Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/226

 218] ENGLISH HISTORY. [oct.

at the very critical stage which had been reached. Towards the close of his speech Mr. Chamberlain refused to be alarmed by the gloomy anticipations as to the results of the war expressed in the Times by Mr. Selous. He agreed with that eminent traveller that one great Teutonic people could not hold another Teutonic people in subjection, but in South Africa we should not refuse that equality of rights to the Dutch of the Transvaal which had been withheld from us.

Mr. Courtney (Bodmin) still maintained that the ultimate differences shown in the correspondence between the two Governments furnished no adequate ground for war. Sir John Lubbock (London University) declared that most Minis- terial members had understood the despatch of August 28 exactly in the sense of a " qualified acceptance " of the previous Boer proposal, which Mr. Chamberlain now attributed to it.

Among the Opposition members Sir T. Gibson Carmichael (Edinburghshire) was another who supported the Government in regard to South Africa, while Mr. Broadhurst took the contrary line. After some further Nationalist protests against the war, the second reading of the Appropriation Bill was carried by 224 to 28.

On the motion for the second reading of the Treasury Bills Bill Sir William Harcourt censured the Government for not having at once proposed further taxation to defray the cost of the war. Sir M. Hicks-Beach replied that he had not done so because the total amount of the expenditure to be incurred was still uncertain, as was also the proportion of it which would fall on this country.

On October 26 Parliament was prorogued by a brief Queen's Speech, thanking the Commons for their liberal supplies for the conduct of the war in South Africa, congratulating both Houses on the brilliant qualities displayed by our officers and soldiers, expressing profound sorrow for the loss of so many gallant men, and praying for the Divine blessing on the efforts of Parliament and of the Army, "to restore peace and good government to that portion of my empire, and to vindicate the honour of this country."

The dispersal of Peers and members of the House of Com- mons to their homes only served to promote and illustrate the direct and practically exclusive concentration of the heart and mind of England on the war. And here it is well to note that the national way of looking at the military probabilities of the conflict, which soon became serious enough, was a reaction from a condition of cheerful confidence based upon what must be called characteristic ignorance of the conditions involved. When the war was actually in view, the British public generally, as informed by most of the principal newspapers, though perhaps contemplating a brief period of mainly defensive opera- tions on our part, while our reinforcements were arriving,