of its power and its justice
would be to obtain for the Uitlanders in the Transvaal a fair
share in the government of the country which owes everything to
their exertions. It could be made perfectly clear that our
action was not directed against the existence of the Republic. We
should only be demanding the re-establishment of rights which now
exist in the Orange Free State, and which existed in the
Transvaal itself at the time of, and long after, the withdrawal
of British sovereignty. It would be no selfish demand, as other
Uitlanders besides those of British birth would benefit by it. It
is asking for nothing from others which we do not give ourselves.
And it would certainly go to the root of the political unrest in
South Africa, and, though temporarily it might aggravate, it
would ultimately extinguish the race feud, which is the great
bane of the country."[53]

[Footnote 53: C. 9,345.]

It was Lord Milner's intention that the text of this despatch should
have been made public upon its receipt in England. It contained the
essential facts of the South African situation; and, what is more, it
exhibited with perfect frankness the connection between Dutch
ascendancy in the Cape Colony and Dutch tyranny in the Transvaal--a
matter which was very imperfectly understood. The circumstance that
these essential facts were before the British people, and, moreover,
the circumstance that President Krueger knew that they were before the
British people, would, he believed, greatly increase the effect of the
strong demand for reforms which the Imperial Government had determined
to address to the Pretoria Executive in response to the petition to
the Queen.

[Sidenote: Hofmeyr's intervention.]

Nor was he alone in this opinion. Mr. Hofmeyr knew that a despatch of
grave importance had gone home. He had gathered, no doubt, a fairly
accurate notion of its tenor from Mr. Schreiner, whom Lord Milner had
warned some time before of "the gravity of the situation."[54] It is
not going beyond the limits of probability to assume that the Master
of the Bond realised the effect which the publication of these plain
truths, backed by the authority of the High Commissioner, would
produce upon the mind of the English people, and that he thereupon
determined to take steps to prevent a turn of affairs which, as he
conceived, would be most unfavourable to the nationalist