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Nowhere is this corruption of intelligence more plainly seen than in the short-range finality attributed to annexation as a 'settlement.' Seen rightly, the crime called annexation is an absolute pledge of permanent unsettlement, by the natural operation of human motives. If the guilt of this war lay mainly with the Boer peoples, who, animated by vain ambitions, had themselves unworthily sought Empire, and the expulsion of British rule from South Africa – if they had planned and plotted for this end, as the financial-politicians and their journalists still assert (without adducing a tittle of sound evidence) some consciousness of the justice of their heavy punishment would win its way into their hearts and sap their indignation: thus annexation might have become settlement. But this is not the case; the Boers are conscious of no such guilt, nor will they in long years of subjugation recognize the justice of their punishment. Annexation is not for them a Nemesis, the retribution of a lustful career, the penalty of an ambition that o'erleapt itself. On the contrary, the passionate sense of injustice will preserve and feed the sentiment of nationality; and all who know the Boers, as friends or enemies, are agreed, whatever other qualities