al rights of
interference, any more than a preponderance of force gives Germany
rights against Holland.

As I have referred to the Convention of 1884, it may be well to observe
that while continuing to believe that, on a review of the facts as they
then stood, the British Government were justified in restoring
self-government to the Transvaal in 1881, they seem to me to have erred
in conceding the Convention of 1884. Though the Rand goldfields had not
then been discovered, Lord Derby ought to have seen that the relations
of the Transvaal to the adjoining British territories would be so close
that a certain measure of British control over its internal
administration might come to be needful. This control, which was indeed
but slight, he surrendered in 1884. But the improvidence of the act does
not in the least diminish the duty of the country which made the
Convention to abide by its terms, or relieve it from the obligation of
making out for any subsequent interference a basis of law and fact which
the opinion of the world might accept as sufficient.

It has not been sufficiently realised in England that although the
Transvaal may properly, in respect of British control over its foreign
relations, be described as a semi-dependent State, Britain was under the
same obligation to treat it with a strict regard to the recognised
principles of international law as if it had been a great power. She had
made treaties with it, and those treaties it was her duty to observe.
Apart from all moral or sentimental considerations, apart from the fact
that Britain had at the Hague Conference been the warm and effective
advocate of peaceful methods of settling disputes between nations, it is
her truest interest to set an example of fairness, legality and
sincerity. No country, not even the greatest, can afford to neglect that
reasonable and enlightened opinion of thoughtful men in other
countries--not to be confounded with the invective and misrepresentation
employed by the press of each nation against the others--which
determines the ultimate judgment of the world, and passes into the
verdict of history.

Did then the grievances of which the British residents in the Transvaal
complained furnish such a basis? These grievances are well known, and
will be found mentioned in chapter XXV. They were real and vexatious. It
is true that some of them affected not so much British residents as the
European shareholders in the great mining compan