e Expulsion Law. The crisis was over in June, and during
the next few months the Pretoria Executive showed a somewhat more
conciliatory temper towards the Government of Great Britain. And in
this connection two other facts must be recorded. In August, 1896, Sir
Jacobus de Wet had been succeeded as British Agent at Pretoria by Sir
William (then Mr.) Conyngham Greene, and the Imperial Government was
assured, by this appointment, of the services of an able man and a
trained diplomatist. The Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the
Raid, promised in July, 1896, met on February 16th, 1897, and reported
on July 13th of the same year. Its report did little more than
reassert the findings of the Cape Parliamentary Inquiry, which had
been before the British public for the last year. It was otherwise
remarkable for the handle which it gave (by the failure to insist upon
the production of certain telegrams) to some extreme Radicals to
assert Mr. Chamberlain's "complicity" in the "invasion" of the
Transvaal as originally planned by Mr. Rhodes.

[Sidenote: Milner's thoroughness.]

Lord Milner had expressed his intention of acquainting himself with
the conditions of South Africa by personal observation before he
attempted to take any definite action for the solution of the
problems awaiting his attention. Nor, after the first month of
anxious diplomatic controversy with the Pretoria Executive, was there
anything either in the political situation in the Cape Colony, or in
the attitude of the Transvaal Government, to prevent him from putting
his purpose into effect. Apart from the circumstance that the
reorganisation of the Chartered Company's Administration--a question
in which the political future of Mr. Rhodes was largely involved--was
a matter upon which his observation and advice were urgently required
by the Colonial Office, Lord Milner had no intention, as he said, of
"being tied to an office chair at Capetown." He had resolved,
therefore, to visit at the earliest opportunity, first, the country
districts of the colony which formed the actual seat of the Dutch
population, and, second, the two protectorates of Bechuanaland and
Basutoland, which were administered by officers directly responsible
to the High Commissioner, as the representative of the Imperial
Government. In point of fact he did more than this. Within a year of
his arrival he had travelled through the Cape Colony (August and
September, 1897), through the Bechua