Exchange at home, and an often regretted part in the
income-earning capital of private families. On this
bare South-African tableland fortunes have been made
by those who had nothing, and others have lost what
they had previously acquired elsewhere. Commercial
and mining companies were once of daily formation, as
though the whole country was one vast gold-reef, and
the Transvaal was to redress the financial balance of
Europe. The Jews have long possessed a genius for
dealing with precious stones and for being the best
financiers in the world. Diamonds brought them to
Kimberley, the discovery of gold-bearing reefs proved
at once a magnetic attraction to the Transvaal; they
largely created Johannesburg and its stock exchange—
now so silent,—and their element has proved a considerably
constructive one in the formation of a commercial
community, many branches of which are now almost
entirely their own. With the untiring energy and
industry of the race, they have explored the whole country
in search of subjects for financial speculations, and their
knowledge of the Transvaal I estimate as far higher than
that of the Boers, who may, and doubtless do, excel
them in the possession of geographical details, but do not
approach their profound appreciation of the present and
future commercial capacity of the state. The Jew,
again, has a racial, but no particular political, nationality,
and thus can prosper with less suspicion and friction
amongst the burghers, who are naturally proud of the
development they see going on around them, yet know
it is not their work, and feel mistrust as to their future
independence in a purely Boer condition. And yet in
other respects the two races have little in common. No
one can deny that the Boer in his religion is a narrow
bigot, and not only in his heart dislikes unbelievers, but
would probably deny the right of a Jew or any pronounced
heretic to hold an administrative part in the
Bepublic. On the other hand the Boer is a natural
sportsman, a pleasure which the Jew little appreciates,
who is at home in shop or counting-house, for which
the Boer has neither aptitude nor predilection. The
Jew also by his very cosmopolitanism becomes a good
citizen, and some of the largest industries are being
founded by him. His natural gaiety leavens the solemn
national lump of Boer respectability. His literary
abilities have largely contributed to the success of the
Press, and in the Transvaal he is always “ en évidence.”
I'am speaking of the intelligent Jew, and not the scum of
Houndsditch, which may also too plentifully be found,
but which no more represents the race than numerous
drunken ruffians who hail from Britain are to be taken
as typical Englishmen. Like the travelling Christian,
the migratory Jew does not let the rules of his creed
sit very heavily on his shoulders ; both eat at the same
table of the same food, and there seems no particular
restriction as to meat. Both creeds also afforded unique
representatives. A Polish Jew who sat at my hotel
table, and proved a very amusing companion, belonged
to the most orthodox Hebrew sect ; he was fairly
learned in the Bible and Talmud, was of extreme and
often violent orthodox-bigotry, but plainly admitted that
his views had no claim on him in Pretoria, as Jews
were only there to make money, and he certainly did
not seek to remove that impression. I also knew a
Hollander, who passed as a devout Christian, and who
often told me that the Bible he read every day was the
best of all books, and the New Testament his special
delight. He also informed me of the different stages by
which he was endeavouring to obtain a government
appointment, in which the salary could be increased, not
by bribes, but by what he more euphoniously called
“ additions that fell between the quay and the ship.”
But I regret to say that both of these acquaintances,
the Jew and the Christian, had considerable doubts as
to my orthodoxy, and regarded me with all the suspicion
of “ odium theologicum.”
Commercial morality is a matter of constant evolution,
subject to the stage of surrounding public opinion
in which it exists. Some fortunes held in the Transvaal
were mainly begun by the profit of buying diamonds
from Kafirs who did not state the means by which