ace. On January 1st, 1899, Mr. Merriman wrote to President
Steyn with this object in view. "Is there no opportunity," he
said,[61] "of bringing about a _rapprochement_ between us, in which
the Free State might play the part of honest broker? We, _i.e._, the
Colony and Free State, have common material interests in our railway,
apart from our anxiety to see the common welfare of South Africa
increase from the removal of the one great cause of unrest and the
pretext for outside interference."

[Footnote 60: Mr. Merriman's expression. See his letter to
Mr. Fischer at p. 161.]

[Footnote 61: Cd. 369.]

And Lord Milner, very soon after his return from England, was sounded
by Mr. Schreiner as to the possibility of settling the franchise
question by means of a South African Conference. Early in March--when
Mr. Smuts was in Capetown, and the Pretoria Executive was engaged in
the abortive attempt to separate the leaders of the mining industry
from the rank and file of the Uitlander population by offering them
certain fiscal and industrial reforms, if only they would undertake to
discourage the agitation for political rights--the same subject was
brought before the High Commissioner by Mr. Merriman himself. In
pursuance of the real purpose of the Afrikander Ministry--_i.e._ to
obtain a fictitious concession from President Krueger, instead of the
"fair share in the government of the country" required by the
Imperial Government--it was proposed originally to exclude Lord Milner
altogether from the negotiations by arranging that the Transvaal
Government should bring forward proposals for reform at an inter-State
Conference consisting of representatives of the governments of the two
Republics and the self-governing British Colonies. But Lord Milner
was, happily, High Commissioner as well as Governor of the Cape. As
High Commissioner, he declared that at any such Conference the
Imperial Government must be separately represented. Neither the
Transvaal nor the Free State was willing to enter a Conference on
these terms, although they were acceptable to the Cape Government; and
the plan fell to the ground.

It was then that Mr. Hofmeyr intervened, in view of Lord Milner's
despatch of May 4th; and President Steyn, persuaded with dramatic
swiftness to accept the role of peace-maker, which his predecessor,
Sir John Brand, had played with such success in 1881, secured the
grudging consent of President Krueger t