or the Assizes he receives equal treatment and the full right to defend himself in open public Court. But public opinion on the other side of the Channel is not yet fully ripe for so bold a system. The willingness of the French nation to submit to police restrictions on private liberty is of very old standing, and prevails still, in spite of the Revolution, and in spite of the fact that the French judges, if we may believe Mr. Bodley, hold their practice to be bad for magistrates, bad for counsel, bad for prisoners.'

Meanwhile, in some matters England may with advantage borrow from France. In the prosecution of crime there is no doubt that the action publique, under the direction of the Public Prosecutor, is a better guarantee for the safety and security of life and property than any system of private prosecution. We have admitted the principle of the action publique by the establishment of a Public Prosecutor's Department, but the intervention of that official is rare. In the Prosecution of Offences Acts of 1879 and 1884 there is the nucleus of a national and public system. The Solicitor to the Treasury acts as director of public prosecutions, subject to the direction of the Attorney-General. It is his duty to institute criminal proceedings in crimes of the gravest character such as murder, and generally in offences which appear to him to call for prosecution in the interests of the public. But the practical outcome of the present system is very small. The annual average of cases tried by jury on indictment, for the five years ending 1897, is 11,633; if the indictable cases disposed of summarily are included, the total annual average is 53,174. Yet in the year 1897 only 414 cases were prosecuted by the Public Prosecutor. When we find that the average annual number of offences against the person reported to the police during the five years 1893-97 was 3,853, and that of offences against property with violence was 7,870, while the average numbers of cases brought to trial were only 1,500 and 2,015 respectively, it would seen desirable that the Public Prosecutor should considerably extend the area of his activity. We are slow in the matter of legal reform; but as we have acknowledged that the principle of public prosecution is sound, by actually creating a Public Prosecutor, why should we not make it more efficacious? Society is interested in the repression of all crime; why should we not place all crime in the Prosecutor's hands?

ART. XI.-1. Further Correspondence respecting the Affairs of Swaziland. August 1890. (C. 6200.)

2. A Convention between Her Majesty and the South African Republic for the Settlement of the Affairs of Swaziland, with Correspondence relating thereto. November 1890. (C. 6217.) 3. Further Correspondence respecting the Affairs of Swaziland. November 1893. (C. 7212.)

4. Correspondence relating to Certain Native Territories situated to the North-East of Zululand. June 27th, 1895. (C. 7780.) 5. Further Correspondence relating to Certain Native Territories situated to the North-East of Zululand. August 1895.

(C. 7878.)

6. Paul Kruger and his Times. By F. Reginald Statham. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Boston: L. C. Page and Co., 1898.

7. South Africa. By George M'Call Theal, LL.D. Fourth Edition. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899. (Story of the Nations.)

8. Impressions of South Africa. By James Bryce. Third Edition. London: Macmillan and Co., 1899.

9. The Transvaal and the Boers. By W. E. Garrett Fisher. London: Chapman and Hall, 1900.

10. The History of South Africa to the Jameson Raid. By C. P. Lucas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899.

IN

N the last number of this Review we dealt at some length with the situation in South Africa, and attempted to show that the matter at issue between the British Government and the South African Republic was far wider than the questions involved in the treatment of the Uitlanders. The events which have happened since the article was written have amply justified what we then said, and have clearly shown that what was at stake was the whole position of Great Britain in South Africa. We propose now to review a certain phase of the policy of the Republic between the Convention of London and the unfortunate events of 1895-6. We have no intention at present of entering on a critical examination of the diplomatic controversy which immediately preceded this war; that is a task which may be discharged when the proper time comes; but we wish to direct the attention of our readers to certain aspects of recent South African history of which too little notice has been taken, owing to the predominant interest aroused by the events in the interior of the Transvaal.

We are the more inclined to believe that this will be of use to our readers, because a study of the various works which

profess to instruct the public as to the course of South African history during the last fifteen years shows how much misapprehension exists with regard to the importance and tendency of the events with which we are concerned. The information which can be extracted from the Blue-books is very incomplete; and nearly all the works which have appeared are written either by strong adherents of the Chartered Company or by advocates and defenders of the South African Republic. We miss a careful and impartial consideration of the policy of the Imperial Government; even so careful a writer as Dr. Theal speaks of the relations with the Transvaal during these years as showing unfriendliness on the part of the British Government :

'It has been stated (he says) that the policy of the Republic was unfriendly towards the British possessions in South Africa. But the unfriendliness was not confined to one side, though neither the colonial Governments nor the colonial people were to blame in the matter. The long delay in connexion with the transfer of Swaziland, and the annexation to the British dominions, in April and May 1895, of the territory between the Portuguese possessions and Zululand, whereby the Republic was shut in from extending to the sea, cannot be ignored as weights in the other scale.'

We believe that an impartial review will show that this charge has no foundation in fact.

