on March
6. Then the political negotiation went forward. Would it have been wise,
as the question was well put by the Duke of Argyll (not then a member of
the government), "to stop the negotiation for the sake of defeating a body
of farmers who had succeeded under accidental circumstances and by great
rashness on the part of our commanders, in gaining a victory over us?"
This was the true point.

The parliamentary attack was severe. The galling argument was that
government had conceded to three defeats what they had refused to ten
times as many petitions, memorials, remonstrances; and we had given to men
with arms in their hands what we refused to their peaceful prayers. A
great lawyer in the House of Lords made the speech that is expected from a
great lawyer who is also a conspicuous party leader; and ministers
undoubtedly exposed an extent of surface that was not easy to defend, not
because they had made a peace, but because they had failed to prevent the
rising. High military authorities found a curious plea for going on, in
the fact that this was our first contest with Europeans since the
breech-loader came in, and it was desirable to give our troops confidence
in the new-fashioned weapon. Reasons of a very different sort from this
were needed to overthrow the case for peace. How could the miscarriage at
Majuba, brought on by our own action, warrant us in drawing back from an
engagement already deliberately proffered? Would not such a proceeding,
asked Lord Kimberley, have been little short of an act of bad faith? Or
were we, in Mr. Gladstone's language, to say to the Boers, "Although we
might have treated with you before these military miscarriages, we cannot
do so now, until we offer up a certain number of victims in expiation of
the blood that has been shed. Until that has been done, the very things
which we believed before to be reasonable, which we were ready to discuss
with you, we refuse to discuss now, and we must wait until Moloch has been
appeased"? We had opened a door for negotiation; were we to close it
again, because a handful of our forces had rashly seized a post they could
not hold? The action of the Boers had been defensive of the _status quo_,
for if we had established ourselves on Majuba, their camp at Laing's Nek
would have been untenable. The minister protested in the face of the House
of Commons that "it would have been most unjust and cruel, it would have
been cowardly and mean, if on account