Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/631

 1899.] STA^E PAPEES— TEANSVAAL. 207

of a particular clause of a particular document (whether one of the existing Conventions or any new instrument of a similar character which might hereafter be framed). What was to be done to solve them ? Arbitration of some sort would appear to be inevitable, although the constitution of a suitable tribunal would always be a matter of difficulty. In any case, all that I committed myself to was a willing- ness to do what I could personally to arrange for a regular and auto- matic settlement of future differences, without foreign interference, provided that the main matter then under discussion could be satis- factorily arranged.

Sir A. Milner then gave an account of the proposals of the Transvaal Executive brought forward at the following meeting : —

The meeting on the morning of Friday, 2nd — the fourth meeting of the conference — to which I have just referred, was perhaps the most strenuous of all our discussions. When we reassembled in the after- noon matters took an altogether unexpected turn. I thought that the President, having finally consented to go into the question of franchise, would submit my scheme, which was the basis of the discussion, and which he had pressed me to produce, to some sort of criticism. Instead of that, he suddenly sprang upon me a complete Reform Bill, worked out in clauses and sub-clauses, which I cannot but think he must have had in his pocket all the time, and which had but a very faint resemblance to anything I had proposed.

In the concluding pages of his despatch the High Commissioner sums up the whole attitude at the conference : —

I did my best, in the long memorandum quoted above in full, to point out within a reasonable compass some of the main flaws in the President's scheme. Apart from the — in my view — unacceptable principle of the two stages of citizenship, the scheme was unworkable by reason of the many difficulties which it put in the way of a man seeking to take advantage of it. But the list of these difficulties is by no means exhausted in my memorandum. Since the scheme has become public many others have been pointed out, even by neutral critics, and I think I may say that by this time it is condemned throughout South Africa as totally unworkable.

I do not suppose for a moment that the President himself, who probably did not go very carefully into the details of the proposal, had any idea that the scheme which he put forward as a liberal con- cession to the demands of the Outlanders was in fact so beset with impossible conditions that very few of them would be able, and indeed in all probability very few of them would attempt, to avail them- selves of it. But whoever did think out the details of the plan must have known this perfectly well. I cannot but feel that if this plan had been accepted the discovery of its unworkableness in practice hereafter would have led to even greater discontent, to even more bitter and strained feelings between the Government of the South African Republic and its Outlander population than those which unfortunately exist at present.

With regard to my general policy at the conference, id est, that of