begrudges her. I felt it to be a new thing to be informed that a country was so impoverished by being made the vehicle for traffic from the sea to the interior that it found itself compelled to reimburse itself by filching Custom Duties.[1] England might just as well claim the customs of the Cape Colony because she protects the seas over which the goods are carried.
But the Orange Free State can carry on her little business even without the aid of Custom Duties, and will certainly not be driven back into the arms of the mother who once repudiated her by the want of them. She can pay her modest way; and while she can do so the Boer of the Volksraad will certainly not be induced to give up the natural delight which he takes in ruling his own country. The Free State might send perhaps six members to the central Congress of a South African Federation, where they would be called upon to hear debates, which they would be unable to share or even to understand because spoken in a foreign language. They would be far from their farms and compelled to live in a manner altogether uncomfortable to them. Is it probable that for this privilege they will rob themselves of the honour and joy they now have in their own Parliament? In his own Parliament the Boer is close, phlegmatic, by no means eloquent, but very firm. The two parliamentary ideas most prominent in his mind are that he will vote away neither his independence nor his money. It
- ↑ What I have said here as to duties levied say at Fort Elizabeth on goods for the Orange Free State applies equally to goods for the Transvaal landed in Natal at Durban.
