not in a position to pay it.

In connection with this matter, I will pass to the Financial clauses of
the Report. When the country was annexed, the public debt amounted
to 301,727 pounds. Under British rule this debt was liquidated to
the extent of 150,000 pounds, but the total was brought up by a
Parliamentary grant, a loan from the Standard Bank, and sundries to
390,404 pounds, which represented the public debt of the Transvaal on
the 31st December 1880. This was further increased by moneys advanced by
the Standard Bank and English Exchequer during the war, and till the
8th August 1881, during which time the country yielded no revenue, to
457,393 pounds. To this must be added an estimated sum of 200,000 pounds
for compensation charges, pension allowances, &c., and a further sum of
383,000 pounds, the cost of the successful expedition against Secocoeni,
that of the unsuccessful one being left out of account, bringing up the
total public debt to over a million, of which about 800,000 pounds is
owing to this country.

This sum, with the characteristic liberality that distinguished them in
their dealings with the Boers, but which was not so marked where loyals
were concerned, the Commissioners (Sir Evelyn Wood dissenting) reduced
by a stroke of the pen to 265,000 pounds, thus entirely remitting an
approximate sum of 500,000 pounds, or 600,000 pounds. To the sum of
265,000 pounds still owing, must be added say another 150,000 pounds
for sums lately advanced to pay the compensation claims, bringing up the
actual amount now owing to England to something under half a million, of
which I say with confidence she will never see a single 10,000 pounds.
As this contingency was not contemplated, or if contemplated, not
alluded to by the Royal Commission, provision was made for a sinking
fund, by means of which the debt, which is a second charge on the
revenues of the States, is to be extinguished in twenty-five years.

It is a strange instance of the proverbial irony of fate, that whilst
the representatives of the Imperial Government were thus showering gifts
of hundreds of thousands of pounds upon men who had spurned the benefits
of Her Majesty's rule, made war upon her forces, and murdered her
subjects, no such consideration was extended to those who had remained
loyal to her throne. Their claims for compensation were passed by
unheeded; and looking from the windows of the room in which they sat in
Newcastle, the members of th