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THE UITLANDER GRIEVANCES.
political agitators when they were receiving 1l. a day. The most serious of all the grievances of the Partiality of the courts.Uitlanders were, he thought, the uncertainty of the administration of justice, and the uncertainty of the law. By the former he meant that it was unlikely for a conviction to be procured against a Dutch inhabitant of the Transvaal, and that even if a conviction were secured, it was not likely that the whole sentence would be carried out. Mr. Brassey gave instances in illustration, and referred at length to other grievances given in the Blue Book.
In 1897, the Transvaal Government appointed a commission to inquire into the difficulties and grievances under which the mining industry were labouring, all the Commissioners being of high official standing. These men took an immense amount of valuable evidence, and made several important recommendations which Mr. Brassey enumerated and yet these were for the most part ignored or rejected by a small committee of the Volksraad to which the Commissioners' findings were referred. Could they wonder that every one engaged in the mining industry in Johannesburg was disgusted with the Government which treated its Commission in this manner? The Judges' oath.Restrictions on civil rights.A particular grievance from the point of view of most Englishmen was the judges' law passed in 1897, under which judges, on assuming office, were compelled to take an oath which bound them to carry out any resolution of the Raad, whether they thought it consonant with principles of justice or not. Mr. Brassey referred in terms of disapproval to the Aliens' Expulsion Law, the press law in the Transvaal, and the form of municipal government, stating with regard to the last-mentioned matter, that in the
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