and Dr. Leyds could divest
themselves of all responsibility in negotiations such as these, and
claim to have been acting in their private capacity only; and the
extraordinary anxiety to keep secret matters which deeply affected
the public, and to the settlement of which the Government designed
that the public should be committed, compelled the negotiators to
produce evidence that the statements and conclusions of the
Government were not warranted by the facts. The following letter,
which was formally acknowledged but never answered, practically
concluded the negotiations:--

JOHANNESBURG, S.A.R., _April 14, 1899._

_To the Honourable the State Secretary, Pretoria._

HONOURABLE SIR,--

We have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your communication
of the 8th April, 1899.

Certain of our statements being doubted and described as erroneous in
your letter, we deem it advisable to go more fully into the facts
which have preceded and led to this correspondence.

It may be that communications exchanged through an intermediary have
been transmitted in a manner liable to convey a different impression
from what was actually meant, and in order to clear any possible
misunderstanding, we beg to enclose copies of all documents supplied
to us by Mr. Lippert, whom we, at all times, considered as your
authorized agent.

From these it will be apparent that during the negotiations we acted
in perfect good faith, communicating and discussing what we justly
considered were the wishes and proposals of the Government, and it
will also be clear to you that every one of our statements is based
on documents which we had every reason to believe were approved of by
the Government.

On February 27th Mr. Lippert called together Messrs. E. Birkenruth,
A. Brakhan, and G. Rouliot, to whom he stated that a settlement of
certain pending questions could probably be arrived at. He said that
he had ascertained the views of Dr. Leyds, Messrs. Reitz and Smuts,
who had agreed to a certain programme, and he wanted to know whether
we would be willing to open negotiations on that basis, in which case
the three officials mentioned would see the State President and
ascertain whether he would be prepared to adopt their views.

If the State President's approval could be obtained, Mr. Lippert
suggested that a conference should be held to discuss the subjects
mentioned in his memorandum.

This memorandum (Annexure 'A'), as explained to us by Mr. L