s, but that they should be
banished from the country. In answer to this telegram, Lord Kimberley
informs him that Her Majesty's Government will amnesty _everybody_
except those who have committed acts contrary to the rules of civilised
warfare, and that they will agree to anything, and appoint a Commission
to carry out the details, and "be ready for friendly communications with
_any persons_ appointed by the Boers."

Thus was Her Majesty's authority finally re-established in the
Transvaal.

It was not a very grand climax, nor the kind of arrangement to which
Englishmen are accustomed, but perhaps, considering the circumstances,
and the well-known predilections of those who made the settlement, it
was as much as could be expected.

The action of the Government must not be considered, as though they were
unfettered in their judgment; it can never be supposed that they acted
as they did, because they thought such action right or even wise,
for that would be to set them down as men of a very low order of
intelligence, which they certainly are not.

It is clear that no set of sensible men, who had after much
consideration given their decision that under all the circumstances,
the Transvaal must remain British territory, and who, on a revolt
subsequently breaking out in that territory, had declared that Her
Majesty's rule must be upheld, would have, putting aside all
other circumstances, deliberately stultified themselves by almost
unconditionally, and of their own free will, abandoning the country,
and all Her Majesty's subjects living in it. That would be to pay a
poor tribute to their understanding, since it is clear that if reasons
existed for retaining the Transvaal before the war, as they were
satisfied there did, those reasons would exist with still greater force
after a war had been undertaken and three crushing defeats sustained,
which if left unavenged must, as they knew, have a most disastrous
effect on our prestige throughout the South African continent.

I prefer to believe that the Government was coerced into acting as
it did by Radical pressure, both from outside, and from its immediate
supporters in the House, and that it had to choose between making an
unconventional surrender in the Transvaal and losing the support of
a very powerful party. Under these circumstances it, being Liberal in
politics, naturally followed its instincts, and chose surrender.

If such a policy was bad in itself, and necessaril