Page:The Transvaal war; a lecture delivered in the University of Cambridge on 9th November, 1899.djvu/26

 dynamite company, the effect of which monoply [sic] was very largely to increase the cost of dynamite, and thereby the cost of working the mines. That was said to be contrary to the convention; I never could see how. There is a great deal to be said in the other two cases, but as the convention says nothing of monopolies I never could see how one could be a breach of it. Then the Transvaal government, in the exercise of that right which the second convention gave it of conducting its own foreign affairs, systematically delayed to submit the treaties which it had concluded to the Queen for approval until so late a stage that to disapprove them might cause her government to incur considerable unpleasantness with the country with which the Transvaal was negotiating. In the particular instances there was no danger of such unpleasantness arising, but by omitting to present treaties for the Queen's sanction until after they had been ratified by the government with which they had been made, which the Transvaal claimed the right to do, it might happen that in less harmless cases that other government might be seriously offended by the refusal of her sanction. Upon all or most of the matters I have mentioned the Transvaal government got abundant opinions from international lawyers that what they were doing was not a breach of the convention. On the other hand the British government was sustained by the opinion of its own lawyers in maintaining that the convention had been broken. My opinion on one or more of the cases in which I was consulted professionally was that the Transvaal government was right, and in one of them I thought it was wrong. But they were all cases which might have been remedied without war as they turned upon the interpretation of the convention, and if it was thought that there was a wrong the course might have been adopted which the Transvaal government suggested and the question submitted to arbitration.