Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/617

 1899.] STATE PAPEES— TEANSVAAL. 193

SIR A MILNER'S VIEWS.

Telegram. High Commissioner Sir Alfred Milner to Mr. Chamberlain. (Received 1 a.m. May 5, 1899.)

May 4. Having regard to critical character of South African situa- tion and likelihood of early reply by her Majesty's Government to petition, I am telegraphing remarks which, under ordinary circum- stances, I should have made by despatch. Events of importance have followed so fast on each other since my return to South Africa, and my time has been so occupied in dealing with each incident severally, that I have had no opportunity for reviewing the whole position.

The present crisis undoubtedly arises out of the Edgar incident. But that incident merely precipitated a struggle which was certain to come. It is possible to make too much of the killing of Edgar. It was a shocking and, in my judgment, a criminal blunder, such as would have excited a popular outcry anywhere. It was made much worse by the light way in which it was first dealt with by the Public Prosecutor, and by the attitude of the judge at the trial. By itself, however, it would not have justified, nor, in fact, provoked the present storm. But it happened to touch a particularly sore place. There is no grievance which rankles more in the breasts of the mass of the Outlander popula- tion than the conduct of the police, who, while they have proved singu- larly incompetent to deal with gross scandals like the illicit liquor trade, are harsh and arbitrary in their treatment of individuals whom they happen to dislike, as must have become evident to you from the recurrent ill-treatment of coloured people. There are absolutely no grounds for supposing that the excitement which the death of Edgar caused was factitious. It has been laid to the door of the South African League, but the officials of the league were forced into action by Edgar's fellow workmen. And the consideration of grievances once started by the police grievance, it was inevitable that the smouldering but profound discontent of the population who constantly find their affairs mismanaged, their protests disregarded, and their attitude misunder- stood by a Government on which they have absolutely no means of exercising any influence, should once more break into flame.

We have, therefore, simply to deal with a popular movement of a similar kind to that of 1894 and 1895 before it was perverted and ruined by a conspiracy of which the great body of the Outlandere were totally innocent. None of the grievances then complained of, and which then excited universal sympathy, have been remedied, and others have been added. The case is much stronger. It is impossible to overlook the tremendous change for the worse which has been effected by the lower- ing of the status of the High Court of Judicature and by the establish- ment of the principle embodied in the new draft Grondwet that any resolution of the Volksraad is equivalent to a law. The instability of the laws has always been one of the most serious grievances. The new Constitution provides for their permanent instability, the judges being bound by their oath to accept every Volksraad resolution as equally binding with a law passed in the regular form and with the provisions of the Constitution itself. The law prescribing this oath is one of

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