al
expenditure, which, however, was subsequently paid by the Government;
but those who desired to bring him to trial for murder were baffled, for
the Old Bailey Grand Jury threw out the bill. Public opinion, I think,
on the whole, approved of what they had done. Most moderate men had come
to the conclusion that Governor Eyre was a brave and honourable man who
had rendered great services to the State and had saved countless lives,
but who, through no unworthy motive and in a time of extreme danger and
panic, had committed a serious mistake which had been very amply
expiated.

The more recent events connected with the Jameson raid into the
Transvaal may also be cited. Of the raid itself there is little to be
said. It was, in truth, one of the most discreditable as well as
mischievous events in recent colonial history, and its character was
entirely unrelieved by any gleam either of heroism or of skill. Those
who took a direct part in it were duly tried and duly punished. A
section of English society adopted on this question a disgraceful
attitude, but it must at least be said in palliation that they had been
grossly deceived, one of the chief and usually most trustworthy organs
of opinion having been made use of as an organ of the conspirators.

A more difficult question arose in the case of the statesman who had
prepared and organized the expedition against the Transvaal. It is
certain that the actual raid had taken place without his knowledge or
consent, though when it was brought to his knowledge he abstained from
taking any step to stop it. It may be conceded also that there were real
grievances to be complained of. By a strange irony of fate some of the
largest gold mines of the world had fallen to the possession of perhaps
the only people who did not desire them; of a race of hunters and
farmers intensely hostile to modern ideas, who had twice abandoned their
homes and made long journeys into distant lands in search of solitude
and space and of a home where they could live their primitive, pastoral
lives, undisturbed by any foreign element. These men now found their
country the centre of a vast stream of foreign immigration, and of that
most undesirable kind of immigration which gold mines invariably
promote. Their laws were very backward, but the part which was most
oppressive was that connected with the gold-mining industry which was
almost entirely in the hands of the immigrants, and it was this which
made it a