wider change, which had manifested itself among the
supporters of the Government and in the country at large since the
publication, on June 14th, of his despatch of May 4th. Private letters
had made him aware that to men to whom Dutch ascendancy at the Cape
and Boer tyranny in the Transvaal, Afrikander nationalism and Boer
armaments, were meaningless expressions, his resolute advocacy of the
Uitlanders' cause and his frank presentation of the weakness of Great
Britain had seemed the work of a disordered imagination or a violent
partisanship. Nor was his knowledge of the relapse in England limited
to the warnings or protests of his private friends. _The South African
News_, the ministerial organ, which of late had filled its columns
with adverse criticisms taken from the London Press, this morning
contained a bitter article on him reprinted from _Punch_, which had
arrived by the yesterday's mail. After all, it seemed, the long
struggle against mis-government in the Transvaal was going to end in
failure; and the British people would once more be befooled. With such
thoughts in his mind, Lord Milner must have found the work of making
up the weekly despatches for the Colonial Office--for it was a
Wednesday[116]--a wearisome and depressing task. The mail was detained
until long past the customary hour. But before it left, in spite of
discouragement and anxiety, Lord Milner had gathered together into a
brief compass all the documents necessary to put Mr. Chamberlain in
possession of every material fact relative to the new law--passed only
on the day before--and to the proceedings of the Transvaal Executive
and the Volksraad between the 12th and the 19th. And, in addition to
this, he had written a fresh estimate of the Franchise Bill in its
latest form, in which he emphasised his former verdict that the
proposals which it contained were not such as the Uitlanders would be
likely to accept. And in particular he pointed out that the fact of
the final amendment being thus readily adopted by the Volksraad
disposed of the contention, upon which President Krueger had laid so
much stress at Bloemfontein, that his "burghers" would not permit him
to make the concessions which the British Government required. He
wrote:

[Footnote 116: The English outward mail-boat arrived on
Tuesday, and the homeward boat left on Wednesday.]

"On July 12th Her Majesty's Government requested the Government
of the South Afric