of the staff who were married.  The Transvaal Government, under the advice of their educational chief, Dr. Mansfeld, provided similar premiums to secure married teachers from Holland and by raising the salaries of married Hollander officials already placed.  The Hollander population attracted to the Transvaal since 1850, and which did not number above 500 in 1870, had increased by 1898 to fully 12,000, representing, as ranged with the Boers, by far the largest factor of educated intelligence, attached to and dependent upon the Government and its staunch allies.  The men received full burghership as a rule soon after arrival, exempt from the formalities and probation prescribed by law.

Holland being the locality of the inception, I may say the ingestion, of the Afrikaner Bond, one’s thoughts are apt to retrace, by way of contrast, that little nation’s creditable past.  The view presents those dykes, monuments of labour’s heroism; then that glorious resistance against the mighty persecutor of religion, those unsurpassed performances in the arena of culture, arts, and sciences, and that long epoch of success in exploits of colonization, finance, and commerce.

    “But view them closer, craft and fraud appear;
    Even liberty itself is bartered here.”—­Goldsmith.[5]

One notes the placid landscapes intersected by those still but deep-flowing rivers and canals, scenes so conducive to mental exercise—­the Dutch patriot mourning over the transition of former national prestige to present condition of decadence presaging complete national submersion, but at the same time courageously employing his fertile brain in devising far-reaching projects of remedy over distant perspectives so as to stem that tide of decadence and declension and to erect a firm barrier against that menace—­to gain (by inspiration from the titular genius of commerce and craft so conspicuous in that famed art representation[6] exhibited in his Bourse) a dazzling prize for his nation by one fell swoop and, so to say, with folded arms, just by pitting against the English his almost forgotten and long-neglected clan, the Boer nation, inciting them to usurp Great Britain in South Africa, Holland sharing the spoils.  See here the master mind exulting in the conception, gestation, and birth of the Afrikaner Bond conspiracy; note the Hollander patriot’s glitter of satisfaction at the vista of realizing the restoration of Holland to a position excelling its former glory, of a moribund language revived to significance, and of witnessing besides a sweet vendetta operated upon England, the old enemy and despoiler of his nation, to compass the humiliation and disintegration of the British Empire.  Patience, dear reader; preserve judicial composure.  Evidence is following on the heels of the charge.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 5:  This is of course not directed against the nation as a whole.  See also notice, page vi.]