ion: EX-PRESIDENT STEYN.

_Photo by Duffus Bros., Capetown._]

In the past the Boers, _i.e._, the Dutch element in the late Republics,
have frequently been described, and as often maligned, by men who were
perfect strangers to them; men who had not taken the least trouble to
study their habits and character so as to arrive at a better
understanding of the people they were trying to describe. Hence the
various contradictory statements and representations of one and the
same people. Alas! that they should ever have been the victims of so
much cheap slander, that some men should have vied with one another in
heaping insult and infamy on their heads, while others conjured up for
themselves a fantastic and outrageous monster, and called that a Boer.
We cannot expect that minds so inflamed and exasperated would do justice
to the Boers. We feel convinced that their character can only be
portrayed correctly and justly by men not animated by hostile sentiments
towards them, but who, having been in touch with them have generously
entered into their feelings and aspirations, and have looked at things
from the Boer standpoint, as well as from their own; men who have had
patience to bear with their infirmities; in a word, by men from their
very midst--such and such only could do justice to their character.

Born and bred among the Dutch, associated with them all our lives, Dutch
ourselves every inch--a fact in which we glory--our relations to the
Boers, specially during the war, have afforded us excellent
opportunities of making an ethnological study of them. During the war
the Dutch population, more especially that portion of it which was
directly connected with the struggle, passed through various phases and
changes of life. Subjected to the most harassing circumstances, one saw
them at their worst, but also at their best. Their virtues, as well as
their vices, were fanned by the breath of war. Many a hidden virtue
sparkled forth, as the dewdrop glistens in the beams of the rising sun.
Many a slumbering vice and latent evil inclination found the regions of
discord and strife a fruitful soil for development.

Now that hostilities have ceased, and the liberties of speech and the
Press are extended once more, not only to such as were or are possessed
of the bitterest of feelings towards the Dutch, but to all British
subjects, we feel constrained to dissipate, if possible, some of the
clouds of slander which encompassed the Boers b