roduce so marked a change
in the mind of the genial, clear-sighted Englishman, who, as Mr.
Asquith said, took with him to South Africa "as sympathetic an
imagination" as any man of his acquaintance? _Nemo repente fuit
turpissimus._ Whether the diagnosis of his Graaf Reinet speech was
right or wrong, something must have happened to turn Lord Milner from
ready appreciation to grave remonstrance.

The circumstances which provide the answer to this question form an
element of vital importance in the volume of evidence upon which
posterity will pronounce the destruction of the Dutch Republics in
South Africa to have been a just and necessary, or a needless and
aggressive, act. But to see them in true perspective, the reader must
first be possessed of some more precise information of the political
situation in the Cape Colony at this time.

[Sidenote: The Sprigg ministry.]

At the period of Lord Milner's appointment the political forces set in
motion by the Raid were operating already to prepare the way for the
new and significant combinations of persons and parties in the Cape
Colony that took definite form in the parliamentary crisis of May,
1898. The Ministry now in office was that formed by Sir Gordon Sprigg
upon Mr. Rhodes's resignation of the premiership after the Raid
(January 6th, 1896). Like every other Cape Ministry of the last
thirteen years, it was dependent upon the support of the Afrikander
Bond, which supplied two out of the six members of the cabinet--Mr.
Pieter Faure, Minister of Agriculture, and a moderate Bondsman, and
Dr. Te Water, the intimate friend of Mr. Hofmeyr, and his direct
representative in the Ministry. Another minister, Sir Thomas Upington,
who had succeeded Mr. Philip Schreiner as Attorney-General, had been
himself Prime Minister in the period 1884-6, when he and Sir Gordon
Sprigg (then Treasurer-General), had opposed the demand for the
intervention of the Imperial Government in Bechuanaland, successfully
and strenuously advocated by Mr. J. W. Leonard and Mr. Merriman. It
was, therefore, eminently, what would be called in France "a Ministry
of the Centre." Sir Gordon Sprigg's regard for British interests was
too lukewarm to command the confidence of the more decided advocates
of British supremacy; while, on the other hand, his more or less
friendly relations with Mr. Rhodes aroused the suspicions of the Dutch
extremists. But Dr. Te Water's presence in the Ministry, offering in
itself a suff