ressing himself to this effect at
Wellington, on February 15th, 1901, he went to Capetown to consult the
Bond leaders on the matter, and, as the result of this consultation,
he wrote to Mr. de Wet, five days later, declining to meet the peace
delegates again, or negotiate with them, on the ground that the
"principles of the Afrikander Bond" would be prejudiced by his
entering into official negotiations with the deputation, whose
official status he was unable, after inquiry, to recognise. It is
difficult not to connect this summary treatment of the peace delegates
by the Bond with the fact that, just at this time, General C. de Wet
was reporting to General Louis Botha that the "Cape Colony had risen
to a man."[276] However this may be, the wholesale manner in which the
Afrikander Bond had identified itself in the country districts with
the Boer invaders is sufficiently displayed by a return published six
months later, from which it appears that, out of a total of
thirty-three men holding official positions in the Bond organisation
in three districts in the Cape Colony, twenty-seven were accused of
high treason, of whom twenty-four were convicted, two absconded, and
one was acquitted.[277]

[Footnote 274: Sir Richard Solomon was appointed legal
adviser to the new Transvaal Administration.]

[Footnote 275: Cd. 903.]

[Footnote 276: See p. 431.]

[Footnote 277: Cd. 903.]

With the Bond in this mood, with certain districts practically
maintaining the enemy and certain other districts constantly exposed
to the incursions of the guerilla leaders, with a large proportion of
the loyalist population fighting at the front, and a still larger
number organised for local defence, and with the whole of the Colony,
except the ports, under martial law, it was obviously impossible for
the machinery of representative government to continue in its normal
course.

[Sidenote: Anti-British libels.]

The registration of electors, which, under the provisions of the
colonial law, was directed to take place not later than the last day
of February, 1901, was postponed to a more convenient season. The
existing register, while it contained the names of--it was
estimated--ten thousand persons disfranchised, or about to be
disfranchised, for rebellion, and of some thousands of others then in
arms against their sovereign, failed to include persons who had
acquired the necessary qualifications since