ise inevitably to the mind
that pursues the narrative of the next few months, must be
anticipated. What was the position of Mr. Schreiner? What was his real
standpoint, and what was his relationship to Lord Milner? How was it
that two Englishmen, Mr. Merriman and Sir (then Mr.) Richard Solomon,
came to be in this Afrikander Cabinet, and what were their respective
motives in thus associating themselves with the objects of the Bond?

[Sidenote: The prime minister.]

Mr. Philip Schreiner was the son of a German by birth, a missionary of
the London Missionary Society, who had married an Englishwoman, and
afterwards settled in the Orange Free State. He had himself married a
sister of Mr. F. W. Reitz, formerly President of the Free State, and
now State Secretary of the South African Republic. The Schreiner
family was remarkable for intellectual power. Of his sisters one is
the authoress of _The Story of an African Farm_, and a second, Mrs.
Lewis, like her brother Theophilus, was an active Imperialist and a
determined opponent of the Bond. Mr. Schreiner himself was educated at
the South African College at Capetown, and subsequently at Cambridge,
where he was placed first in the First Class of the Law Tripos, and
afterwards elected a Fellow of Downing. After a successful career at
the Cape Bar he was appointed Attorney-General in Mr. Rhodes's
Ministry, a position which he held at the time of the Raid. He was
prevented by his strong disapproval of the part then played by Mr.
Rhodes from joining the Progressive party; and, having accepted the
position of Parliamentary leader of the Bond, he had become, as we
have seen, Prime Minister through the Bond victory in the Cape General
Election of 1898. It is characteristic alike of Mr. Schreiner and of
his political position that the only word of sympathy with the British
connection, uttered from first to last during this election by the
Bond candidates or their supporters, was the conventional reference to
the greatness of the British Empire which, as we have noticed,
occurred in his address to the electors of Malmesbury. With these
political and social ties, Mr. Schreiner was compelled to be a South
African first and a British subject second. His is precisely the kind
of case where true allegiance can be expected only when a federal
constitution has been created for the Empire.

"See," said Lord Milner, in his farewell speech at Johannesburg,
"how such a consummation woul