Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/194

 186] ENGLISH HISTOEY. [sept.

handed to the British Agent, which was soon understood to have made the situation distinctly more acute. For its effect was to withdraw the offer of the five years' franchise made in Dr. Eeitz's despatch of August 19, on the ground that the conditions attached to it had been refused, and to substitute nothing in place of that offer, except a belated expression (telegraphed six days later) of the willingness of the Transvaal Government to enter into a conference about the probable working of the seven years' franchise law of July.

The Boer Government complained that " from semi-official discussions," between Dr. Eeitz and Mr. Conyngham Greene, the British Agent at Pretoria, " which had been brought to the knowledge of her Majesty's Government, they had thought that they might infer that their proposal " set forth in the notes of August 19 and 21, " would have been acceptable to her Majesty's Government. " As it was not so, the Boer Govern- ment considered that their proposal had " lapsed. " As to the conditions attached to the lapsed proposal they observed: " (a) That with reference to intervention, this Government has neither asked, nor intended, that her Majesty's Government should abandon any right which it really might have, on the ground either of the Convention of London, 1884, or of inter- national law, to intervene for the protection of British subjects in this country, (b) That as regards the assertion of suzerainty, its non-existence has, as this Government ventures to think, already been so clearly stated in its despatch of April 16, 1898, that it would be superfluous to repeat here the facts, arguments, and deductions stated therein ; it simply wishes to remark here that it abides by its views expressed in that despatch/'

The matter of the misunderstanding above alleged to have been due to semi-official discussions at Pretoria, was more definitely brought up later. But, as bearing on the situation created by the despatch just summarised, the important fact has to be remembered that in the interval caused by the delays of Boer diplomacy her Majesty's Government, and also many well-informed persons in England, had clearly recognised that the (seven years') Franchise Act of July was hedged about with such a network of crippling restrictions and formalities that it would certainly fail, and had probably been meant to fail, as a measure for the prompt redress of the political sub- jection of the Outlanders.

More or less realising this, British opinion at home, though much slower in consolidating on the subject than that of the colonies, now rapidly hardened into a readiness to use force for the vindication of our rightful claims in South Africa. There were, of course, voices raised in a contrary sense. Mr. John Morley, addressing his constituents at Arbroath (Sept. 5), dwelt on the importance of so shaping British policy as to carry with it the sympathy of the Dutch in South Africa generally. Even after a successful war, he argued, the Trans-