Page:The Siege of London - Posteritas - 1885.djvu/15

 very short time, it became evident that the treaty entered into by the Boers was not likely to be long respected, and, chafing under the power, although nominal, which the new conditions imposed, a deputation was sent to London to confer with the Secretary for Colonial Affairs, who was then Lord Derby. His lordship had recently seceded from the Conservative ranks, and had taken office under the Liberal Government but his whole policy was marked by astonishing weakness, and an absence of that firmness and power to grasp the true situation which had hitherto been characteristic of English statesmen. The consequence was, the Boer delegates succeeded in obtaining a new Convention, which provided for their complete independence, on condition that they respected certain reserves in the Transvaal which were under British protection. Thoughtful and far-seeing men said at the time that this Convention would never be respected. The history of the Boers proved that their promises were not to be relied upon, and that their arrogant, domineering spirit would brook no authority that sought to restrain them from depredation or acquiring by force that which they had no right to possess. These views unhappily proved too true, and the Convention was torn up. But events in Egypt diverted public attention for a time from South Africa. A False Prophet, calling himself, had raised the Soudan in revolt, and Egypt was threatened. The extraordinary policy pursued by the British Government, who, having bombarded Alexandria, crushed the power of the arch-mutineer, in a brilliant feat of arms at Tel-el-Kebir, and propped the Khedive on his throne by means of British bayonets, talked of retiring, and practically leaving the country to govern itself. It was a "would and I would not" policy; a policy of letting "I would" wait upon "I dare not"; a policy, in short, of vacillation, procrastination, of weakness and stupidity, if not of absolute cowardice. Mr. Gladstone had never liked Egypt, and displayed a morbid nervousness to get out of the country. But Fate, like a Nemesis, said "No" to this. The "Mahdi's mission" was rallying a host to his standard, arid as long as that was so, Egypt could not be considered safe. But the most extraordinary thing is, that the English Government,