found necessary for the Government to take; but the reason
for that prudent abstinence is not very far to seek. Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman and his friends knew very well that
any factious opposition to the granting of these supplies
would have brought down upon them the almost unanimous
condemnation of the whole people; and Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman is much too shrewd and sensible a man to
risk the danger of committing for his party an act of
political suicide."--Address to Women's Liberal Unionist
Association.]

And so in 1900--after the Raid, after the long diplomatic conflict,
after the sudden revelation of the military strength of the
Republics, after the ambitions of the Afrikander nationalists had been
unmasked, and after the Dutch subjects of the Queen had risen in
arms--the Liberal friends of the South African Dutch set themselves to
do again what they had done in 1880. Just as then President Krueger
wrote,[214] on behalf of himself and his Afrikander allies, to Lord
(then Mr.) Courtney: "The fall of Sir Bartle Frere ... will be
useful.... We have done our duty, and used all legitimate influence to
cause the [Federation] proposals to fail"; so now these Boer
sympathisers prepared to work hand in hand with the Afrikander
nationalists in their endeavour to secure the "fall" of Lord Milner,
and to cause the Annexation proposals to "fail." Happily the analogy
ends here. Upon the "anvil" of Lord Milner the "hammers" of the
enemies of the Empire were worn out--_Tritantur mallei, remanet
incus_.

[Footnote 214: June 26th, 1880, C. 2,655.]

CHAPTER IX

THE "CONCILIATION" MOVEMENT

The correspondence forwarded to the Colonial Office during the first
half of the year 1900 by Lord Milner, and presented to the House of
Commons in time for the Settlement debate of July 25th, furnishes a
complete record of the origin of the "conciliation" movement. The whole
of this interesting and significant collection of documents is worthy of
attention; but all that can be done here is to direct the notice of the
reader to one or two of its more salient features--features which
illustrate the extraordinary condition of the Cape Colony, and explain
how the disaffection of the Dutch subjects of the Crown was to be first
aggravated, and then used as a means of saving the independence of the
Republics. The position taken up by the Bo