e his cherished
oligarchy for another few years; but the end will be the same.'
The extract reflects the tone of all of the British press, with the
exception of one or two papers which considered that even the
persistent ill usage of our people, and the fact that we were peculiarly
responsible for them in this State, did not justify us in interfering
in the internal affairs of the republic. It cannot be denied that
the Jameson raid and the incomplete manner in which the circumstances
connected with it had been investigated had weakened the force of those
who wished to interfere energetically on behalf of British subjects.
There was a vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists
were engineering the situation for their own ends. It is difficult to
imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a
state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely it
is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances of the
Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would be to
remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among those
who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout
the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her
adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest
but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless
conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous evils from which a
modern progressive State has to suffer.

It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their petition
praying for protection to their native country. Since the April previous
a correspondence had been going on between Dr. Leyds, Secretary of State
for the South African Republic, and Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary,
upon the existence or non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one
hand, it was contended that the substitution of a second convention
had entirely annulled the first; on the other, that the preamble of
the first applied also to the second. If the Transvaal contention were
correct it is clear that Great Britain had been tricked and jockeyed
into such a position, since she had received no quid pro quo in the
second convention, and even the most careless of Colonial Secretaries
could hardly have been expected to give away a very substantial
something for nothing. But the contention throws us back upon the
academic question of what a suzerainty is. The Transvaal admitted a
power of