Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/216

 208] ENGLISH HISTORY. [oct.

President Kruger, as in one despatch Mr. Chamberlain had recognised, after the Bloemfontein Conference. Then with regard to the conditions attached to the offer of a five years' franchise in the despatches of August 19 and 21, Sir Wm. Har- court maintained that they were not unreasonable. As to suzerainty, the Transvaal Government did not, as stated, or implied, in a subsequent British despatch, stipulate for the acceptance by her Majesty's Government of their previous contention that they were a sovereign international State, but only that the controversy on the subject should be allowed tacitly to drop. As to the rule of non-interference in the internal affairs of the Transvaal, Mr. Chamberlain himself had recognised it in 1896. The soundness of that principle, he contended, had been clearly recognised by Lord Salisbury's Government in 1890, through the mouth of Mr. W. H. Smith, and by Lord Rosebery's in 1895, through the mouth of Mr. Buxton, the Colonial Under-Secretary. Sir Wm. Harcourt regretted the making by Mr. Chamberlain of his speech at Highbury, at a time when the negotiations, as it seemed to him, " had reached a most promising point." Then he could not see why, having rejected the conditions of the five years' franchise offer, the Government should not have been willing to renew the proposal of a joint commission to inquire into the Franchise Law of July. Supposing, as the Government now maintained, that it was beset with conditions making it altogether insuf- ficient, the inquiry would have exhibited that fact to the world. Sir "William then contended at some length that the Govern- ment, having in the despatch of September 22, pronounced it useless to pursue the discussion on the lines hitherto followed, ought not to have delayed the production of their own proposals for a final settlement. The Duke of Devonshire had said (at New Mill) that those proposals would be found most moderate. President Steyn pressed for their production, and said the Free State would use its good offices towards the preservation of peace. Why then, having closed one door, did not the Gov- ernment open the other afforded by their " most moderate proposals " ? Why at so critical a moment did the formulation of these proposals take so long? " You have no right," said Sir Wm. Harcourt, " to involve the country in war, in the dark as to the proposals you are prepared to make." On Mr. Chamber- lain's interjecting that with the offer of the Free State's good offices was associated as a preliminary the request that the British troops be withdrawn, for otherwise the result would not be hopeful, Sir Wm. Harcourt retorted, " What was the answer to that ? Not the communication of the demands, but two days after that final appeal from the President of the Free State to be informed of the demands of the British Government, the Reserves were called out. ... I confess that I see in these circumstances the immediate cause of the breach that took place." Sir Wm. Harcourt added that " it was the claim to