Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed | Page 6

be asked, could that hitherto friendly
people have been deluded to risk all in a disloyal breach with England
by joining the Transvaal in a "Bond" issue against her best friend?

Towards the Transvaal also had England proved her earnest desire to
maintain an intercourse on the basis of sincere amity, desirous only of
reciprocity, which indeed could be expected in willing return, seeing
that England took upon her own shoulders to provide for the protection
and welfare of the entire area of South Africa by sea and land, whilst
both Republics freely participated in all the great benefits so derived.
These considerations should substantially disprove the wicked
aspersion lately made that British policy aimed at the subversion of
republican autonomy in those two States. All that Great Britain needed
and confidently expected in return for her goodwill was friendly
adhesion, and a willing recognition of her paramountcy in matters
affecting the common weal of South Africa as a whole, and also such
reciprocity and mutual concern in the welfare of all as consistently
comport with common interests. How fell and malignant the
"influence" which operated a treacherous ingratitude and hostility
instead!

TRANSVAAL HISTORY--SUZERAINTY
The references made to the history of the Transvaal so far reach up to
the rehabilitation of its independence and the convention of 1881.
Some of the conditions of that treaty, especially the subordinate
position imposed by the suzerainty clause, were found to be repugnant
to the burghers. Delegates were therefore commissioned to proceed to
England in order to get the treaty so altered as to place the State into
the status provided by the Sand River convention, which conceded
absolute independence. Mr. Jorrison, a violent anti-English Hollander,
was the chief adviser of the members of that delegation.
To that the English Ministry could not assent, but sought to meet the
wishes of the people by agreeing to certain modifications of the
convention of 1881. This was effected with the treaty of 1884. The
delegates had specially urged the renunciation of the suzerainty claim,
but that claim appears not to have been abandoned, to judge from the
absence of such mention in the novated treaty. Had its renunciation
been agreed to, as has been since averred, it is quite certain that the
delegates would not have been content without the mention in most
distinct terms of that, to them, so important point. It may therefore be
assumed as a fact that the negotiations did not result in an active

suspension of the relations as set forth in the convention of 1881, and
that the Transvaal continued in a status of subordinacy to England, but
only with a wider range in regard to conditions of autonomy. To most
lay minds it therefore appears perfectly clear that the Transvaal
delegates had well understood and accepted, and so had also their
Government, that the convention of 1884 was de facto a renewal of that
of 1881, with the only difference that it provided an enlarged exercise
of autonomy, but without in the least abrogating the principles of
respective relations, which were left intact, or at least latent.
It has been averred and a strong point made in the theory of repudiating
suzerainty or over-lordship that Lord Kimberley had given the
assurance that the right of Transvaal autonomy and independence was
meant to equal that of the Orange Free State. This need not be
contested, as that Minister obviously relied upon a similar observance
of staunch adhesion towards England which that State had shown
during a period of thirty years previous; the fact that the Transvaal was
quite differently situated as to adjoining territory imposed the necessity,
if only as a matter of form, to preserve the written conditions of
Transvaal vassalage.
Lord Kimberley, in 1889, intimated the readiness of his Government to
afford advisory and other co-operation with the Transvaal Government
in order to cope with the new element of foreign immigration, resulting
from the discovery of the rich gold-fields, and to provide appropriate
relations with a new floating population, without materially altering the
status of Transvaal authority, or the methods of government then in
practice.
The Transvaal Government, however, preferred to ignore that loyal
offer, and to be guided by Bond principles instead. That circumstance
affords another proof that England did not then see the necessity, as has
subsequently been the case, of strengthening her position against Bond
aggression by imposing a demand of general franchise for Uitlanders.
One aspect of the prolonged controversy re suzerainty forced upon
England would be to denote a lack of honour, which is not of
unfrequent occurrence when one party to a contract seeks by cavil and
legal quibble to evade compliance with some of its conditions, simply
because the written terms appear to afford scope for doing so. But the
principal reason