settlement; and that, in return for this act of favour on the part of the Republic, the British Government should agree to substitute a new treaty of amity and commerce,' as between two contracting parties negotiating on equal terms, for the one-sided Convention by which they were bound. They always refused to enter into any separate or fresh Convention except on these terms. It will be remembered, for instance, that in 1894 a serious difficulty arose regarding the claim of the Republic to commandeer British subjects in the war against Malaboch. Sir Henry Loch, who was then High Commissioner, on that occasion visited Pretoria; the result of his remonstrances was that the British subjects who had been commandeered were recalled, and a written promise was given that they should not be commandeered for the future. It seemed, however, desirable that this immunity should rest not only on a promise, but be embodied in a formal Convention; and this was the more necessary because Conventions had been entered into by the Republic with the Governments of nearly all European States, exempting their subjects from military service, and British subjects were thus at a manifest disadvantage as compared with other Uitlanders. A draft Convention was presented by Sir Henry Loch to the President, but the Volksraad refused to ratify it, their reason being that they wished to avoid a separate Convention on this point, and to embody what they regarded as a concession in a general revision of the Convention of London. The point is one which, as our readers will recollect, came forward prominently in recent negotiations. Both in the spring of 1896, and again in the autumn of 1899, this demand for a withdrawal of the provisions of the London Convention was made. When Mr. Chamberlain invited Mr. Kruger to visit England immediately after the Raid, it was on this point that the preliminary negotiations broke down. The President made it a condition of his undertaking the journey, that the Convention of London should be superseded; the reason for this demand should be carefully noticed. It was, he said, because in several respects it has already virtually ceased to exist; because in other respects it has no more cause for existence; because it is injurious to the dignity of an independent Republic.' Of course, the very reason why the Convention took the form which it did was that the British Government did not desire that the South African Republic should assume the dignity of an independent State. The statement that it had no more cause to exist was one to which no Englishman could assent; and that it had virtually ceased to exist was not true except in very subordinate points. Moreover President Kruger specifically demanded that the withdrawal of Article 4 should be one of the subjects of the conference, and he suggested that the Convention should be replaced by a treaty of peace, commerce, and friendship. Again, in the autumn of last year, just before the outbreak of war, it will be remembered that, in a very celebrated despatch, President Kruger offered to grant the terms required by the High Commissioner with regard to the Uitlanders on condition that all claim to suzerainty or to interfere with the internal condition of the Transvaal should be given up; in other words, that Great Britain should abdicate all rights based upon the Convention of London. It has often been suggested that these demands made by the President were the natural result of the distrust caused by the Jameson Raid. Nothing is further from the truth. They were not new demands; they had been formulated at least as far back as 1893; they had again and again been brought to the notice of the British Government; they represented the deliberate and persistent policy of the President; and it is this attempt on every possible occasion to escape from the restrictions of the Convention which has made it so difficult to carry on any negotiations with him. The direct demand for a renunciation of the suzerainty was the President's trump card; for years he had looked forward to playing it. Probably one of the reasons for refusing any amelioration in the condition of the Uitlanders was that he might play it. When he had played it and lost, there was no course open to him but surrender or war. The other important point in regard to which the freedom of the Republic was limited was the extension of the frontier. It is a matter which cannot be studied too closely by those who wish to understand the character of Boer diplomacy. On this point the Convention of London was very carefully worded, and the provisions were very strict. By Article 2 the Government of the South African Republic undertook 'strictly to adhere to the boundaries defined in the first article, and to do its utmost to prevent any of its inhabitants from making any encroachments upon lands beyond the said boundaries'; and by Article 4 it undertook not to conclude any treaty or engagement with any native tribe to the eastward or westward of the Republic, until the same had been approved by Her Majesty the Queen. No one, we believe, who has followed the history of the western frontier will maintain that these clauses were unnecessary, nor can it be said that they were unjust. The restoration of inde not guilty, or that he prefers to make no statement at all One point remains to be considered. The defenders o E or the Assizes-be 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 fly ripe for so bold a system. The willingness of the French nation to subunit to police restrictions on private liberty is of very on standing. and prevails still, in spite of the Revolution, and in spite of the fact that the French judges, if we may believe Mr. Bager, hold their practice to be 'bad for magistrates, bad or conse 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 Patc 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 art putique by the establishment of a Public Prosecutor's Department, but the intervention of that official is rare. In the Prosecution Offences Acts of 1879 and 1884 there is the nuciens of national and public system. The Solicitor to the Treasury acts as director of public prosecutions, subject to the direct of the Attorney-General. It is his duty to institute crinuta 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 5174. Te 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 agains 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 seem 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? that this charge ossible to rely on ld depend on the a nation-never. ay well serve as When the British ependence on the were performing ade of the Boers of South Africa. was the mistake! ved that they had hey claimed as a endence as it had ndependence, and : first instalment. lly enjoying their only considering o the ears of the ing hearing-too hown with what Pretoria altered; pendence had been the restoration to the Boers of full rights of self-government within their own territory and their assigned limits. It was one thing to grant this, it would have been quite a different thing to allow the Republic to be a centre whence Republican government should spread over all the unoccupied parts of South Africa; yet this undoubtedly would have been the case had not the British Government after 1884 strictly enforced the observance of these articles. What the Government of Pretoria aimed at was an extension of territory which, had it been granted, would have made the Republic the leading and dominant State in South Africa. On the west they tried to secure the control over the great trade route northward ; on the north they coveted the territories of the Matabele and of the Mashona; on the east they claimed that all the country which lay between the Republic and the sea should be surrendered to them, so that with a harbour and sea-coast of their own they might take their place as a completely independent State in the family of nations. The attempted extension on the west was stopped by Sir Charles Warren's expedition and by the proclamation of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in 1885; with that we do not propose to deal. There remain however the questions of the eastern and of the northern frontier, which came to a crisis in 1890. The negotiations touching these matters deserve more attention than they have received; and we are the inore inclined to undertake the task of explaining them, because we are in a position to supplement the information already published, and to give an authentic account of some points respecting which only distorted or imperfect narratives have hitherto appeared. Let us take first the question of the northern frontier. There had long been among the more adventurous of the burghers a strong desire to wander north, and, as they had so often done, to found a new and independent State in the country beyond the Limpopo. They disliked the constant flow of English into the country, and saw with regret that much of the land was being bought by Englishmen. They wished to go to new country where they would be untrammelled by the growth of civilisation. They were dissatisfied even with their own Government: it was becoming too strong and too exacting; they desired to make a new State of their own where the Government should be even more democratic than it was in the Republic. The knowledge that the north was always open, even after the west was closed, had kept this desire alive. Suddenly, in 1888, they heard that Mr. Moffat had concluded a |