ities, met[297] under the
presidency of Sir Gordon Sprigg, and resolved:

[Footnote 297: December 17th, 1901.]

"That this committee views with the utmost disapproval the
statement of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at Plymouth, to the
effect that no satisfactory settlement would be arrived at in
South Africa so long as Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Milner retained
their present offices, and, on the contrary, emphatically affirms
that the retention in office of those statesmen is regarded by
the South African loyalists as affording the best security for a
settlement which will be permanent, just, and consistent with the
honour of the empire and the best interests of South Africa, and,
further, affirms that the whole tone of Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's speech is most pernicious, and prejudicial
to Imperial interests in South Africa, and shows him to be
entirely out of sympathy with loyalist opinion in South Africa."

With this prompt and uncompromising rejoinder we may take leave of an
attempt to remove a great and devoted servant of the empire, which is
as discreditable to the intelligence as it is to the patriotism of
those prominent members of the Liberal party who thus lent their
co-operation to the Afrikander nationalists. In South Africa the
issue was simple. While Boer and rebel combined in their efforts to
rid themselves of the man who had thwarted their ambitions, the
loyalists closed their ranks and stood firm in his support. It is to
the far-off Homeland that we have to turn for the spectacle of a
nation in which gratitude to the man who upheld the flag gave place to
sympathy for the enemy and the rebel; in which patriotism itself
yielded to a greed of place wrapped up by sophistry in such decent
terms as "humanity," "Liberal principles," and "conciliation."

[Sidenote: Finances of the new colonies.]

In the meantime Lord Milner had returned to Johannesburg. His
"hard-begged" holiday had proved a change of occupation rather than a
respite from work. Before he left England (August 10th), he had made
known to the Home Government the actual condition of the infant
administrations of the new colonies, and obtained a provision for
their immediate wants. The Letters Patent constituting him Governor
and Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony had
been passed under the Great Seal; and these and other instruments
creating a s