opponent may imagine that they have sown
good seed which in time will bear ample fruit; but it is not so.
Nothing but firmness and strict justice will avert a bloody day of
reckoning. Nothing but prompt and effective veto on every attempt to
break or stretch the spirit of past undertakings will bring it home
to the Transvaal Government that all the give cannot be on the one
side and all the take on the other; that they cannot trade for ever
on the embarrassment of a big Power in dealing with a little one; and
that they must comport themselves with due regard to their
responsibilities.

Almost the first use made by the Transvaal Government of their
recovered power was one which has wrought much mischief to the State.
The Triumvirate who ruled the country in 1882 granted numbers of
concessions, ostensibly for the purpose of opening up industries or
developing mining areas. The real reasons are generally considered to
have been personal, and the result was the crushing of budding
activities, and the severe discouragement of those who were willing
to expend capital and energies in legitimate work. Favouritism pure
and simple dictated these grants. It is hardly too much to say that
the system and spirit then introduced rule to this day, for although
the Volksraad has taken definite resolution condemning the principle
of monopolies and contracts conferring preferential rights of any
sort, the spirit of this resolution is violated whenever the
President and Executive deem it fit to do so--witness, for instance,
the monopoly granted in December, 1895, for the free importation
of produce, which is disguised as a Government agency with a
'commission' to the agent; but it is really a monopoly and
nothing else!

The Boers were not satisfied with the Convention of 1881. They
desired the removal of the Suzerainty, the cancellation of the
clauses referring to natives, and the restoration of the title of the
South African Republic in lieu of that of the Transvaal State. They
also desired (but did not expect to obtain) complete freedom in
regard to their external relations, and they lost no time in trying
how far they would be allowed to go in the direction of stretching
the spirit of the Convention. Nothing in that ineffectual and
miserable document is clearer than the definition of certain
boundaries, and the provision that no extension shall be allowed.
This hemming of them in--or shutting them up in a kraal, as President
Kruger