The Boers steadily sold their best and surplus lands, and these the British as steadily bought, till the value rose from their original price of one penny an acre to half-a-crown, and then five shillings. Subsequently, in many cases, as much as ten, and even twenty shillings an acre was offered for ordinary raw arable land. But of that time too much has to be said to be recounted here.
In discussing the events of the past with a view to obtaining light on the development of the present, it is needful, and indeed just, to inquire into the character of the Boers as a race. It is a complex character, with multitudinous lights and shades, so subtle and yet so marked, that they are difficult to define accurately. It is therefore necessary that the opinions of many writers on the subject of the Boer temperament should be taken--of writers who have made it their business to look upon the subject with the eye of the historian rather than the eye of the advocate, and who may be trusted to have given their verdict without passion or favour.
But regarding one fact connected with the case, all writers of practical experience are inclined to agree. They declare that the Boer of the past was a very much finer fellow than the Boer of the present--finer morally and physically; and that in his obstinate determination to resist the march of progress he has allowed himself to suffer deterioration. The reason for this deterioration is not difficult to comprehend. In the first place, as we all know, nothing in creation stands still. We must advance, or we go back. Both in moral and in mental qualities we must maintain our vitality, or practically ossify!
The Boer, from having been essentially a sporting man and a free and a robust tiller of the soil, has come under the influence of schemers, who have played upon his natural avarice, and polished his inherent cunning, till these qualities have expanded to the detriment of those earlier qualities for which the Boer of to-day still gets credit, but which are fast dying out of the national character.
In one respect there has been little change. In the matter of his native piety he remains as he was. The Boer, if one may use a phrase recently coined by Lord Rosebery, is an "Old Testament Christian." No one can describe his race better than the writer who says of the original settlers in 1652, that "they are a mixture in religion of the old Israelite and the Scotch Covenanter." There is some question about Boer hypocrisy, and Dr. Theal says on the subject, "Where side by side with expressions of gratitude to the Creator are found schemes for robbing and enslaving natives, the genuineness of their religion may be doubted." But it must be remembered that in bygone centuries the world's morality differed much from that of the present day, and therefore the Boer, who has not progressed in proportion to the world at large, can scarcely be judged by the ethics of the world at large. To be just, we must look at him as a being apart, and place him always in the frame of the seventeenth century. Some historians declare that the Boer borrowed from the French refugees much religious sentiment. Other authorities--and these, considering the Boer disinclination to expansion, seem to be right--declare that under the French influence he deteriorated.