ember of a Native Location Committee, which
was at some future time, to provide land for natives to live on.

In perusing this Report it is easy to follow with more or less accuracy
the individual bent of its framers. Sir Hercules Robinson figures
throughout as a man who has got a disagreeable business to carry out,
in obedience to instructions that admit of no trifling with, and who has
set himself to do the best he can for his country, and those who suffer
through his country's policy, whilst obeying those instructions. He has
evidently choked down his feelings and opinions as an individual, and
turned himself into an official machine, merely registering in detail
the will of Lord Kimberley. With Sir Henry de Villiers the case is very
different, one feels throughout that the task is to him a congenial one,
and that the Boer cause has in him an excellent friend. Indeed, had he
been an advocate of their cause instead of a member of the Commission,
he could not have espoused their side on every occasion with greater
zeal. According to him they were always in the right, and in them he
could find no guile. Mr. Hofmeyer and President Brand exercised a wise
discretion from their own point of view, when they urged his appointment
as Special Commissioner. I now come to Sir Evelyn Wood, who was in the
position of an independent Englishman, neither prejudiced in favour
of the Boers, or the reverse, and on whom, as a military man, Lord
Kimberley would find it difficult to put the official screw. The results
of his happy position are obvious in the paper attached to the end of
the Report, and signed by him, in which he totally and entirely differs
from the majority of the Commission on every point of importance. Most
people will think that this very outspoke and forcible dissent deducts
somewhat from the value of the Report, and throws a shadow of doubt on
the wisdom of its provisions.

The formal document of agreement between Her Majesty's Government and
the Boer leaders, commonly known as the Convention, was signed by both
parties at Pretoria on the afternoon of the 3d August 1881, in the same
room in which, nearly four years before, the Annexation Proclamation was
signed by Sir T. Shepstone.

Whilst this business was being transacted in Government House, a curious
ceremony was going on just outside, and within sight of the windows.
This was the ceremonious burial of the Union Jack, which was followed to
the grave by a crowd o