s

23 "I do not know whether I am indebted to you or to Mr. Childers or to
both, for the continuance of H.M.'s confidence, but I shall always
feel more deeply grateful than I can express; and can never forget
H.M.'s gracious message of encouragement at a time of great
trouble."--Colley to Kimberley, Jan. 31, 1881.

24 "The directions to Colley," says Mr. Bright in a cabinet minute,
"intended to convey the offer of a suspension of hostilities on both
sides, with a proposal that a commissioner should be appointed to
enter into negotiations and arrangements with a view to peace."

_ 25 Life of Childers_, ii. p. 24.

M17 Repulse On Majuba Hill

26 Colley's letter to Childers, Feb. 23, _Life of Childers_, ii. p. 24.

M18 Sir Evelyn Wood's View

27 See Selborne's _Memorials_, ii. p. 3, and also a speech by Lord
Kimberley at Newcastle, Nov. 14, 1899.

28 In a speech at Edinburgh (Sept. 1, 1884), Mr. Gladstone put the same
argument--"The people of the Transvaal, few in number, were in close
and strong sympathy with their brethren in race, language, and
religion. Throughout South Africa these men, partly British subjects
and partly not, were as one man associated in feeling with the
people of the Transvaal; and had we persisted in that dishonourable
attempt, against all our own interests, to coerce the Transvaal as
we attempted to coerce Afghanistan, we should have had the whole
mass of the Dutch population at the Cape and throughout South Africa
rising in arms against us."

29 July 25, 1881.

30 One of the most determined enemies of the government in 1881, ten
years later, in a visit to South Africa, changed his mind. "The
Dutch sentiment in the Cape Colony, wrote Lord Randolph Churchill,
'had been so exasperated by what it considered the unjust,
faithless, and arbitrary policy pursued towards the free Dutchmen of
the Transvaal by Frere, Shepstone, and Lanyon, that the final
triumph of the British arms, mainly by brute force, would have
permanently and hopelessly alienated it from Great Britain.... On
the whole, I find myself free to confess, and without reluctance to
admit, that the English escaped from a wretched and discreditable
muddle, not without harm and damage, but perhaps in the best
possible manner."

M19 Case C