te in their votes for the contract;
and as there had been no pledge on their part, the donor had actually
incurred the risk of missing his object. From that time the practice of
obtaining and selling concessions or of sinecures and other lucrative
advantages grew quite into a trade; and receiving douceurs became a
hankering passion from highest to lowest, but happily with not a few
exceptions where the official's honour was above being priced.

There was nothing shocking in all this venality to the bulk of the
Johannesburg speculator class and others of that category. The rest
assessed official morality at a depreciated value, but hoped the
blemishes might be purged out with other and graver causes for
discontent, if Uitlanders, were only granted some effective
representation in public matters. That appeared to be the only
constitutional remedy. But this continued to be resentfully refused,
even in matters which partook of purely domestic interest, such as
education, municipal privileges, etc. The latter were opposed upon the
specious argument that such extended rights would constitute an
_imperium in imperio,_ and thus a condition incompatible with the safety
and the conservation of complete control.

In the usual intercourse with burghers and officials a great deal of
exasperating and even humiliating experiences had often to be endured,
Uitlanders being treated as an inferior class, with scarcely veiled and
often with arrogant assumption of superiority.

I witnessed a field cornet enjoying free and courteous hospitality at a
Uitlander's house, while being entertained by his host and others in the
vernacular Dutch, peremptorily object to the conversation in English in
which the lady of the house happened to be engaged with another guest at
the further end of the table. His remark was to the effect "that he
could not tolerate English being spoken within his hearing"; this was in
about 1888.

No wonder that under such conditions and ungenial usage Englishmen and
other Uitlanders were put in a resentful mood, and many of them
bethought themselves of methods other than constitutional to improve
their position.

Identification was resorted to with the Imperial League, a political
organization called into being in the Cape Colony to stem Boer
assertiveness there and to restrain Bond aspirations. It was also
seriously mooted to obtain the good offices of Great Britain as an
influence for intervention and remonstrance.