L
378] FOEEIGN HISTOEY. [1899.
judiciary was set aside, and August 20 and 27 were days set apart by proclamation for national humiliation and prayer.
The Chamber of Mines at Johannesburg had offered in February to lend money to cancel the dynamite monopoly, or it was to be extended on conditions for a further fifteen years. President Kruger a month later said that this offer never reached the executive, and as the Netherlands Company was
Eaying back the loan of 2,000,00(M. it was not necessary to orrow. A secret session of the Eaad (July 19) discussed the subject, Mr. Kruger opposed cancellation, and it was said that the President resigned office, but the Volksraad refused by one vote to accept it. Afterwards the Dynamite Company proposed a reduction of prices, and on August 26 the Volksraad adopted the majority report of the Dynamite Commission to continue the monopoly.
General Sir W. F. Butler, in command of the British force in South Africa, was relieved on August 15, and Lieut. -General Sir Forestier- Walker was appointed his successor.
On August 21 Mr. Kruger made an alternative new proposal of a five years franchise, and offered a share in the election of President of the Transvaal, with increased representation of the gold fields in the Volksraad, while other questions were to be sub- mitted to arbitration, but not to a foreign Power. He proposed that Great Britain should relinquish all claims to suzerainty, and should not use her present interference in Transvaal affairs as a precedent.
To this the Imperial Government replied (Aug. 28), that it could not give up its rights under the conventions of 1881 and 1884, nor divest itself of the obligations of a civilised Power to protect its citizens abroad from injustice, adding that there were matters which the giving of a franchise could not settle, and which could not properly be left to arbitration, but they could be settled with the other questions at a conference re- commended to be held at Cape Town.
The Transvaal replied with regrets that Great Britain was not able to accept the proposals made by the Transvaal (Aug. 19 and 21), by which the term for obtaining the franchise was fixed at five years, and the representation of the Witwatersrand district was increased. On these conditions the Transvaal would con- sider its formal proposals annulled ; the Transvaal never desired Great Britain to abandon any rights possessed in virtue of the London Convention of 1884, or in virtue of international law, and the Transvaal hoped that these declarations would still lead to a solution of existing difficulties. As to the suzerainty the Transvaal referred to its despatch of April 16, 1898 ; the Transvaal Government had already made known to the British Agent its objections to the High Commissioner's proposals of August 2, suggesting appointment of delegates to draw up a report on the last electoral law voted by the Volksraad, and if the one-sided examination referred to in the last British de-
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