olony, and received a pension, his private means
having been entirely spent in the service of his country.[26] The
Vice-President (Mr. Kruger) and the executive council of the Republic
also protested, and sent delegates to London to remonstrate. By the mass
of the Boer people--for the few English, of course, approved--little
displeasure was shown and no resistance made. Had a popular vote been
taken it would doubtless have been adverse to annexation, for a memorial
circulated shortly afterwards, praying for a reversal of Sir T.
Shepstone's act, received the signatures of a large majority of the Boer
citizens.[27] But while they regretted their independence, they had been
so much depressed by their disasters, and were so much relieved to know
that the strong arm of Britain would now repel any Kafir invasion, as to
take the change more quietly than any one who remembered their earlier
history would have expected.

On the English public, which knew little and cared less about South
African affairs, the news that their empire had been extended by a
territory nearly as large as the United Kingdom, though it came as a
complete surprise, produced little impression. They were then excited
over the outbreak of the war between Russia and the Turks, and absorbed
in the keen party struggles which Lord Beaconsfield's apparent desire to
help the Turks had caused in England, so that scant attention was given
to a distant colonial question. A motion condemning the annexation which
was brought forward in the House of Commons received no support. Nearly
all of those few persons who cared about South Africa had been alienated
from the Boers by their treatment of the natives. Scarcely any one
foresaw the long series of troubles, not yet ended, to which the
annexation was destined to give rise. Neither did it arouse any serious
opposition in Cape Colony, though the Dutch element there regarded with
misgivings the withdrawal of independence from their emigrant kinsfolk.

To those who now look back at the act, in the light of the events which
followed, it seems a high-handed proceeding to extinguish a Republic
which had been formally recognized twenty-five years before, and to do
this without giving the people an opportunity of declaring their wishes.
Yet the act was not done in a spirit of rapacity. Neither the British
government nor the British people had the least idea of the wealth that
lay hidden beneath the barren and desolate ridges of