PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE.
and men were throwing up commissions in local Volunteer corps and such like things.
The recent negotiations.Mr. Brassey described the negotiations which had taken place between the Transvaal and English Governments during the last few months, and, in concluding his speech, said it was his deliberate opinion that the Government could not have accepted unreservedly the franchise proposals of August 19th. The fact of the Transvaal Government having successfully kept the Uitlanders in subjection for years past had caused unrest all over South Africa, and unless we asserted our position as the paramount power now, no settlement had a chance of being permanent. He did not wish to enter into a criticism of the conduct of the Government in this matter, but it was quite possible that some of the dispatches might have been more temperately worded if they had been written by an old diplomatist like Lord Salisbury, instead of a new diplomatist of the character of Mr. Chamberlain; but, in dealing with this question, Her Majesty's Government had been extraordinarily patient. He believed Sir Alfred Milner had done his best to avert war, but he thought the Government was in fault in allowing that gentleman's dispatches to Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain's dispatches to Sir Alfred Milner, to be published.
Mr. Brassey asked his audience whether they had been struck, as he had, with the patience of the Uitlanders, in spite of all they had gone through—tradesmen ruined and the mine-owners losing between them about one and a half million pounds per month—and said he should like to impress upon the Government that it was not very fair to delay much longer.254
