"The Transvaal Republic" says a Dutchman, Mr.C.Hutten, "is administered in the interests of a clique of some three dozen families."[15] [Footnote 15: _The Doom of the Boer Oligarchies_.

(_North American Review_, March, 1900.)] 3 .-- _Salaries of Boer Officials._ The salaries of the Transvaal officials amounted, in 1886, to L51,831; in 1898, to L1,080,382; and in 1899, they were estimated at L1,216,394.
Salaries amounting to L1,216,394 for 30,000 electors! Such are the figures of the Transvaal Budget.
Here we find undoubtedly a great superiority over other countries; and the officials in receipt of such salaries would look down with profoundest contempt on the much more modest pay of their European colleagues if they knew anything about them.

Each elector represents more than L40 of official salaries.

At the same rate the pay of the French Government officials would amount annually to about four hundred and thirty-two millions pounds sterling (L432,000,000)! This is not all.
In 1897, a member of the Volksraad asked what had become of some L2,400,000 which had been paid over to Transvaal officials, in the form of advances of salary.

He received no reply.
4 .-- _The Debit Side of the Boer Budget._ In a pamphlet, by M.Edouard Naville, _La Question du Transvaal_, and also in the _Revue Sud-Africaine_ of October 22nd, 1899, we find a list showing the expenditure of the Pretoria Government, from which may be gathered the extraordinarily rapid rate of increase: In the fourteen years--1886-99--the budget expenditure amounted to L37,031,000, of which nine-tenths have been defrayed by the gold industry.