point of fact
the British population was too insignificant a factor in the politics
of the central republic to make it necessary to maintain a distinct
organisation for the promotion of nationalist sentiment. In the
Transvaal, again, the Bond maintained no regular organisation. And
this for two reasons. Every burgher of the northern Republic was
sufficiently animated by the anti-British sentiments which it was
intended to promote; and the only "constitution" which the Transvaal
Dutch would accept was one which embodied principles so flagrantly
inconsistent with submission to British authority that it could not be
adopted by the branches of the Bond in the Cape Colony without
exposing its members to immediate prosecution for high treason.[20]

[Footnote 20: Under the changed conditions of to-day the Boer
population is organised in the Transvaal into _Het Volk_, and
in the Orange River Colony into the _Oranjie Unie_; both
practically identical with the Bond in the Cape Colony.]

[Sidenote: The origin of the Bond.]

In the politics of the Cape Colony, however, the Bond became the
predominant force; and any picture, however briefly sketched, of South
Africa as it was when Lord Milner's administration commenced, must
include some account of the origin and methods of this remarkable
organisation.

The origin of the Afrikander Bond is to be found in the articles
written by the Rev. S. J. du Toit, a Dutch predikant, in _De Patriot_,
a newspaper published at the Paarl, of which he was the editor. Mr. du
Toit's political standpoint is sufficiently revealed by the fact that
in 1881 he claimed that _De Patriot_ had done more than any other
single agency to secure the successful revolt of the Boers from
British authority accomplished in that year. The inspiration which
drove his pen to advocate the founding of a political organisation,
that should serve to prepare the way for a more general and complete
"war of independence," was the defeat of the British troops by the
Transvaal burghers.

"This is now our time," he wrote, in the same year, "to establish
the Bond, while a national consciousness has been awakened
through the Transvaal War. And the Bond must be our preparation
for the future confederation of all the States and Colonies of
South Africa. The English Government keeps talking of a
confederation under the British flag. That will never happen. We