nce and the progress of South Africa. _Then_ the
Boer system will be condemned by a higher authority than the
Colonial Office or the opinion of England; and from the high
court of Nature--a court from which no appeal lies--the
inexorable decree will go forth: 'Cut it down; why cumbereth
it the ground?'"]

[Footnote 347: See admissions of the Boer Generals quoted
_supra_.]

[Footnote 348: "The South African Republic will conclude no
treaty or engagement with any state or nation other than the
Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward
or westward of the Republic, until the same has been approved
by Her Majesty the Queen." Captain Mahan writes: "In refusing
the Transvaal that independence in foreign relations which
would enable other states to hold it directly accountable,
Great Britain retained, in so far, responsibility that
foreigners should be so treated as to give no just cause for
reclamations.... Great Britain, by retaining the ultimate
control of foreign relations, and by her well-defined purpose
not to permit interference in the Transvaal by a foreign
Power, was responsible for conditions of wrong to foreign
citizens within its borders. She had surrendered the right to
interfere, as suzerain, with internal affairs; but she had
not relieved herself, as by a grant of full independence and
sovereignty she might have done, from responsibility for
injury due to internal maladministration, any more than the
United States was relieved of the responsibility to Italy [in
the case of the Italian citizens lynched at New Orleans] by
the state sovereignty of Louisiana" (_Ibid._). And, says the
same writer, _a fortiori_ was Great Britain justified in
interfering on behalf of her own subjects.]

[Sidenote: Effect of surrender terms.]

Obviously the quality of mercy was strained to the point of danger by
the grant of terms to such a people. It will always remain a question
whether it would not have been better policy, instead of negotiating
at all, to wait for that unconditional surrender of the Boers which,
as the discussion at Vereeniging clearly shows, could only have been
deferred for a very few months. But, granting that the course actua