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Great Britain, the European Powers had expressly excluded the Transvaal, on the ground that it was a subordinate suzerain state. Opposition to customs union, railways, and equal political rights has been so long and doggedly maintained because it was thought that isolation was the path to independent sovereignty.

A South African Dominion under the protection of the British Crown is the only ultimate means of repressing racefeeling. It certainly will never be repressed under a Dutch South African Republic, with the corrupt Transvaal as its nucleus, and President Kruger doing his best to accentuate differences of race. If Lord Carnarvon made a grave blunder in rushing the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877, no blunder could have been worse than Mr. Gladstone's disastrous Convention after Majuba Hill in 1881, restoring its internal independence. Attempts to be amiable after a reverse seldom obtain success or respect. And if the Convention of 1881 was a folly, no signature

was ever put to a more badly worded and useless paper than the Convention of 1884. The Boers' chief object since 1881 has been to see how often they could break these Conventions in spirit without doing so in letter. And now it is scarcely concealed that their aim in breaking them in spirit was to pave the way to become a sovereign international state. The restless spirits of the Transvaal were willing to tolerate British paramountcy for a time, if Great Britain's position were nominal and false, and could be overthrown when convenient; but when they echoed British hopes about the excellence of a South African federation, it was a Dutch federation that they meant, not a British, with perhaps a right to the protection of the British navy so long as they could not do without it. Mr. Kruger would not have joined anything materially different. He shares something of the old Boer feeling of nationality and independence, and love of quiet and liberty, but he has worked upon that feeling which is very genuine in the

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majority of Boer farmers from less praiseworthy motives.

Some of the cases in which the Conventions have been broken in spirit have already become almost matters of history. So far back as 1884 a noticeable instance occurred. The Convention of London had just been signed, on February 27th, defining inter alia the western boundaries of the Transvaal, and not including within those boundaries two territories, called Stellaland and Goshen, beyond its southwest corner, in Bechuanaland. Article 2 laid down that the Transvaal would

strictly adhere to the boundaries defined in the first Article" of the Convention, and Article 4 stated that it would conclude no treaty or engagement with any native tribe to its eastward or westward.* In

* Article 4 of the Convention of 1884 runs as follows: "The South African Republic will conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Republic, until the same has been approved by Her Majesty the Queen.

"Such approval shall be considered to have been granted if Her Majesty's Government shall not, within

the summer of 1884 disturbances arose in connexion with two native chiefs in Stellaland and Goshen, where the new British protectorate had just been proclaimed and a British commissioner sent. Boer freebooters took a prominent part. On September 10th President Kruger, "in the interests of humanity," issued a proclamation that these territories were provisionally under the protection of the Transvaal. The President was, in conversational language, "trying it 'trying it on." Representations from the British Government at once secured the withdrawal of the proclamation in October. Is it paying an undeserved compliment to President Kruger's "slimness (to use an expressive South African word) to say that in thus making use of the Stellaland and Goshen raids he was not merely actuated by a desire to get as much land

six months after receiving a copy of such treaty (which shall be delivered to them immediately upon its completion), have notified that the conclusion of such treaty is in conflict with the interests of Great Britain or of any of Her Majesty's possessions in South Africa."

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as possible for his Afrikander supporters, but that his action was part of a far-seeing conspiracy for extending a Boer barrier right across Africa to Walfisch Bay, in order to prevent entirely all British extension northwards?

Other instances of breaches of the Conventions in spirit though not in letter have taken place with respect to the Transvaal Railway. Hostile railway rates, especially for mining goods destined for Johannesburg, have long been a policy of President Kruger, a charge being made three or four times in excess of the ratestariff of the Cape Government Railway. If the Transvaal Railway were a State Railway the common arrangement in South Africa-President Kruger would be restrained by Article 13 of the Convention of 1884 from imposing these exorbitant charges.* Accordingly, the

* "Except in pursuance of any treaty or engagement made as provided in Article 4 of this Convention, no other or higher duties shall be imposed on the importation into the South African Republic of any article coming from any part of Her Majesty's dominions than