losses, except such as stood in relation with dividend-paying mines.  England, though apparently apathetic and inactive, was not inattentive to the situation.  Whoever had a stake, whether in South Africa or abroad, looked to Great Britain as the Power upon whom the duty devolved to provide a peaceable remedy.  The suzerainty controversy was then followed by other questions of diplomatic difference, among which that of the franchise reform.  Upon this matter English intervention took an insistent form.  It clearly turned all upon that—­and once it were satisfactorily arranged, the amicable solution of other questions might in turn be expected to follow.  As to suzerainty, that claim appeared relegated to remain in abeyance.  A conference was convened at Bloemfontein early in June, 1899, for the discussion of those topics between the Colonial Governor, Sir Alfred Milner, and the Presidents of the two Republics.  The outcome was a final demand for the right of representation of the Uitlander interests in the legislative bodies of the Transvaal, amounting to one-fifth of the total aggregate of members, the voting qualifications to consist in the usual reasonable conditions and a residence in the State of five years, operating retrospectively.

We may here consider whether such a demand contained any real feature of unfairness to warrant refusal.

Three-fifths of the entire white Transvaal population were Uitlanders, the majority of them English.  They own four-fifths of the total wealth invested in the State.  About half of them have been domiciled, with house and other fixed property, for periods of from five to ten years and more.

The preponderance is not only in numbers and wealth, but also in intelligence and in contributing at least four-fifths of the total State revenues.

Is it right or prudent to exclude such interests and such a majority from legislative representation?

Could a minority of one-fifth, that is to say, twelve Uitlander members against forty-eight Boer members, be said to constitute a menace to the status or to the conservative interests of State?

Do Uitlanders not deserve equal recognition with the burghers in respect to intrinsic interest in the land, seeing that the former supplied all the skill and the capital to explore and exploit the mine wealth, all at their risk, and without which it would all have remained hidden and the country continued fallow and poor?

Though one-fifth would be so small a minority, it would at least have afforded the constitutional method of declaring the wishes of Uitlanders, and have done away with the disquieting and less effective practices of Press agitations, public demonstrations, and petitions.  The measure could also have been expected to open up the way towards reconciling relations between the English and Boer races, beginning in the Transvaal, where it was hoped that the burghers would be gained over as friends, and so to stand aloof from the Afrikaner