question should be put in the foreground;
since it would be useless to discuss other matters in dispute until a
satisfactory settlement of this all-important question had been
achieved. Mr. Chamberlain replied (May 24th), agreeing with the line
indicated by Lord Milner:

"I think personally that you should lay all the stress," he
telegraphed, "on the question of the franchise in the first
instance. Other reforms are less pressing, and will come in time
if this can be arranged satisfactorily, and the form of oath
modified."

Mr. Chamberlain at the same time authorised Lord Milner to inform the
Uitlander petitioners that they might rely upon obtaining the general
sympathy of the Imperial Government in the prayers which they had
addressed to the Queen.

[Sidenote: Motives of Afrikander leaders.]

There was no doubt in Lord Milner's mind as to the real motives which
had prompted the Afrikander nationalist leaders to make this effort.
They recognised at length that he was in earnest, and that Mr.
Chamberlain was in earnest, and they desired, above all things, to
avoid a crisis which would force a conflict before their ultimate
plans had fully matured. Lord Milner knew that any delay which
involved the continuance of the present position--a position which was
one of moral superiority for the Dutch--would unite the whole of the
Dutch, with a section of the British population, against Great Britain
within a measurable period. He recognised that the franchise question
was the one issue which could be raised between the paramount Power
and the South African Republic in which the whole of the Cape Dutch
would not throw in their lot bodily with their republican kinsmen.
This very anxiety on the part of Mr. Hofmeyr to prevent the decisive
action of the Imperial Government was evidence of the truth of his
estimate. But as a response to the appeal of the Graaf Reinet speech,
this Afrikander mediation came too late. "Hands off" the Transvaal was
the first plank in the platform of the Schreiner Ministry; "reform"
was a second and subsidiary plank, adopted in place of the first only
when they had been driven to abandon it by Lord Milner's resolution
and statesmanship. But the purpose of the Ministry now, no less than
before, was to hinder, and not to help, the British Government in
obtaining justice for the Uitlanders. Moreover, the Transvaal
armaments were well advanced, and the Pretoria Executive was too