My Advice to “The Bright, Clever Men at Johannesburg.”

This is the wonderful incongruity I spoke of that such a President and people as above described should be rulers over the enlightened progressive community of Johannesburg. At a dinner at the Club I quietly suggested a corrective of this incongruous and unprecedented condition of things, and said that it lay in the saying: “It was expedient that one man should die for many.” I was conscious of being stared at, and, indeed, if with all their intellectual capacity the idea never entered their minds before, I can quite understand their surprise. But it appears to me that if, according to their own admission, they have tried everything—pleading, arguments, petitions, resolutions, menaces, bribery—and all have failed, relief can only come through one of two things, viz.: Active interference of England, or a determination on their own part to endure no more. As to the first, every public man in England knows that the active interference of England in a matter of this kind is impossible. It may be her moral duty to interfere, but those bright, clever men at Johannesburg should know as well as we do that the present age and times will not admit of national action on grounds purely moral. The story of their wrongs will always receive sympathy, but to move a nation to action something more than sympathy is required. We delivered the Transvaal territory over to the charge of its own citizens, and they only are responsible for what happens in their territory. If their laws are oppressive or unjust to the strangers residing amongst them, the strangers may withdraw, or endure the evils of which they complain as well as they can. It is not for us to advise them what they should do; the choice must lie with themselves. They may fly the country or leave their properties in the charge of trustworthy Boer agents, if any such can be found, or they may continue to suffer all that the Boers may choose to inflict, or they may all unite in ceasing work and pay neither dues, taxes or bribes until justice be done to them, but we cannot interfere until we know what Johannesburg has resolved upon doing. What we may do in any event is not worth discussing—no, not until the Johannesburg people act like Englishmen.