Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/218

210] allowed to remain in a position of inferiority, was it likely that thereby racial animosity would be avoided? A racial animosity in Africa existed already, and was based upon contempt, and would increase as long as one white race had a contempt for another. In the circumstances any English statesman of whatever party would have been bound to use force when persuasion had failed. Incidentally Mr. Chamberlain mentioned the grievances of the natives whom we had promised to protect when we retroceded the Transvaal. The treatment of the natives in the Transvaal had been brutal and unworthy of a civilised Power.

Discussing next the subject of supremacy, Mr. Chamberlain said that all were agreed that our supremacy ought to be maintained, and it had been threatened. From 1881 downwards the Boers had been patiently and persistently endeavouring to oust the Queen from her suzerainty, until, in their despatch of last May, they threw off the mask and declared themselves a sovereign independent State. In support of this statement Mr. Chamberlain gave various proofs, such as General Joubert's counsel to Lobengula to join with the Boers against the English, and President Kruger's refusal, in 1896, to accept the Government's invitation to London, on the express ground that Mr. Chamberlain had refused to discuss with him an alteration of Article IV. of the 1884 Convention which places Boer foreign relations under British control. He added that the Government had suspicions, almost amounting to knowledge, that the mission of Dr. Leyds had been one continuous series of intrigues with foreign Powers against the British supremacy. He also stated that in consequence of her policy of arming, the Transvaal was a few months ago the most powerful State in South Africa. Mr. Chamberlain denied the allegation made that we were fighting about the word suzerainty. We were fighting about the position conveyed by it, and he had used the word in his despatch of October, 1897, because the Boers were attempting to undermine that position, which no Colonial Secretary since 1884 had regarded as abolished.

Having vindicated the publication of Sir A. Milner's despatch containing comments on disloyal utterances in the Dutch press, as dealing with an element in the situation which it would have been folly to conceal, Mr. Chamberlain passed to a review of the franchise negotiations after the Bloemfontein Conference. In this connection special interest attached to the Colonial Secretary's treatment of the conditional offer of the five years' franchise, contained in the Boer despatches of August 19 and 21. "We agreed," said Mr. Chamberlain, "to accept the five years settlement as a basis, subject to an inquiry which, as they objected to a joint inquiry, should be a unilateral inquiry. They attached conditions.... The first was that we should agree to a scheme of arbitration. We accepted it. We had been negotiating on that basis.... They then proposed that we should