In 1886 gold was discovered in great quantities and in different parts of the South African Republic, and with that discovery our people entered upon a new phase of their history. The South African Republic was to develope within a few years from a condition of great poverty into a rich and prosperous State, a country calculated in every respect to awaken and inflame the greed of the Capitalistic speculator. Within a few years the South African Republic was ranked among the first gold-producing countries of the world. The bare veldt of hitherto was overspread with large townships inhabited by a speculative and bustling class brought together from all corners of the earth. The Boers, who had hitherto followed pastoral and hunting pursuits, were now called upon to fulfil one of the most difficult tasks in the world, namely, the management of a complicated administration, and the government of a large digging population, which had sprung up suddenly under the most extraordinary circumstances. And how have they acquitted themselves of the task? We quote the following from a brilliant pamphlet by Olive Schreiner, who possesses a deeper insight into the true condition of affairs in South Africa than has been vouchsafed to any other writer on the same subject:--
[29] "We put it to all generous and just spirits, whether of statesmen or thinkers, whether the little Republic does not deserve our sympathy, which wise minds give to all who have to deal with new and complex problems, where the past experience of humanity has not marked out a path--and whether, if we touch the subject at all, it is not necessary that it should be in that large impartial, truth-seeking spirit in which humanity demands we should approach all great social difficulties and questions?"
"It is sometimes said that when one stands looking down from the edge of this hill at the great mining camp of Johannesburg stretching beneath, with its heaps of white sand and _débris_ mountain high, its mining chimneys belching forth smoke, with its seventy thousand Kaffirs and its eighty thousand men and women, white or coloured, of all nationalities, gathered here in the space of a few years on the spot where, fifteen years ago, the Boer's son guided his sheep to the water and the Boer's wife sat alone at evening at the house door to watch the sunset, we are looking upon one of the most wonderful spectacles on earth. And it is wonderful; but as we look at it the thought always arises within us of something more wonderful yet--the marvellous manner in which a little nation of simple folk, living in peace in the land they loved, far from the rush of cities and the concourse of men, have risen to the difficulties of their condition; how they, without instruction in statecraft or traditionary rules of policy, have risen to face their great difficulties, and have sincerely endeavoured to meet them in a large spirit, and have largely succeeded. Nothing but that curious and wonderful instinct for statecraft and the organisation and arrangement of new social conditions which seem inherent as a gift of the blood to all those peoples who took their rise in the little deltas on the north-east of the Continent of Europe where the English and Dutch peoples alike took their rise could have made it possible. We do not say that the Transvaal Republic has among its guides and rulers a Solon or a Lycurgus, but it has to-day, among the men guiding its destiny, men of brave and earnest spirit, who are seeking manfully and profoundly to deal with the great problems before them in a wide spirit of humanity and justice. And we do again repeat that the strong sympathy of all earnest and thoughtful minds, not only in Africa, but in England, should be with them."