Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/212

 204] ENGLISH HISTOBY. [oct.

dwelling on the gross insult conveyed by the ultimatum, said that it was one of the most satisfactory parts of our policy in these later days that when a question arose in which the vital interests and the honour of this country were concerned there were no distinctions of party. The constitutional conditions under which we lived, however, made the conduct of negotia- tions much more difficult than they were formerly ; and there were occasions on which absolute secrecy could not be observed without sacrificing a great source of power. Too much had been made of the supposed provocation contained in Sir A. Milner's despatch, and President Kruger was not the sensitive person some people supposed. Lord Salisbury's belief was that the desire to get rid of the word "suzerainty " and the reality which it expressed had been the dream of President Kruger's life. The President had, in fact, used the oppression of the Outlander population as a screw by which to obtain some con- cession from us on the subject of the suzerainty. He entirely agreed, however, that suzerainty was a word wholly unnecessary for our present purpose. Situated as Great Britain was in South Africa, we had a paramount power and duty which had nothing to do with any conventional suzerainty. " To the state of things established by the Convention of 1881 or 1884, whatever it may have been," the Premier said, " we can never return. We can never consent, while we have the strength to resist it, to be put into the same position which we have held in South Africa for the last seventeen or eighteen years. With regard to the future, there must be no doubt that the sovereign power of England is paramount ; there must be no doubt that the white races will be put upon an equality, and that due pre- caution will be taken for the philanthropic, and kindly, and improving treatment of those countless indigenous races of whose destiny, I fear, we have been too forgetful. Those things must be insisted upon in the future. By what means they will be obtained I do not know. I hope they may be consistent with a very large autonomy on the part of the race which values its individual government so much as the Dutch people do. But with that question we have no concern at present."

As a former High Commissioner in South Africa, Lord Loch gave his support to the policy of the Government. He also expressed the opinion that both the Dutch republics should ultimately be annexed to the empire. After some observations from Lord Camperdow T n on the same side, Lord Selborne (Under-Secretary for the Colonies) defended the action of his chief in an effective speech, urging, in conclusion, that the real origin of the war lay in an essential incompatibility of the Boer and British ideals of the future development of South Africa. The address was then agreed to.

In the Commons, the address in answer to the Queen's. Speech was moved by Sir A. Acland-Hood (Wellington), who used