1899.] The Transvaal and Mr. Chamberlain. [159
vaal itself, there was a progressive party. For fifteen years the Boer oligarchy, contrary to the spirit and, in many cases, he believed, to the letter of the convention, had put the Outlanders in a position of inferiority to the Boer inhabitants. There had resulted five crises under different Governments, and in one case an insurrection. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had talked of race antagonism as the result of a war. The race antagonism was there already, which did not arise in the Orange Free State or in Cape Colony, where both races had equal rights, but in the Transvaal : " Here is a country mainly inhabited by British subjects surrounded almost for its entire circumference by British colonies, whose foreign relations are under the control of the British Government, and yet where British subjects are placed in a position of humiliating inferiority, where they are subject to injury, and even to outrage, and where the friendly remonstrances of the suzerain Power are treated with contempt. This matter is sometimes discussed as if it were a question of some petty reform. It is nothing of the kind. It is the power and authority of the British Empire. It is the position of Great Britain in South Africa. It is the question of our pre- dominance, and how it is to be interpreted, and it is the question of peace throughout the whole of South Africa/ ' It had been said this state of affairs was not a breach of the convention. But the convention extended, not limited, the right of inter- ference. And in any case there remained the right of which Mr. Gladstone spoke in 1882 of protecting our subjects where- ever they went in pursuit of lawful objects. But they had a right under the convention, which, he contended, had been broken on many occasions. Moreover, the convention had been constantly evaded, or attempted to be evaded — in the matter, for instance, of our control over treaties, and with regard to the general incidence of taxation. These continual evasions had naturally given rise to the suspicion that there was a deliberate attempt to get out of the convention altogether. The whole spirit of the convention was the preservation of equality as between all the white inhabitants of the Transvaal, and the whole policy of the Transvaal had been to promote a position of inferiority on the part of certain classes. The con- ventions were the result of a previous conference at which definite promises were made. On May 10, 1881, at a conference between representatives of her Majesty and representatives of the Transvaal, there was a distinct promise that, so far as burgher rights were concerned, they made and would make no difference whatever between burghers and those who came in, whereas, in fact, they had gradually made the inequality more marked. If, therefore, he was asked why they meddled with internal affairs of the Transvaal he would reply that (1; they had the right of every Power to protect their own subjects ; (2) they had special rights as suzerain Power ; (3) the convention had been broken in the letter and the spirit ; (4) the promises
