Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/384

 376] FOEEIGN HISTORY. [1899.

accompanied by affidavits supporting the allegations. A counter petition, purporting to give the real views of the Uitlanders and expressing contentment with the Government, was being signed in the Transvaal not long after. Many thought that the Trans- vaal Government would yield to pressure and grant equal rights to all white residents. President Kruger made speeches in Johannesburg and other places in April, asserting that he made no distinctions as to the franchise between nationalties but only between loyal and disloyal people, and that he would pro- pose to the Volksraad to reduce the qualifying period by five years. New-comers, however, must first forswear their old country.

An assault made in April on the editor of the Johannesburg Star by two Dutchmen aroused great indignation among the Uitlanders.

The British High Commissioner telegraphed on May 4 to Mr. Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, that the Edgar inci- dent had precipitated a struggle that was sure to come. Sir A. Milner referred to the instability of the laws in the Transvaal and to the endless series of Outlander grievances ; he regarded the case for intervention as overwhelming, and that the movement was not, as had been alleged, the work of scheming capitalists or professional agitators; that the spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the position of helots, constantly chafing under undoubted grievances and calling vainly to her Majesty's Government for redress, was steadily undermining the influence and reputation of Great Britain and the respect for the British Government within the Queen's dominions, and that a ceaseless stream of malignant lies in a section of the press as to the intentions of the British Govern- ment were producing a great effect on a large number of "our Dutch fellow-colonists."

In his reply to Sir A. Milner, Mr. Chamberlain said that her Majesty's Government suggested that a meeting for discussing the situation in a conciliatory spirit should be arranged between Sir A. Milner and President Kruger.

Seven or eight Englishmen of low degree were arrested, May 15, at Johannesburg, charged with high treason. Boer agents testified that these men had been enrolling a corps, to be armed in Natal, for action against the Transvaal, that they were under orders from the British War Office, and that with 2,000 men they were planning to seize the Johannesburg fort. This so- called conspiracy, when sifted, was found to be an invention of the Boer police, and its object to divert attention from the claims of the Uitlanders. When brought to trial all the prisoners were acquitted.

On May 30 Sir Alfred Milner, yielding to the wishes of the Imperial Government, met Mr. Kruger at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, but after several sessions the conference ended (June 5) without result. The franchise question, the dynamite monopoly, the incorporation of Swaziland in the South