ext morning."

Mr. Mackenzie had little success in this expedition. He was listened to
with indifference when he represented to certain Landdrosts and Field
Cornets that he had not come to talk politics, but to complain of a
theft. Those to whom he spoke looked upon the cattle raid not as
robbery, but as "annexation" or "commandeering." A man, listening to the
palaver, exclaimed: "Well, anyhow, we shall have cheap beef as long as
Montsioa's cattle last." At the hotel of the place Mr. Mackenzie met
some Europeans, who were farming or in business in the Transvaal. They
said to him: "Mr. Mackenzie, we are sorry to have to say it to you, for
we have all known you so long, but, honestly speaking, we hope you won't
succeed; the English Government does not deserve to succeed after all
that they have made us--loyal colonists--suffer in the Transvaal. For a
long time scarcely a day has passed without our being insulted by the
more ignorant Boers, till we are almost tired of our lives, and yet we
cannot go away, having invested our all in the country."

"Many such speeches were made to me," says Mackenzie, "I give only one."

I cannot find it in my heart to criticize the character of the Boers at
a time when they have held on so bravely in a desperate war, and have
suffered so much. There are Boers and Boers,--good and bad among
them,--as among all nations. We have heard of kind and generous actions
towards the British wounded and prisoners, and we know that there are
among them men who, in times of peace, have been good and merciful to
their native servants. But it is not magnanimity nor brutality on the
part of individuals which are in dispute. Our controversy is concerning
the presence or absence of Justice among the Boers, concerning the
purity of their Government and the justice of their Laws, or the
reverse.

I turn to their Laws, and in judging these, it is hardly possible to be
too severe. Law is a great teacher, a trainer, to a great extent, of the
character of the people. The Boers would have been an exceptional people
under the sun had they escaped the deterioration which such Laws and
such Government as they have had the misfortune to live under inevitably
produce.

A pamphlet has lately been published containing a defence of the Boer
treatment of Missionaries and Natives, and setting forth the efforts
which have been made in recent years to Christianize and civilize the
native populations in their midst. This pa