of the State were somewhat more fully
defined, but the controlling power of Great Britain over the foreign
policy of the Transvaal, though clearly reasserted, was somewhat
limited in its scope. It was provided that the South African Republic
should conclude no treaty or engagement with any State or nation other
than the Orange Free State, or with any native tribe to the eastward
or westward of the Republic, until the same had been approved by the
Queen; that every such treaty should be at once submitted to her
Majesty's Government for her consent, but that this consent should be
presumed to have been granted if no notification to the contrary was
received within six months. The desire of the Transvaal authorities to
be recognised as representing an independent sovereign power was thus
distinctly rejected, and the English Government positively refused a
proposal to admit foreign arbitration in cases of dispute between
England and the Transvaal.

This convention has been severely censured by later writers on the
ground of the insufficiency and ambiguity of its assertion of the
paramount authority of Great Britain over the Transvaal, and of its
failure to do anything to supply the great deficiency in the preceding
convention by an article securing political equality for the British
population within it. A few years later, when an immense English
immigration had taken place, not only with the consent but at the
express invitation of the Transvaal Government; when the English
element formed a large majority of the inhabitants of the State; when
they paid an enormous preponderance of its taxation, and were the
chief agents in developing its wealth and raising it from the position
of a very poor pastoral community into that of a great and wealthy
State, the Transvaal Government proceeded to impose upon the new
emigrants disqualifications and disabilities which were utterly
unknown when England conceded self-government to 'the inhabitants of
the Transvaal.' They completely deprived the vast majority of
political power or local self-government, and surrounded them at every
turn with the most irritating disabilities. The Transvaal became the
one part of South Africa where one white race was held in a position
of inferiority to another. At a time when perfect equality was enjoyed
by the Dutch population in our own colonies, the political
disqualification of the English race was made the very corner-stone of
the policy of the Tra