“It is perfectly true that the Boer population, the men who signed the terms of peace at Vereeniging, have loyally observed those terms and have carried them out faithfully.  They profess to-day, and I absolutely believe them, that no idea of an armed rising or unlawful action is in their minds.  I may say I am in constant, perhaps I should say frequent communication with the men who in the war fought us so manfully and then made manful terms.  We differ on many points, no doubt, and I do not expect them to rejoice with us in what has happened, or to feel affection for a man who, like myself, has been instrumental in bringing about the great change which has come over the Constitution of the country.  But I firmly believe their word when they come forward and meet us, and, without professing to agree in all respects with the policy of the Government, declare that they desire to co-operate in all questions affecting the prosperity of the country and the maintenance of public order.  I accept the assurance they give in that respect, and I think it is practically impossible to put your hands on anything done by myself or any member of the Government which can be regarded as a manifestation of distrust of the men who have shown themselves, and do show themselves, men of honour.  Let me say, then, I am perfectly satisfied that so great is the influence of their leaders over the minds of the main section of the Boer population that so long as those leaders maintain that attitude a general rising is out of the question.”

Those are the words which Lord Milner used three years ago, and I think they are words which do justice to the subject and to the speaker.  But more than two years have passed since the representations were made to the right hon. gentleman the Member for St. George’s, Hanover Square, which induced him to confer a measure of self-government on the Transvaal.  Those representations laid stress on the fact that the desire for self-government was not put forward only by the Boers, but that both sections of the community in the Transvaal desired to take the control of affairs into their own hands.  The right hon. gentleman published a Constitution.  That Constitution conferred very great and wide powers.  It conferred upon an overwhelming elected majority the absolute power of the purse and control over legislation.  But it has always been my submission to the House that that Constitution had about it no element of permanence, that it could not possibly have been maintained as an enduring, or even a workable settlement; and I am bound to say—­I do not wish to be controversial this afternoon if I can avoid it—­that, when I read the statement that this representative government stage would have been a convenient educative stage in the transition to full self-government, the whole experience of British colonial policy does not justify such an assumption.  The system of representative government without responsible Ministers, without