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who still desire to have a reasonable faith to turn their best practical intelligence upon the sort of evidence of the conspiracy furnished by such a work as that which the Times has humorously entitled, 'The History of the Boer War.' How unsatisfactory this evidence still remains may be judged by the ingenuous admission in the Preface that it is 'largely cumulative.'
The theory of 'cumulative evidence' consists in a pretence that fifty pieces of bad evidence proceeding from a common tainted source are exchangeable for one piece of good evidence. When any one admits that his case rests on 'cumulative evidence' it may be understood that he knows its falsity, and trusts to the corrupted intelligence of his readers for such acceptance as it may win.
But the most remarkable example of this corruption is afforded by the adoption of members of the mine-owning confraternity as authoritative advisers on the nature of the war and its settlement. Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose book, 'The Transvaal from Within,' is accepted as if it were the unbiassed statement of a skilled historian who happened to reside in the Transvaal, is a member of the Eckstein firm (the local branch of Wernher, Beit, and