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Updated: June 26, 2025
A few days after the rejection of the Confederation Bill, President Burgers, who had frequently alluded to the desperate condition of the Republic, and stated that either some radical reform must be effected or the country must come under the British flag, laid before the Raad a brand new constitution of a very remarkable nature, asserting that they must either accept it or lose their independence.
It is also incidentally remarkably confirmed by a passage in Mr. Burgers' posthumous defence, in which he says: "Hence I met Shepstone alone in my house, and opened up the subject of his mission. With a candour that astonished me, he avowed that his purpose was to annex the country, as he had sufficient grounds for it, unless I could so alter as to satisfy his Government.
All the thinking and intelligent people know this, and will be thankful to be delivered from the thraldom of petty factions, by which they are perpetually kept in a state of excitement and unrest, because the Government, and everything connected with it, is a thorough sham. This arrangement with President Burgers was a most improper compromise on both sides.
In 1877 Burgers is the despairing head of a State driving rapidly to ruin, if not to actual extinction, when the strong hand of the English Government is held out to him. What wonder that he accepts it gladly on behalf of his country, which is by its help brought into a state of greater prosperity than it has ever before known?
Then Stephen, who had his sword naked in his hand, straightway hewed down the slayer, and swords came out of the scabbards everywhere; and it went but a little but that all the Burgers were slain at once. But Ralph cried out: "Put up your swords, Champions! Stephen slew yonder man for slaying his fellow, who was under my ward, and that was but his due.
On the following morning, Thursday, two of the party bade farewell to our hosts at the fort and started on one of the quickest possible treks, leaving our companion to proceed across country to the fort established by President Burgers, or "Porocororo," as the Basutus call him, at Steelport. We returned to Middelburg by an entirely different route from that by which we came.
The first reference to it is in a despatch of Governor Sir George Grey, in 1858; and it is to be found more definitely in the speeches of President Burgers in the Transvaal Raad in 1877 before the annexation, and in his apologia published after the annexation. Mr.
Quite a strange, dismal appearance they presented, in their long black gowns and broad white collars plaited around the neck. They would have been taken, not for burgers of the two first cities of the land, but for gravediggers and undertakers, who had come here in the discharge of their melancholy offices.
But to let that pass, it is evident that President Burgers did not take the same view of the Annexation in 1877 as he did in 1881, and indeed his speeches to the Volksraad would read rather oddly printed in parallel columns with his posthumous statement.
Yesterday morning Mr. Burgers came to me to arrange how the matter should be done. I read to him the draft of my Proclamation, and he proposed the alteration of two words only, to which I agreed. He brought to me a number of conditions which he wished me to insert, which I have accepted, and have embodied in my Proclamation.
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