Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/635

 1899.] STATE PAPEES— TEANSVAAL. 211

ment, a further arrangement might be come to whereby the many other differences between them and the Government of the South African Republic might be adjusted, and the relations between the two Governments placed upon a perfectly harmonious footing. These hopes were for the time disappointed. The conference met and sepa- rated without any agreement as to the means to be adopted for the removal of that discontent of the majority of the inhabitants of the Transvaal which has been for so many years a menace to the peace and a hindrance to the prosperity of the whole of South Africa.

The Government of the South African Republic, in the despatch of June 9, in which they submit proposals for arbitration to which I will presently refer, deplore the fact that, as a result of the disputes which arise between themselves and the Government of her Majesty, " party feeling and race hatred are more and more increased, and the minds of the public are held in such a state of tension that the whole of South Africa suffers most deeply under it, and is bowed down thereby." Her Majesty's Government agree that these indirect consequences of the constantly strained relations between the two countries are even more serious than the results of the particular acts of legislation or admin- istration of which they have had to complain, but they must point out that this deplorable irritation between kindred people, whose common interests and neighbourhood would naturally make them friends, is due primarily to the fact that in the South African Republic alone of all the States of South Africa the Government has deliberately placed one of the two white races in a position of political inferiority to the other, and has adopted a policy of isolation in its internal concerns which has been admitted by the present Prime Minister of the Cape Colony to be a source of danger to South Africa at large. It is this policy, enforced and continually extended since the Convention of 1884, which constitutes the most serious factor of the present situation.

Besides the ordinary obligations of a civilised Power to protect its subjects in a foreign country against injustice, and the special duty arising in this case from the position of her Majesty as the paramount power in South Africa, there falls also on her Majesty's Government the exceptional responsibility arising out of the Conventions which regulate the relations between the Government of the South African Republic and that of her Majesty. These Conventions were granted by her Majesty of her own grace, and they were granted in the full expectation that, according to the categorical assurances conveyed by the Boer leaders to the royal commissioners in the negotiations pre- liminary to the Convention of 1881, equality of treatment would be strictly maintained among the white inhabitants of the Transvaal.

It may be well to remind you what those assurances were, as detailed in the Blue-book of May, 1882. At the conference of May 10, 1881, at Newcastle, there were present Sir Hercules Robinson (presi- dent), Sir Evelyn Wood, Sir J. H. de Villiers, her Majesty's Commis- sioners; and as representatives of the Boers, Mr. Kruger, Mr. P. J. Joubert, Dr. Jorissen, Mr. J. S. Joubert, Mr. de Villiers and Mr. Buskes.

The following report of what took place shows the nature of the assurances given on this occasion :—

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