16 SEPTEMBER 1899
The Irish brigade which has been formed to lend a helping hand to the Boers in the event of war will not include Delegate Hoskins, who has fled from the Rand to save his delicate ears from the rude alarums of war, nor Mr. St. John Carr, nor the genteel Lord Ffrench, nor that worshipper of truth, Dr. Kendal Franks, but it will include the Irish merchants, traders, and workingmen of Pretoria, the Irish mineworkers and artisans of the Ran, and the old Irish prospectors, fossickers and diggers of Lydenburg and Pilgrim’s Rust, whose opinions of the British Empire, frankly expressed in the English taal with the aid of a few good Dutch and Irish words, would, if he heard it, almost shock the Editor of the Irish Times into sanity.
England made a mistake in the manner in which she divided her Press liars between France and the Transvaal. She sent all the artistic ones to the Rennes to describe the beatific smiles of the Tortured Jew and the demoniac faces of the French Generals who believe in an invasion of England, and she sent her ’prentice hands to South Africa to describe the sufferings of the oppressed British uitlanders, ground to the dust by the operation of the most liberal code of gold-mining and labour laws in the world. The result is bad. Look how the Special Lying Idiot of the Pall Mall Gazette this week described how Durban, a British port, was being worked for all it was worth in the interests of the South African Republic by the Dutch Government of Natal. Now I am willing to wager a sovereign against the brain of an Irish Times leader-writer that the Right Hon. Harry Escombe had an apoplectic fit when he read that. What think you, Harry, of the Dutch Government of Natal, where the Jingo English rule the roose and where you and yours friends grind down with taxation and the British Hindoos and deny them civil rights—what think you, Harry, of the good old Rule Britannia Government of Natal which has nearly succeeded in wiping out Dutch representation in the Legislature being described as—DUTCH! If the Pall Mall will take an ex-uitlander’s humble advice it will fire out this inartistic liar and engage Dr. Kendal Franks in his place.
Lo! a specimen of the oppressed uitlander—‘A. Carroll, or Cork.’ ‘I am a true-born Irishman,’ writes this fellow to the Evening Herald, ‘just back from the Transvaal.’ Just back—ha! Has this true-born runaway preserved the white feather he was presented with at Johannesburg Park Station when he was sprinting for the train? He says truly the Editor knows nothing of the tyranny ‘we Irishmen’ suffer in the Transvaal. The true-born Irishmen of that country who have embodied themselves into a brigade to defend it against the scoundrelly Empire on whose infamy the sun never sets, may thank God that white-livered sneaks are clearing out of the country; but is there any true-born Corkman who can spare a few minutes to lift this true-born coward on the toe of his boot out of the city on the Lee?
When I lived in the Transvaal I derived much instruction from reading how I was savagely and brutally oppressed by the Boer. Sometimes I used to drop round to my savage and brutal oppressor and read him all about his iniquities and we used to laugh together at them. Queer thing, isn’t it, that the Irish, German, Scandinavian, French, American, and Hollander uitlanders could never be got to see that the spirit of Spartacus called on them to haul down the Vierkleur, upraise the Union Jack, and allow Joe Chamberlain’s dynamite to be used, and used only, on the Rand mines?
Of the four demands made in the British ultimatum to the South African Republic two—the five years’ franchise and the one-fourth representation—had been practically conceded. The other two demands deal with the equalisation of rights in connection with the elections of President and Commandant-General and the equality of the English and Dutch languages in the Raad. At present both the President and Commandant-England are elected by a direct vote of the burghers. Possibly the Transvaal Government will offer to agree to this demand subject to the changing of the present mode of election for election by the Raad. On the language question the Boers should stand firm.
I would suggest to the Anglo-Jewish conspirators, when they get a hold of the Republic, that they should elect Solly Joel President, Harold Strange, Commandant-General, and Majuba Jack, Delegate Hoskins, Rabbi Herz, and Ikey Sonnenberg as the Executive Council.
IER.