“That practically is the demand.  Are you prepared to grant it?  I for my part say, that rather than grant it I would (a voice in the meeting—­’fight!’) yes, if necessary, fight; but I will do my utmost to persuade my fellow countrymen to make the declaration that, if necessary, force will be used, which, if it was believed in, would make it unnecessary to fight.

“The Transvaal Boers know our power, and the Delegates know our power.  It is our will that they doubt.  If I could not persuade my fellow countrymen that they meant to show that they would never grant such demands as these, I would rather do—­what I should otherwise oppose with all my might,—­withdraw from South Africa altogether.  I am not so proud of our extended Empire as to wish to preserve it at the cost of England refusing to discharge her duties.  If we have obligations we must meet them, and if we have duties we must fulfil them; and I have confidence in the English people that first or last they will make our Government fulfil its obligations.  But there is much difference between first and last; last is much more difficult than first, and more costly than first.  The cost increases with more than geometrical progression.  There are people who say, (but the British nation will not say it;) ’leave us alone, let these Colonists and Boers and Natives whom we are tired of, fight it out as best they can; let us declare by our deeds, or rather by our non deeds that we will not keep our promise nor fulfil our duty.’  Such a course as that would be as extravagantly costly as it would be shamefully wrong.  This laissez faire policy tends to make things go from bad to worse until at last by a great and most costly effort, and perhaps by a really bloody and destructive war, we shall be obliged to do in the end at a greater cost, and in a worse way, that which we could do now.  It is not impossible to do it now.  A gentleman in the meeting said it was a question of fighting.  I do not believe this; but though born a Quaker, I must admit that if there be no other way by which we can protect our allies and prevent the ungrateful desertion of those who helped us in the time of need, than by the exercise of force, I say force must be exercised.”

Readers will remark how extraordinarily prophetic are these words of Mr. Forster, spoken in 1883.

The “venerable and beloved Lord Shaftesbury,” as Mr. Mackenzie calls him, spoke as follows:—­

“This morning has been put into my hands the reply of the Transvaal delegates to the Aborigines Protection Society.  I read it with a certain amount of astonishment and of comfort too,—­of astonishment that men should be found possessing such a depth of Christianity, such sentiments of religion, such love for veracity, and such regard for the human race as to put on record and to sign with their own hands such a denial of the atrocities and cruelties which have been recorded against them for so many years.  It is most blessed to contemplate the depth