"Subsequently" indeed, and not without good reason. For only two years after the latter of the two said conventions was concluded an event took place, which changed the face of Transvaal affairs to an extent, no mortal eye could

We refer, of course, to the

have foreseen three years before. discovery of the gold-treasures of the Rand. Now, first, it is simply unfair to urge upon any one the exact fulfilment of a pledge after a total change of the situation. "Even", SO runs the argument of one of your most distinguished authorities in ethical philosophy, "even if a promise has been "made quite freely and fairly, circumstances may alter so "much before the time comes to fulfil it, that the effects "of keeping it may be quite other than those which were "foreseen when it was made. In such a case probably all "would agree that the promisee ought to release the promiser." But secondly, apart from the question of fairness, it is a quite unwarrantable assumption to construe from the aforesaid words a juridical "nexus", whereby the President and Volksraad should ever after be debarred from prolonging the term of residence alluded to beyond the limits of a single year. If promise there was, it was a promise made by men, who as is emphatically asserted by your Imperial government, were no party to the instrument drawn up in consequence of those interviews. They were but the receivers of a boon, subject to the conditions, the donor onesidedly stated. Their sayings are therefore, on no account whatever, to be smuggled into the text of that one-sided document,

where such an abnormal provision, as the clipping of the Volksraad's wings in matters of franchise legislation would certainly have been, was nowhere mentioned in express terms. And even if that so called promise could be read into the Pretoria agreement, the London convention, which afterwards took its place, is absolutely silent on this point. Neither in the negotations, which preceded its conclusion, nor in the wordings of it preamble and its articles was the franchiseproblem even touched on. Finally, not to insist upon this: even if your government were right in speaking of that juridical nexus as existing, such a thing would be a matter for arbitration and not for war-threats.

There remains between both terms of our comparison but one material difference, a highly "material" one indeed, only not such remember what we said about the principle of international equality and the parallel we drew between Russia and Montenegro as should have any weight in a juridical argument. It is this; that the Mexican commonwealth is a power of some magnitude, a power, moreover, protected by its big neighbour on account of the Monroe-doctrine, a power, in short, whose hostility your Government would fain avoid, while the Boer-republic is a little state, a stumbling block in the way of that policy of expansion, so popular now amongst some powerful elements of your Unionist majority. We entreat you most earnestly to ponder a minute, in true sincerity of heart, on this inevitable outcome from our inquiry. Every one of you may sometimes have met with

specimens of a sort of men, which, in the language of fable books, we may call "the wolfish type". Just like the wolf, which frisks before the lion, but scolds at the lamb, so those men, while polite in their dealings with equals and superiors, always scoff at the lesser ones, who, unfortunately, happen to come across their path. Have they any proper cause for that behaviour? None, except that they rely on their superior strength and therefore reckon upon impunity. Do not scorn at that unsympathetic type too soon. Change the names, and the tale applies to yourselves, at least to the odious part your leading men bid your grand nation act in its present conflict with the Transvaal. Leave off the vain search for a lawful motive to justify that part to your disquieted conscience. The sham excuses, your minister has adduced to deaden you into moral somnambulism, we have weighed before your eyes and all have been proved wanting. And above all do not bother us with the exigencies of the so-called "respect" which the name of Great Britain ought to command, wherever the Union-jack is hoisted, and which is said to be shaken by the stubbornness of President and Volksraad. No argument sounds more enchanting than this sabre-clashing sentence. Yet no one ought to weigh so little. Even a propos of our conduct towards uncivilised nations, "the honour of the flag" is far too frequently used as a pretext. But where the question involved relates to the position of two Christian neighbours, as in the case of Great Britain and the Transvaal, only one of two issues can be strictly conceived of. On the one hand, you may, by

inspiring your neighbour with a feeling of fear and distrust and anger, acquire for the moment a sense of security; at the least change of the status, however, that security may be converted into insecurity and danger; and at all events that policy fosters a racial feud, most fatal to the development of South Africa as a whole. On the other hand, by developing a cordial loyalty, you may be enabled to rely with absolute confidence upon the hearty co-operation of your Dutch cousins no less than your own British offspring, and by that cooperation insure the welfare of Africa's southern part. If your government persists in the way, it has followed of late, in threatening the Boers, and overawing them, and bullying them, and in exasperating them by shifting its ground at every turn in the course of its negotiations, (not even to speak, by the way, of real violence) then, to the lasting misery of that part of the world, for which you could have been a blessing, you will never attain anything but the sham-security, which was named above. But if, to South Africa's bliss, you want that solid security, which is rooted in genuinelyrespectful loyalty both amongst colonists and neighbours, one policy only is capable of giving you that: conquer distrust by justice. Indeed: there is no excuse for violence. There is no avoiding this conclusion: unless you put a stop in time to the fatal course of your supercilious politicians, you will stand convicted before the civilised world side by side with all those workers of injustice, dead or living, who have attempted to crush down their neighbours on no other ground but this, that, on account of their superior forces, they laugh at NEMESIS.

What a jarring antinomy the greater part of your daily papers exhibited some time ago before our eyes! While they are almost at a loss to find adequate terms to express their righteous indignation against a handful of French officers who heaped injustice upon one man's head, at the same time they never cease abetting the British public and its government, that they may wrong without a shadow of reason. one individual? nay a whole nation. Would it not then befit you to recall at last to your minds the Scriptural saying about the mote and the beam by which our Saviour rebuked the Pharisees of His lifetime?

It is a painful task we have discharged. It is always painful to feel obliged to speak strongly of a fellow man's shortcomings. But it is especially so when we have to deal with a party, who up to the present had generally won our profound respect. For in that case we resent our own action as harmful to ourselves. It makes us spiritually poorer, inasmuch as it robs us of one of the objects never too numerous we had hitherto been accustomed to hold up to our mind as great examples. And that we had done till now with grand old England. We had been taught to honour your glorious country particularly on two accounts. First: as the champion for the chivalrous principle of free trade, the restorer in modern times of the idea of "pax Romana." The civilised world peaceful arena, where every nation should be at liberty to compete fairly with all others, and where the prizes of material

a