ystem of Crown Colony Government, with Executive and
Legislative Councils in both colonies, had been sent to him in
readiness for use "whenever it might be thought expedient to bring
them into operation."[298] And on August 6th the House of Commons had
voted L6,500,000 as a grant in aid of the revenues of the Transvaal
and Orange River Colony. Of this sum L1,000,000 was required for the
purchase of fresh rolling-stock for the Imperial Military Railways,
still placed under the direction of Sir Percy (then Colonel) Girouard,
and L500,000 was assigned to "relief and re-settlement," an item which
included the purchase of land and other arrangements for the
establishment of suitable British settlers on farms in both colonies.
The debate on the vote afforded a significant exhibition of the spirit
of mingled pessimism and distrust in which the Liberal Opposition
approached every aspect of the South African question. The idea of the
Transvaal ever being able to repay this grant-in-aid out of the
"hypothetical" development loan appeared ridiculous to Sir William
Harcourt. "Why," asked the Liberal ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer,
"was not the money required for the South African Constabulary put
forward in a supplementary military vote, instead of being proposed in
this form and, under the grant-in-aid, subject to future repayment by
the Transvaal, in which nobody believed?"[299]

[Footnote 298: They were read and published by Lord Milner on
June 21st, 1902.]

[Footnote 299: It is scarcely necessary to say that the
entire cost of the Constabulary has been borne by the new
colonies; or that every penny of this grant-in-aid was paid
back out of the development loan raised in 1902-3.]

This temporary financial assistance was of the utmost importance. Just
as in the Cape Colony Lord Milner had seen that the Boers and
Afrikander nationalists were to be beaten at their own game of renewed
invasion by enabling the loyalist population to defend the Colony, so
in the new colonies he proposed to beat the guerilla leaders at their
game of wanton and mischievous resistance by building up a new
prosperity faster than they could destroy the old. The conditions
under which he worked, and the state in which he found South Africa
when he began to engage actively in the work of reconstruction, he has
himself described. In a despatch, written from the "High
Commissioner's Office, Johannesburg,