Note 70 — Chapter VI · THE BOER AND HIS REPUBLICS

The yet later story of how another attempt was made by the same hands in new and subtler form, beguiling by misrepresentation a great people into lending them its national mantle to cover the grotesque misshapenness of their nakedness, in order the more easily to grasp the gold and land, and with it the independence of this little nation—this, and much that followed, is known in rough outline to all. But for the present we have gone far enough to be able roughly to estimate what the position is of the African Boer and of his nineteenth century descendant in South Africa, at the present day.