In the month of February the Transvaal Government received a dispatch from her Majesty’s Government with reference to the dynamite concession.  It referred to the announcement already recorded, that in the course of the coming session of the Raad a proposal would be submitted for the extension of the monopoly for fifteen years.  Mr. Chamberlain pointed out that her Majesty’s Government were advised that the dynamite monopoly in its present form constitutes a breach of the Convention; he expressed the hope that the Transvaal Government might see its way voluntarily either to cancel the monopoly or to so amend it as to make it in the true sense a State monopoly operating for the benefit of the State; and he suggested that in any case no attempt should be made to extend the present concession, as such a proposal would compel her Majesty’s Government to take steps which they had hitherto abstained from taking in the hope and belief that the Transvaal Government would itself deal satisfactorily with the matter.  It was with this despatch, so to say in his pocket, that the President introduced and endeavoured to force through the Raad the proposal to grant a fifteen years’ extension of the monopoly.

That representations had been made by the British Government on the subject of the dynamite monopoly, had been known for some time before the Peace Negotiations (as they have been called) between the Government and the Capitalists were proposed.  On February 27{49} Mr. Edouard Lippert, the original dynamite concessionaire, who it was known would receive the further sum of L150,000 if the monopoly remained uncancelled for five years, opened negotiations on behalf of the Government with certain representatives of the capitalist groups on the Rand; and it was immediately seen that the main—­one might almost say sole—­object of the negotiations was to safeguard the dynamite monopoly.  The Government had, in fact, been placed in a very awkward position.  One of the excuses for not expropriating the monopoly had been that the State had not been successful in raising a loan.  In order to deal with this objection the Chamber of Mines had, in the month of February, 1899, made an offer, guaranteed by all the principal firms on the Rand, to provide the sum of L600,000 to compensate the monopolists for their actual expenditure up to date upon buildings, plant, machinery, &c., so that there should be no semblance of injustice in the treatment meted out to them.  The conditions of the offer were that the dynamite monopoly should be cancelled and importation of explosives permitted under an import duty which would give the State a very large revenue at once and which in the course of a few years would provide a sinking fund sufficient to extinguish the loan of L600,000.  The offer was so favourable to the State that it placed the Government in a quandary.{50} The attitude of the Volksraad, too, was distinctly hostile to the dynamite monopoly; and on top of all came the representations of the Imperial Government upon the subject.  It became necessary to do something to save the threatened ‘cornerstone’; hence the Peace negotiations between the Government and the capitalists.