cause.
Surmises apart, it is certain, at least, that five days sufficed to
place Mr. Hofmeyr in a position to ask Lord Milner if he would
favourably consider an invitation to meet President Krueger in
conference at Bloemfontein; and that within three days more (May 12th)
a definite proposal to this effect had been made through the agency of
President Steyn and accepted by Mr. Chamberlain. Nor, is it any less
certain that, in view of the friendly discussion which was to take
place so soon, the Secretary of State decided to postpone the
publication of Lord Milner's despatch. This is the short history of
the Bloemfontein Conference. It was a counter-stroke dealt by one of
those "formidable personalities" of which Mr. Asquith spoke, and in
all respects worthy of Mr. Hofmeyr's statesmanship. Indeed, the
methods which he employed for paralysing the machinery of British
administration in South Africa were always subtle: infinitely more
subtle than those which Parnell adopted in the not very dissimilar
circumstances of the Home Rule campaign.

[Footnote 54: C. 9,345. See forward, p. 155.]

The decision to postpone the publication of Lord Milner's despatch of
May 4th was a serious mistake, the injurious effect of which was felt
both at the Conference and afterwards. But before we observe the
incidents by which this central event was immediately preceded, it is
necessary to examine more fully the political environment in which
Lord Milner found himself established now that the April elections[55]
had given the Afrikander party an assured tenure of power, and, at the
same time, the moment had arrived for the Imperial Government to
fulfil the pledge given on February 4th, 1896, for the redress of the
"admitted grievances" of the Uitlanders.

[Footnote 55: See p. 125.]

[Sidenote: The Bond and the ministry.]

The Schreiner Ministry was the agent of the Bond; it could not exist
for a day if the Bond withdrew its support. The Bond majority in the
Legislative Assembly had been returned by the Dutch inhabitants of the
Colony for the avowed purpose of preventing the intervention of the
Imperial Government in the affairs of the Transvaal. The Ministry and
its supporters had begun by ranging themselves definitely on the side
of the Transvaal. And, therefore, in all that was done by either
party from the Bloemfontein Conference to the Ultimatum, it followed,
_ex hypothesi_, that, in their opinion, the Transvaal was r