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Leyds could divest themselves of all responsibility in negotiations such as these, and claim to have been acting in their private capacity only; and the extraordinary anxiety to keep secret matters which deeply affected the public, and to the settlement of which the Government designed that the public should be committed, compelled the negotiators to produce evidence that the statements and conclusions of the Government were not warranted by the facts.
He was regarded as the incarnation of Hollanderism the 'head and front' of that detested influence. It was not credited to him in the Transvaal, as it has been elsewhere, that he designed or prompted the policy against the Uitlanders. There it is fully appreciated that there is but one man in it, and that man President Kruger. Dr. Leyds and others may be and are clever and willing tools.
Leyds, it was well known, went on a political mission to Lisbon and to Berlin, and it was stated that large sums had been withdrawn from the Treasury and charged to the secret service fund, the handling of which was entrusted to this gentleman. Dr. Leyds' personal popularity, never very great, was at the lowest possible ebb.
When Mr. Lippert came to Dr. Leyds and myself, and informed us that you and other gentlemen were agreeable to his mediation, we at once agreed with his plan, being aware that there was a warm desire and continued struggle on the part of this Government to remove out of the way all friction and trouble, and that in this case especially it was our object to leave no stone unturned to get all differences settled.
Since the April previous a correspondence had been going on between Dr. Leyds, Secretary of State for the South African Republic, and Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, upon the existence or non-existence of the suzerainty.
The old President jumped up in a huff and said, 'Ja, ja, ja! You always say it is somebody else! First, it was Jorissen who did everything; then it was Nellmapius; and then it was Leyds. Well, Jorissen is done for; Nellmapius is dead; Leyds is in Europe who is it now?
Leyds, in his capacity of legal adviser of the Government, having previously been prepared by him in his other capacity. The sum of £124,000 appears to have been expended on construction ten months before any contract was given out for the same or any work begun, and fifteen months before any material was shipped.
The climax of duplicity is reached when it is averred that the pursuit of such an organized programme during the past twenty years and more had meant peace only, never a thought of conquest, as Ambassador Leyds so innocently declared after failing to gain abroad the hoped-for support for the monstrous Bond enormity.
Leyds the latter replied that it was necessary on account of the risk of fire. For about eight months, therefore, water was to be and of course was their only drink. Only once during the thirteen months did Du Plessis appear to 'get home. It was when he proposed that the two should be separated and sent to out-of-the-way gaols, widely apart and distant from all friends.
Leyds had suppressed the essential fact that whereas out of the 90s. paid to the monopolists the Government only receive 5s. by way of duty, they would out of the 90s. which it was proposed to pay for Nobel's dynamite receive no less than 38s. per case as duty, and that if the contract proposed by the Chamber had been made the Government would have profited during the previous four years to the extent of £1,200,000 instead of £150,000.
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