[75] It is clear how large an advantage this gives the Boer in case of war. A Boer nation containing 30,000 adult males has the entire 30,000 from whom to select its most efficient generals and leaders; while in a vast Empire like that of England the choice is confined to so small a body as to be absolutely minute when compared to the bulk of the people. What Oliver Cromwells, Cronjes and de Wets there may be slumbering among the hard-handed farmers and working-men of England no man knows or ever will know. The strength of the dominating oligarchy is too great.
It is further often said, when one animadverts on the fact that members, connections, or, worse still, dependants of those small circles of families forming the administrative oligarchy in England, are almost always sent out as Governors to the Colonies of Canada and Australia and New Zealand, that the English-speaking people of these countries would not respect men chosen by themselves, and that no successful form of government would be possible were not foreigners sent them. Whether this would be the case in Canada or Australia we have not had personal means of judging, but in South Africa the very reverse is true. Were a prince of the Guelph family or a Duke's son sent out, though loaded with wealth and oligarchic honours, he would never have one half of the influence over or submission from the majority of South Africans that a man born among them, growing up among them, and selected by themselves, would readily obtain. "_He is our man, who knows us and whom we know; we have chosen him, therefore we will follow him!_"
It is the complete failure to understand this ineradicable instinct on the part of the African Boer which has caused so many of those who have attempted to interfere in South African affairs so grievously to fail. With a race in which this instinct is so inborn that it manifests itself in all the relations of life, towards pastor, magistrate, and general; with an individual instinct for not obeying any person to whom it has not first consciously and deliberately delegated its authority; and then an instinct for following and supporting that person,--the South African nation, in which the Boer element predominates, is bound ultimately to become free, self-governing, independent, and republican.