ounced, under a complete
misapprehension as to the facts. The representatives of the Colonial
Office in South Africa had reported, partly through insufficient
knowledge, partly because their views were influenced by their feelings,
that there was no such passion for independence among the Boers as
events had shown to exist.[31] Once the true facts were known, did it
not become not merely unjust to deprive the Transvaal people of the
freedom they prized so highly, but also impolitic to retain by force
those who would have been disaffected and troublesome subjects? A free
nation which professes to be everywhere the friend of freedom is
bound--so it was argued--to recognize the principles it maintains even
when they work against itself; and if these considerations went to show
that the retrocession of the Transvaal was a proper course, was it
either wise or humane to prolong the war and crush the Boer resistance
at the cost of much slaughter, merely in order to avenge defeats and
vindicate a military superiority which the immensely greater forces of
Britain made self-evident? A great country is strong enough to be
magnanimous, and shows her greatness better by justice and lenity than
by a sanguinary revenge. These moral arguments, which affect different
minds differently, were reinforced by a strong ground of policy. The
Boers of the Orange Free State had sympathised warmly with their
kinsfolk in the Transvaal, and were with difficulty kept from crossing
the border to join them. The President of the Free State, a sagacious
man, anxious to secure peace, had made himself prominent as a mediator,
but it was not certain that his citizens might not, even against his
advice, join in the fighting. Among the Africander Dutch of Cape Colony
and Natal the feeling for the Transvaal Boers was hardly less strong,
and the accentuation of Dutch sentiment, caused by the events of 1880
and 1881, has ever since been a main factor in the politics of Cape
Colony. The British government were advised from the Cape that the
invasion of the Transvaal might probably light up a civil war through
the two Colonies. The power of Great Britain would of course have
prevailed, even against the whole Dutch-speaking population of South
Africa; but it would have prevailed only after much bloodshed, and at
the cost of an intense embitterment of feeling, which would have
destroyed the prospects of the peace and welfare of the two Colonies
for many years to com