of the instructions which the Commissioner had received? When the Secretary of State received a telegram from Madeira, the nearest telegraph station, saying that the Transvaal had been annexed, which he did in the following May, he surely must have been more surprised than any other man in England at what had been done.
Was the deed justifiable? Has it been justified by what has occurred since? And if so how had come about a state of things which had made necessary a proceeding apparently so outrageous? The only man I have met in all South Africa who has questioned the propriety of what has been done is Mr. Burgers, the ousted President. Though I have discussed the matter wherever I have been, taking generally something of a slant against Sir Theophilus,—as I must seem to have done in the remarks I have just made, and to which I always felt myself prompted by the high-handedness of the proceeding,—I have never encountered even a doubtful word on the subject, except in what Mr. Burgers said to me. And Mr. Burgers acknowledged to me, not once or twice only, that the step which had been taken was manifestly beneficial, to the Natives, to the English,—and to the Dutch. He thought that Sir Theophilus had done a great wrong,—but that the wrong done would be of great advantage to every one concerned. He made various complaints;—that the Natives around him had been encouraged to rebel in order that an assumed difficulty might be pleaded;—that no national petition, and indeed no trustworthy petition, had been sent forward praying for annexation;—that the deed was uncalled for and tyrannical;—and that the whole pro-
