onference President Krueger had put in a
memorandum in which he expressed his intention of introducing his
franchise scheme to the Volksraad, and his hope that the High
Commissioner would be able to recommend this, and a further proposal
for the settlement of disputes by arbitration, to the favourable
consideration of the Imperial Government. Lord Milner had replied that
any such proposals would be considered on their merits; but that the
President must not expect them to be connected in any way with the
proceedings of the Conference, out of which, as he then declared, no
obligation had arisen on either side.

The Raad met on Friday, June 9th; and on Monday, the 12th--the day on
which Lord Milner received the Ebden address[86]--President Krueger
laid the draft Franchise law, containing his revised Bloemfontein
scheme, before it. On Tuesday, 13th, Mr. Chamberlain's despatch of May
10th, on the position of the Uitlanders and the petition to the Queen,
was delivered to the Transvaal Government by the British Agent; and on
Wednesday, June 14th, as we have already noticed, the Blue-book
containing this despatch, Lord Milner's despatch of May 4th, and the
whole story of the franchise controversy up to the Bloemfontein
Conference, was published in England. As the conditions under which
Lord Milner's despatch had been telegraphed to England were now
changed, it would have been better if it had remained unpublished, and
the stage of fighting diplomacy, reached through the failure of the
Bloemfontein Conference, had been at once opened--and opened in
another way. What Lord Milner had learnt at Bloemfontein was not
merely that President Krueger was unwilling to yield, but that he was
psychologically incapable of yielding. He had learnt, that is to say,
not that Krueger was determined to refuse the particular reform which
the Imperial Government demanded, but that his whole system of thought
was irreconcilably opposed to that of any English statesman. It is the
knowledge which can be obtained only by personal dealings with the
Boers, and no one who has had such personal dealings can fail to
remember the sense of hopelessness that such an experience brings with
it. The Boer may be faithful to his own canons of morality; but his
whole manner of life and thought is one that makes his notion of the
obligations of truth and justice very different from that of the
ordinary educated European. He is not devoid of the conception of
duty, b