at the earnest
solicitation of the Transvaal leaders of that date that an interference
on the part of the British Commissioner was undertaken. The Republic
was in a state of apparently hopeless anarchy, owing to constant
conflicts with warlike native tribes around and in the heart of the
country. The exchequer was exhausted. By the confession of the President
(Burgers) the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.[1] The acceptance
of the annexation was not unanimous, but it was accepted formally in a
somewhat sullen and desponding spirit, as a means of averting further
impending calamity and restoring a measure of order and peace. Whether
this justified or not the act of annexation I do not pretend to judge.
The results, however, for the Republic were for the time, financial
relief and prosperity, and better treatment of the natives. The
financial condition of the country, as I have said, at the time of the
annexation, was one of utter bankruptcy. "After three years of British
rule, however, the total revenue receipts for the first quarter of 1879
and 1880 amounted to L22,773 and L47,982 respectively. That is to say,
that, during the last year of British rule, the revenue of the country
more than doubled itself, and amounted to about L160,000 a year, taking
the quarterly returns at the low average of L40,000."[2] Trade, also,
which in April, 1877, was completely paralysed, had increased
enormously. In the middle of 1879, the committee of the Transvaal
Chamber of Commerce pointed out that the trade of the country had in two
years risen to the sum of two millions sterling per annum. They also
pointed out that more than half the land-tax was paid by Englishmen and
other Europeans.

In 1881, the Transvaal (under Mr. Gladstone's administration) was
liberated from British control. It was given back to its own leaders,
under certain conditions, agreed to and solemnly signed by the
President. These are the much-discussed conditions of the Convention of
1881, one of these conditions being that Slavery should be abolished.
This condition was indeed, insisted on in every agreement or convention
made between the British Government and the Boers; the first being that
of 1852, called the Sand River Convention; the second, a convention
entered into two years later called the Bloemfontein Convention (which
created the Orange Free State); a third agreement as to the cessation of
Slavery was entered into at the period of the Annexation,