Impressions of South Africa | Page 6

controversy.
Suzerainty, which is a purely legal, though somewhat vague,
conception, has in many minds become confused with the practical
supremacy, or rather predominance, of Britain in South Africa, which is
a totally different matter. That predominance rests on the fact that
Britain commands the resources of a great empire, while the Dutch
republics are petty communities of ranchmen. But it does not carry any
legal rights of interference, any more than a preponderance of force
gives Germany rights against Holland.

As I have referred to the Convention of 1884, it may be well to observe
that while continuing to believe that, on a review of the facts as they
then stood, the British Government were justified in restoring
self-government to the Transvaal in 1881, they seem to me to have
erred in conceding the Convention of 1884. Though the Rand
goldfields had not then been discovered, Lord Derby ought to have
seen that the relations of the Transvaal to the adjoining British
territories would be so close that a certain measure of British control
over its internal administration might come to be needful. This control,
which was indeed but slight, he surrendered in 1884. But the
improvidence of the act does not in the least diminish the duty of the
country which made the Convention to abide by its terms, or relieve it
from the obligation of making out for any subsequent interference a
basis of law and fact which the opinion of the world might accept as
sufficient.
It has not been sufficiently realised in England that although the
Transvaal may properly, in respect of British control over its foreign
relations, be described as a semi-dependent State, Britain was under the
same obligation to treat it with a strict regard to the recognised
principles of international law as if it had been a great power. She had
made treaties with it, and those treaties it was her duty to observe.
Apart from all moral or sentimental considerations, apart from the fact
that Britain had at the Hague Conference been the warm and effective
advocate of peaceful methods of settling disputes between nations, it is
her truest interest to set an example of fairness, legality and sincerity.
No country, not even the greatest, can afford to neglect that reasonable
and enlightened opinion of thoughtful men in other countries--not to be
confounded with the invective and misrepresentation employed by the
press of each nation against the others--which determines the ultimate
judgment of the world, and passes into the verdict of history.
Did then the grievances of which the British residents in the Transvaal
complained furnish such a basis? These grievances are well known, and
will be found mentioned in chapter XXV. They were real and vexatious.
It is true that some of them affected not so much British residents as the
European shareholders in the great mining companies; true also that the

mining industry (as will be seen from the figures on p. 301) was
expanding and prospering in spite of them. Furthermore, they were
grievances under which, it might be argued, the immigrants had placed
themselves by coming with notice of their existence, and from which
they might escape by taking a train into the Free State or Natal. And
they were grievances which, however annoying, did not render either
life or property unsafe,[1] and did not prevent the Johannesburgers
from enjoying life and acquiring wealth. Nevertheless, they were such
as the British Government was entitled to endeavour to have redressed.
Nor could it be denied that the state of irritation and unrest which
prevailed on the Witwatersrand, the probability that another rising
would take place whenever a chance of success offered, furnished to
Britain, interested as she was in the general peace of the country, a
ground for firm remonstrance and for urging the removal of all
legitimate sources of disaffection, especially as these re-acted on the
whole of South Africa. The British authorities at the Cape seem indeed
to have thought that the unyielding attitude of the Transvaal
Government worked much mischief in the Colony, being taken by the
English there as a defiance to the power and influence of Britain, and
so embittering their minds.
Among the grievances most in men's mouths was the exclusion of the
new-comers from the electoral franchise. It must be clearly
distinguished from the other grievances. It was a purely internal affair,
in which Britain had no right to intermeddle, either under the
Convention of 1884 or under the general right of a state to protect its
subjects. Nothing is clearer than that every state may extend or limit the
suffrage as it pleases. If a British self-governing colony were to restrict
the suffrage to those who had lived fourteen years in the colony, or a
state of the American Union were to