By what illusion, it may well be asked, could that hitherto friendly people have been deluded to risk all in a disloyal breach with England by joining the Transvaal in a “Bond” issue against her best friend?  Towards the Transvaal also had England proved her earnest desire to maintain an intercourse on the basis of sincere amity, desirous only of reciprocity, which indeed could be expected in willing return, seeing that England took upon her own shoulders to provide for the protection and welfare of the entire area of South Africa by sea and land, whilst both Republics freely participated in all the great benefits so derived.  These considerations should substantially disprove the wicked aspersion lately made that British policy aimed at the subversion of republican autonomy in those two States.  All that Great Britain needed and confidently expected in return for her goodwill was friendly adhesion, and a willing recognition of her paramountcy in matters affecting the common weal of South Africa as a whole, and also such reciprocity and mutual concern in the welfare of all as consistently comport with common interests.  How fell and malignant the “influence” which operated a treacherous ingratitude and hostility instead!

TRANSVAAL HISTORY—­SUZERAINTY

The references made to the history of the Transvaal so far reach up to the rehabilitation of its independence and the convention of 1881.  Some of the conditions of that treaty, especially the subordinate position imposed by the suzerainty clause, were found to be repugnant to the burghers.  Delegates were therefore commissioned to proceed to England in order to get the treaty so altered as to place the State into the status provided by the Sand River convention, which conceded absolute independence.  Mr. Jorrison, a violent anti-English Hollander, was the chief adviser of the members of that delegation.

To that the English Ministry could not assent, but sought to meet the wishes of the people by agreeing to certain modifications of the convention of 1881.  This was effected with the treaty of 1884.  The delegates had specially urged the renunciation of the suzerainty claim, but that claim appears not to have been abandoned, to judge from the absence of such mention in the novated treaty.  Had its renunciation been agreed to, as has been since averred, it is quite certain that the delegates would not have been content without the mention in most distinct terms of that, to them, so important point.  It may therefore be assumed as a fact that the negotiations did not result in an active suspension of the relations as set forth in the convention of 1881, and that the Transvaal continued in a status of subordinacy to England, but only with a wider range in regard to conditions of autonomy.  To most lay minds it therefore appears perfectly clear that the Transvaal delegates had well understood and accepted, and so had also their Government, that the convention of 1884 was de facto a renewal of that of 1881, with the only difference that it provided an enlarged exercise of autonomy, but without in the least abrogating the principles of respective relations, which were left intact, or at least latent.