time being, Jameson's invasion has made such a suggestion impossible.
Now, tell me in a word, Is there any one thing that you require more
than anything else, which we can help you to get?' The answer was:
'The one thing which we must have--not for its own sake, but for the
security it offers for obtaining and retaining other reforms--_is_
the franchise. No promise of reform, no reform itself, will be worth
an hour's purchase unless we have the status of voters to make our
influence felt. But, if you want the chief economic grievances, they
are: the Netherlands Railway Concession, the dynamite monopoly, the
liquor traffic, and native labour, which, together, constitute an
unwarrantable burden of indirect taxation on the industry of _over
two and a half millions sterling annually_. We petitioned until we
were jeered at; we agitated until we--well--came here [Pretoria
Gaol]; and we know that we shall get no remedy until we have the vote
to enforce it. We are not a political but a working community, and if
we were honestly and capably governed the majority of us would be
content to wait for the franchise for a considerable time yet in
recognition of the peculiar circumstances, and of the feelings of the
older inhabitants. That is the position in a nutshell.'

[Netherlands Railway Company.]

The Netherlands Railway Company is then a very important factor. It
is unnecessary to go very fully into its history and the details of
its administration. As the holder of an absolute monopoly, as the
enterprise which has involved the State in its National Debt, and as
the sole channel through which such money has been expended, the
Company has gradually worked itself into the position of being the
financial department of the State; and the functions which are
elsewhere exercised by the heads of the Government belong here, in
practice, entirely to this foreign corporation. Petitions for the
cancellation of this concession were presented in 1888, when the
progressive element in the first Volksraad consisted of one man--Mr.
Loveday, one of the loyalists in the war. The agitation begun and
carried on by him was taken up by others, but without further result
than that of compelling the President to show his hand and step
forward as the champion of the monopoly on every occasion on which it
was assailed. During the years 1893-96 the President stoutly defended
the Company in the Volksraad, and by his influence and the solid vote
of his ig