and the enlargement of the British pharmacopoeia, so as to adapt it to Indian and colonial needs, received the powerful support of the Colonial Office. Unofficially, also, Chamberlain was able to leave his mark on this side of the work, as the establishment of the Colonial Nursing Association was mainly due to him and to Mrs. Chamberlain.
Turning to a wholly different subject, we note that under Chamberlain the British possessions in West Africa were extended by the effective occupation of the territories behind the Gold Coast and Lagos, and by the placing of the Royal Niger Company’s territories under the control of the Colonial Office (1900). Chamberlain also gave his strong support to the federalizing of the protected Malay States and to the extension of their railway system.
But, valuable as was his work for the benefit of the Crown Colonies, it is in his relations with what are now known as the Dominions that Chamberlain is chiefly remembered. As early as 1888 he had told a Toronto audience that the federation of Canada might be ‘the lamp to lighten our path’ to the federation of the British Empire. Soon after he came to the Colonial Office the Jameson Raid (December 1895), and the events that followed in South Africa, obliged him to concentrate his attention, for the most part, on that one subject. But the symptoms of general European hostility which followed that unfortunate episode served to point the moral: ‘Let us do all in our power by improving our communications, by developing our commercial relations, by co-operating in mutual defence; and none of us will ever feel isolated … and in the time to come, the time that must come, when these colonies of ours have grown in stature, in population, and in strength, this league of kindred nations, this federation of Great Britain, will not only provide for its own security, but will be a potent factor in maintaining the peace of the world’ (21 January 1896). In too confident a mood he seemed to think that the opportunity had already arrived for consolidating the scattered parts into ‘a great self-sustaining and self-protecting empire’.
But the South African difficulty, though it might suggest such ideals, prevented any immediate attempt at their realization. Chamberlain had already given a proof of his mettle in one sharp encounter with President Kruger. The president, in 1895, closed the Vaal drifts in pursuance of his policy of obtaining for the Delagoa Bay Railway Company the monopoly of conveying overseas goods into the Transvaal, Chamberlain, having first obtained an assurance that the government of Cape Colony was prepared to share equally in the expense of any military operations that might be necessary, sent an ultimatum to the president, and the drifts were promptly reopened. But the after-effects of the Jameson Raid undoubtedly made Chamberlain’s position more difficult. During the anxious years that followed he was assailed with great bitterness. He was accused of complicity in the Raid; and after his solemn denial had been unanimously accepted by the House of Commons committee which dealt with the matter, it was still insinuated that there was more behind, which should have been divulged. In fact, Chamberlain’s prompt and immediate action in denouncing the Raid before he knew of its failure, is sufficient proof that he could not have had previous knowledge regarding it. There may have been some confusion between a rising of the Johannesburg Uitlanders, which was expected in England, and the Raid, which was a bolt from the blue. In any case, the atmosphere of suspicion and hate, which the Raid created, made almost hopeless the attempt to secure civic rights for the Transvaal Uitlanders. Moreover, the attitude of the high commissioner, Sir Hercules Robinson (afterwards Baron Rosmead, q.v.), who concentrated all his efforts on securing lenient terms for the prisoners, made still more difficult the task of the colonial secretary. An ultimatum might lead to war; and such a war, he told the House of Commons on 8 May 1896, would be in the nature of a civil war—long, bitter, costly, leaving behind it the embers of strife, which generations might not extinguish. But success in dealing with the Jameson trouble had both hardened Kruger’s heart and increased his confidence in his own wisdom; whilst the Raid had aroused a strong nationalist spirit throughout Dutch South Africa. An agreement which was practically an offensive and defensive alliance between the Orange Free State and the Transvaal (1897) was a serious menace to British interests, and the temporary eclipse of Cecil Rhodes made the English in Cape Colony as sheep without a shepherd.
The appointment, in 1897,.of a high commissioner—Sir Alfred (afterwards Viscount) Milner—who combined strength with caution, gave the colonial secretary an adviser in whom he could place com-
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