Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/630

 206 STATE PAPEBS— TRANSVAAL. [1899.

latitude as to details. Thus the amount of property qualification and the number of new seats was left open. What was vital in my scheme was the simplification of the oath and the immediate admission to full burghership on taking it. Knowing as I do the feeling of the Outlander population, and especially of the best of them on these points, I felt, and feel, that any scheme not containing these concessions would be absolutely useless. The most influential and respectable sections of the Outlander community feel strongly the indignity and injustice of asking them to denationalise themselves for anything less than full burgher- ship — which in the South African Republic carries with it, ipso facto, the right to vote for the first Volksraad and the President. They will not accept citizenship of the Republic on any other terms ; and unless they accept it in adequate numbers, the whole policy of relying on their admission to the State as a means for the improvement of the govern- ment and the removal of grievances falls to the ground.

I took the line that, while I had no authority to speak about arbitra- tion and could not make it a part of any bargain, I certainly desired that, if the present proceedings ended in an all-round settlement, we might arrange for the adjustment of future differences by an "automatic process " — by which I certainly meant their reference to some sort of tribunal. It is this remark of mine— a guarded statement of my personal opinion — of which the President afterwards made very unfair use in saying that I had admitted that arbitration for all questions under the Convention was- reasonable, and which appears from the telegrams to have been widely misunderstood in England.

I therefore wish to make a few further observations about it. In the first place, I would observe that I expressly guarded myself against the idea that arbitration was applicable to all differences. I was think- ing, as I indicated, more especially of the question whether the laws and administration of the South African Republic were fair towards its foreign residents. It is, of course, absurd to suggest that the question whether the South African Republic does or does not treat British subjects resident in that country with justice, and the British Government with the consideration and respect due to any friendly, not to say "suzerain," Power is a question capable of being referred to arbitration. Secondly, I stated quite clearly that her Majesty's Govern- ment would not admit arbitration " by a foreign Power, or any foreign interference," between itself and the South African Republic

To this extent, therefore, I barred arbitration, nor would I, of my own motion, have referred to it. But, as President Kruger brought it in so continually, it would, I think, have been impolitic, and certainly against my own conviction, to take up an absolutely negative attitude with regard to it. I was thinking more especially of the state of things which would arise in the remote contingency of our being able to come to an amicable settlement of all, or our principal, differences. Even in that case it could not be supposed that in future questions of difference would not occasionally arise between us— seeing the intimacy and the complexity of the relations between the South African Republic and her Majesty's South African dominions— where such questions were not general questions of policy, but differences as to the interpretation