Page:The Transvaal war; a lecture delivered in the University of Cambridge on 9th November, 1899.djvu/41

 rest of the negotiations consisted in offering a five years' franchise law without hampering conditions, but only upon other conditions which they knew that this government would not accept. Finally, the position of the Transvaal government is contained in their notes of 19th and 21st August, in which they offer seemingly most favourable terms, terms which if they had been offered without conditions would have been most favourable. They offered a five years' franchise, retrospective, eight new seats for the Rand, and not only a vote for the volksraad but also for the elections of the President and Commander-in-Chief, and they expressed a willingness to receive and to consider friendly suggestions as to the franchise law to be passed. Now come to the conditions. One of them was that the British government should promise in future never to interfere in their internal affairs, that this should be a final interference once and for all; secondly, not to insist further on the existence of a suzerainty, and, thirdly, to agree to arbitration on particular matters. Mr Chamberlain's answer to that expressed satisfaction with the terms themselves, apart from the conditions. With regard to the condition not to insist further on the existence of a suzerainty, he referred to the previous correspondence in which, while insisting—theoretically insisting—upon a vague suzerainty, he had said that since the republic was prepared to abide by the convention of 1884 there was no controversy as to the essential point. As to the condition to agree to arbitration on par-