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The Inevitable in Politics
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of good or evil they impute to them, that one characteristic stands out pre-eminent – they know how to wait.

The Nemesis-drama brings out another feature of 'the inevitable.' Tragedy teaches how hard a thing it is to kill a man. History teaches how much harder it is to kill a nation. There are two lines in a doggerel song, telling the story of a famous martyr in the cause of freedom, the American John Brown, which, by a single stroke of passionate genius, convey the powerful truth: –

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.

In Shakespeare's tragedy the ghosts of the victims of oppression, the murdered ones, appear on the eve of the catastrophe to confound, enfeeble, and unnerve the tottering tyrant.

There are those who think yet that, if we can shoot down enough Boers, and coerce the bodies of the others, all will go well; nationality will thus be slain, the spirit of the Republics will disappear.

But it is no idle rhetoric, it is the clear spinal teaching of history, which assures us that the soul of the nations we are bent on slaying will

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