Note 85 — Chapter XXV

It is hardly necessary to point out the absurdity of the suggestion that the Company intended to seize the Transvaal for itself. The Company could no more have taken the Transvaal than it could have taken Natal. It was for self-government that the insurgent-Uitlanders were to rise, and they would have objected to be governed by the Company at least as much as they objected to be governed by the Boers. Such individual members of the Company as held Rand mining shares would have profited by the better administration of the country under a reformed Government, but they would have profited in exactly the same way as shareholders in Paris or Amsterdam. This point, obvious enough to any one who knows South Africa, is clearly put by M. Mermeix, in his interesting little book, La Révolution de Johannesburg. Other fanciful hypotheses have been put forward, which it seems needless to notice.