to take them in as subjects. In March 1868 this was done,—by no means with the consent of the Free State which felt that it ought to dictate terms and to take whatever territory it might desire from its now conquered enemy and add such territory to its own. This was the more desirable as the land of the Basutos was peculiarly good and fit for cultivation,—whereas that of the Orange Free State was peculiarly bad, hardly admitting cultivation at all without the expensive process of irrigation. The English at last made a boundary line, to which the Free State submitted. By this a considerable portion of the old Basuto land was given up to them. This they have held ever since under the name of the Conquered Territory. Its capital is called Ladybrand, and its possession is the great pride of the Republic. In completing this story I must say that the Republic has been most unexpectedly able to redeem every inch of paper money which it created, and now, less than ten years after a war which quite exhausted and nearly destroyed it, the Orange Free State stands unburdened by a penny of public debt. This condition has no doubt come chiefly from its good luck. Diamonds were found, and the Diamond Fields had to be reached through the Free State. Provisions of all sorts were required at the Diamond Fields, and thus a market was created for everything that could be produced. There came a sudden influx of prosperity which enabled the people to bear taxation,—and in this way the blue-backs were redeemed.
There were other troubles after 1869;—but the little State has floated through them all. Its chief subsequent trouble has been the main cause of its prosperity. The diamonds were found and the Republic claimed the territory on which they were being collected. On that subject I have spoken in a previous chapter, and I need not again refer to the details of the disagreement between Great Britain and the Republic. But it may be as well to point out that had that quarrel ended otherwise than it did, the English of the Diamond Fields would certainly have annexed the Dutch of the Free State, instead of allowing the Dutch of the Free State to annex them;—and then England would have obtained all the country between the Orange and the Vaal instead of only that small but important portion of it in which the diamonds lie. To imagine that Kimberley with all its wealth would have allowed itself to be ruled by a Dutch Volksraad at the little town of Bloemfontein, is to suppose that the tail can permanently wag the dog, instead of the dog wagging the tail. Diamond diggers are by no means people of a kind to submit quietly to such a condition of things. It was bitter enough for the Volksraad to abandon the idea of making laws for so rich and strong a population,—bitter perhaps for Mr. Brand to abandon the idea of governing them. But there can now, I think, be no doubt that it was better for the Free State that Griqualand West and Kimberley should be separated from it,—especially as Mr. Brand was sent home to England by his parliament,—where he probably acquired softer feelings than heretofore towards a nationality with which he had been so long contending, and where he was able to smooth everything by inducing the Secretary of State to pay £90,000 by way of compensation to his own Government. I should think that Mr. Brand looking back on his various contentions with the British, on the Basuto wars and the Griqualand boundary lines, must often congratulate himself on the way he has steered his little bark. There can be no doubt that his fellow citizens in the Republic are very proud of his success.
Since Mr. Brand returned from London in 1876 nothing material has happened in the history of the Free State. In regard to all states it is said to be well that nothing material should happen to them. This must be peculiarly so with a Republic so small, and of which the success and the happiness must depend so entirely on its tranquillity. That it should have lived through the Basuto wars is astonishing. That it should not continue to live now that it is protected on all sides from the possibility of wars by the contiguity of British territory would be as astonishi