We also find there letters from the 11th of March, 1898, up to the 8th of May, 1899, written by Mr.J.X.Merriman, the Cape Treasurer during the Schreiner Ministry.

As he is one of the leaders of the irreconcilable Afrikander group he cannot be suspected of undue sympathy towards England.

In his first letter to Mr.Steyn a year before the Uitlanders had petitioned for a redress, fourteen months before the Bloemfontein Conference, eighteen months before the declaration of war, the following passage is to be found:-- "Yet one cannot conceal the fact that the greatest danger to the future lies in the attitude of President Krueger and his vain hope of building up a State on a foundation of a narrow unenlightened minority, and his obstinate rejection of all prospect of using the materials which lie ready to his hand to establish a true Republic on a broad liberal basis.

The report of recent discussions in the Volksraad on his finances and their mismanagement fill one with apprehension.

Such a state of affairs cannot last, it must break down from inherent rottenness, and it will be well if the fall does not sweep away the freedom of all of us.
"I write in no hostility to the Republics: my own feelings are all in the opposite direction; but the foes of that form of government are too often those of their own household.