rd Derby handed them in time of peace. Their
style was altered from the Transvaal to the South African Republic, a
change which was ominously suggestive of expansion in the future. The
control of Great Britain over their foreign policy was also relaxed,
though a power of veto was retained. But the most important thing of
all, and the fruitful cause of future trouble, lay in an omission. A
suzerainty is a vague term, but in politics, as in theology, the more
nebulous a thing is the more does it excite the imagination and the
passions of men. This suzerainty was declared in the preamble of the
first treaty, and no mention of it was made in the second. Was it
thereby abrogated or was it not? The British contention was that only
the articles were changed, and that the preamble continued to hold good
for both treaties. They pointed out that not only the suzerainty, but
also the independence, of the Transvaal was proclaimed in that preamble,
and that if one lapsed the other must do so also. On the other hand,
the Boers pointed to the fact that there was actually a preamble to the
second Convention, which would seem, therefore, to have taken the place
of the first. The point is so technical that it appears to be eminently
one of those questions which might with propriety have been submitted to
the decision of a board of foreign jurists--or possibly to the Supreme
Court of the United States. If the decision had been given against Great
Britain, we might have accepted it in a chastened spirit as a fitting
punishment for the carelessness of the representative who failed to
make our meaning intelligible. Carlyle has said that a political mistake
always ends in a broken head for somebody. Unfortunately the somebody is
usually somebody else. We have read the story of the political mistakes.
Only too soon we shall come to the broken heads.

This, then, is a synopsis of what had occurred up to the signing of
the Convention, which finally established, or failed to establish, the
position of the South African Republic. We must now leave the larger
questions, and descend to the internal affairs of that small State, and
especially to that train of events which has stirred the mind of our
people more than anything since the Indian Mutiny.

CHAPTER 2. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.

There might almost seem to be some subtle connection between the
barrenness and worthlessness of a surface and the value of the minerals
which lie beneath it. The