ople in the Transvaal, and you have, I fear, in one
quarter or another--I will not enter into details, which might be
injurious to the public interest--prospects of further disturbance
and shedding of blood."

These speeches, as may be imagined, did an incalculable amount of
mischief. Besides fanning the smouldering sparks of discontent, they
served up catchwords wholesale for that section of the British
public whose political machinery is largely fed by catchwords. But,
as has been decided by axiom, "any stick will serve to beat a dog
with," and the Transvaal difficulty was a convenient weapon for the
attack on the Government. The real feeling of the Boer community was
an outside matter, and, as we shall presently see, had nothing to do
with the case, though in March 1880 Mr. Gladstone had the
satisfaction of receiving a letter from a committee of Boer
malcontents, wherein "he was thanked for the great sympathy shown in
their fate." The thanks were a little premature. In April 1880 the
elections took place, and Mr. Gladstone came into power with a
large majority. Then he was asked the great question: Would he
maintain his oft-repeated pledge to retain the Transvaal, or would
he continue to take up the tone of his Midlothian denunciations?

The riddle was shortly to be solved. In the debate on the Queen's
Speech the Prime Minister thus expressed himself: "I do not know
whether there is an absolute union of opinion on this side of the
House as to the policy in which the assumption of the Transvaal
originated. Undoubtedly, as far as I am myself concerned, I did not
approve of that assumption. I took no part in questioning it nor in
the attempt to condemn it, because, in my opinion, whether the
assumption was wise or unwise, it having been done, no good but only
mischief was to be done by the intervention of this House. But
whatever our original opinions were on that policy--and the opinions
of the majority of those who sit on this side of the House were
decidedly adverse to it--we had to confront a state of facts; and
the main fact which met us was the existence of the large native
population in the Transvaal, to whom, by the establishment of the
Queen's supremacy, we hold ourselves to have given a pledge. That is
the acceptance of facts, and that is the sense in which my right
honourable friend, and all those who sit with him, may, if they
think fit, say we accept the principles on which the late Government
proceeded.