Prince Bismarck once said that it was impossible to rely on the gratitude of a nation; sometimes one could depend on the friendship of a sovereign or a dynasty, but of a nation-never. The history of the South African Republic may well serve as an illustration of this characteristic saying. When the British Government in 1881 conferred a modified independence on the Transvaal, they undoubtedly believed that they were performing a generous action, and hoped that the gratitude of the Boers would be the best guarantee for the peace of South Africa. How mistaken were they! and yet how natural was the mistake! The reason of it is simple. The Boers believed that they had been deeply wronged by the annexation; they claimed as a right the complete restoration of their independence as it had been before 1877. They received a partial independence, and accepted it not as a full settlement but as the first instalment. While we were expecting to find them gratefully enjoying their restored right of self-government, they were only considering how they could regain complete independence.

Once more they brought their grievances to the ears of the British Government, and met with a willing hearing-too willing, as we think. We have already shown with what diplomatic ability they got the Convention of Pretoria altered;

by the Convention of London it might indeed seem as if they had attained their wishes. The suzerainty of the Crown was not indeed explicitly withdrawn, but it was no longer mentioned; the right to maintain a British Resident at Pretoria was given up; British troops could no longer be moved across the territory of the Transvaal; and the title of South African Republic,' on which they set such store, was officially restored. It might have been supposed that they would at last be satisfied; that from this time the hopes of the British Government would be achieved; and that the South African Republic, content with its internal independence, would become a friendly, peaceable, and law-abiding member of the South African community.

This, however, was not the case. Just as, from the time the Convention of Pretoria was signed, the Boers set to work to procure an alteration of its provisions, so they regarded the Convention of London merely as a stepping-stone towards the attainment of the position of a completely sovereign, independent, and international State. This is the main cause of the constant friction between England and the Republic. Whatever the question at issue might be, whether it was a commercial union, the right of extending the territory of the Republic, the treatment of British subjects, or the building of railways, there was always an irreconcilable difference between the two parties. The British authorities started from the Convention of London; they required that the Republic should regulate its action in strict conformity with that instrument; any deviation from it must be the subject of special and careful discussion. On the other side the President and his advisers never ceased to regard the Convention as a wrong and injury done to the Republic; wherever and whenever they dared, they ignored its provisions; they held that the violation of the agreement was their right, and whenever the British Government required that their policy should be guided by it, they remonstrated as against an act of grave unfriendliness.

The Convention of London left to the Republic almost absolute freedom except on two points: one was its relations with foreign Powers, the other was that it should not extend its territory beyond the limits laid down. The remainder of the Convention dealt with matters chiefly of local and temporary importance; the only other clauses which might seem in any way to check its freedom of action were those which forbade the introduction of slavery, or of any apprenticeship partaking of the nature of slavery; and the clause that no differential duties should be placed on articles imported into the South African Republic from British possessions. It will, we think,

be generally acknowledged that there was nothing included in the Convention which was not the absolute minimum necessary for the security of British interests, and the maintenance of civilised government. Nevertheless, the Republic did not cease to protest against these provisions, and again and again attempted to procure an alteration of this Convention, carrying still further the changes previously effected in that of Pretoria.

The chief objection to the Convention of London arose not so much from its contents as from its form. It was a unilateral instrument emanating from the Crown, in the form, not of a treaty, but of a charter of self-government. The Boers wished to substitute a simple treaty of amity and commerce,' by which the very last remnants of British authority would disappear; if they succeeded in this, then, of course, they could justly claim that all questions of interpretation should be decided by arbitration. On this matter they more than once approached the British Government; they made informal suggestions; they offered, as in 1884, to send a deputation to England to discuss the matter. It was not, however, only against the form that their protests were raised. Article No. 4 provides that no treaty with a foreign Power should be valid unless it had received the consent of the Queen; against this they protested. Article No. 8 provides against the introduction of slavery; this also they wished to see abrogated. Article No. 7 provides that there should be no molestation of those who before 1881 had fought against the Transvaal; they represented that this was no longer necessary, and that to maintain it was an indignity to the country. If we remember all that has happened, it was too great a demand on British confidence to ask the Government to depend for security in these matters on the mere good-will of the Boer Government.

Fortunately, the control of British interests was, after 1886, in firmer hands than those of Lord Derby; all hints and suggestions on these matters were rejected, but we cannot but admire the persistence and ingenuity with which again and again the Boers returned to the point. A welcome opportunity was given to the Government of Pretoria by the sympathy which the British Government showed for the inhabitants of Johannesburg; it was hoped that this might afford an opening for negotiating a new Convention. The idea which was in the minds of the President and his advisers was that a formal discussion on the franchise should lead to a revision of the Convention of London; that, if in consequence of the pressure exerted by the British Government the franchise were extended to the Uitlanders, this should be part of a general Vol. 191.-No. 381.