Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/188

 180] ENGLISH HISTORY. [auo.

authority, whose independence, impartiality, and capacity would be beyond and above all suspicion."

Mr. Chamberlain went on to observe that, assuming that the Transvaal Government agreed to the proposal for a joint inquiry with regard to the probable working of the July Fran- chise Law, it might be desirable for Sir A. Milner and President Kruger to endeavour, by another personal conference, to come to an understanding as to the action to be taken on the report, or reports, of the joint commission. And he suggested that such conference would offer a suitable opportunity for the discussion of the proposed tribunal of arbitration, and other pending questions which were not brought forward at Bloem- fontein owing to the failure to arrive at a settlement of the Outlander franchise question.

Very interesting were the evidences recorded in the blue book of colonial encouragement to her Majesty's Gov- ernment in the resolute pursuit of justice for the Outlanders in the Transvaal. In the latter part of July resolutions were unanimously passed in both the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly of Natal, expressing " sympathy with and approval of the action of the British Government in its endeav- our to secure equal rights and privileges for all Europeans in South Africa, whereby peace, prosperity, and the termination of racial animosity in this country can alone be assured." This language on the part of the two branches of the constitutional legislature of the colony which would be the first to suffer in the event of war was full of significance. Not less so were the terms of the resolutions passed, also unanimously, by both the Senate and the House of Commons of the great Canadian Dominion. The resolutions, forwarded to London on August 1 and July 31 respectively, set forth that each House had ''viewed with regret the complications which had arisen in the Trans- vaal Eepublic, of which her Majesty is suzerain, from the refusal to accord to her Majesty's subjects now settled in that region any adequate participation in its government " — a condition of things which had resulted in " intolerable oppres- sion " ; and further, that each House, " representing a people which had largely succeeded, by the adoption of the principle of conceding equal political rights to every portion of the popu- lation, in harmonising estrangements, and in producing general content with the existing system of government, desired to express its sympathy with the efforts of her Majesty's imperial authorities to obtain for the subjects of her Majesty who have taken up their abode in the Transvaal such measure of justice and political recognition as may be found necessary to secure them in the full possession of equal rights and liberties."

In connection with the above quotations, it may be observed that in various ways the evidences they afforded of colonial feeling in July were carried forward by newspaper telegrams up to and in the week ending August 26. Thus it was tele-