It was by these that a feeling of
insecurity was introduced into the market which would otherwise have
remained always steady; it was by these that the necessary and periodic
slump was brought about. When the proper time came, "grievances," such
as would arrest England's attention and catch the ear of the people,
were _deliberately invented_; stories again were deliberately invented
of the excitement, panic, and incipient revolution of Johannesburg, and
by these means was introduced that feeling of insecurity I have spoken
of, which was necessary to lower prices.
Not a finger would I raise for these fellows. And another war-cry which
I profoundly disbelieve in, and which will probably turn out in the long
run to be a hoax, is the "Dutch South Africa" cry. How any one who knows
his South Africa, who knows the isolation of life among the farmers, and
the utter stagnation of all ideas that exists among the people, can
credit the Boers with vaulting ambitions of this sort, is always a
surprise to me. I fancy such theories are mostly manufactured for the
English market. Naturally I form my opinion more or less from the men in
our corps who seem best worth attending to. They, most of them, have an
intimate knowledge of the Colony and of one or both of the Republics,
and I do not find that they take the "Great Dutch Conspiracy" at all
seriously.
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