because it was not only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal citizenship.  Nobody out there called the new system an “experiment.”  The wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that whatever the difficulties—­and there were great difficulties—­it was the right thing to be done under the circumstances, and if this unanimity was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against the Liberal attitude at home towards Chinese labour, nobody is any the worse for that.  The day will come when even that burning question will be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside the great principle of responsible government, which includes the decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of domestic policy.

Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British opinion in the Transvaal.  But, again, this was natural.  Parties had long been divided on the South African question.  The abrupt reversal of policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly, grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa.  It is not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emancipated Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful surrender to “the enemy.”  Some of the leading actors in these scenes, notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in their praise of Lord Milner’s services to South Africa.  That Lord Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly true, and he deserves all honour for it.  Probably no public servant of the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and a higher sense of duty.  But good administration is not an adequate substitute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked.  He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in 1906.  It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens.  His violent speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch influences free play in South Africa—­speeches breathing the essential spirit of Fitzgibbonism—­would have wrought incalculable mischief had they coincided with effective