an Republic to give them time to consider the
measure and communicate their views before it was proceeded with.
To this the Government of the South African Republic replied, on
July 13th, with a polite negative, saying that 'the whole matter
was out of the hands of the Government, and it was no longer
possible for the Government to satisfy the demands of the
Secretary of State.' The State-Attorney informed Mr. Greene[117]
at the same time that 'the present proposals represented
absolutely the greatest concession that could be got from the
Volksraad, and could not be enlarged. He personally had tried
hard for seven years' retrospective franchise, but the Raad would
not hear of it, and it was only with difficulty that the present
proposals were obtained.' This was on the 12th, but within a week
the seven years' retrospective franchise had been adopted.
Indeed, the statement of the absolute impossibility of obtaining
more than a particular measure of enfranchisement from the
Volksraad or the burghers has been made over and over again in
the history of this question--never more emphatically than by the
President himself at Bloemfontein--and has over and over again
been shown to be a delusion."[118]

[Footnote 117: Sir W. Greene became a K.C.B. after the war
had broken out.]

[Footnote 118: C. 9,518.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's statement.]

But this full record of the shifts and doublings of Boer diplomacy
would not reach London for another two weeks and a half. It was
necessary, therefore, to use the cable. Early the next morning Lord
Milner sent a telegram to the Secretary of State, in which he warned
the Home Government of the extreme discouragement produced among all
who were attached to the British connection by _The Times_ statement
of their readiness to accept the Franchise Bill. On that afternoon
(July 20th), Mr. Chamberlain made a statement in the House of Commons
in which he took up a much more satisfactory position. The Government,
he said, were led to hope that the new law "might prove to be a basis
of settlement on the lines laid down" by Lord Milner at the
Bloemfontein Conference. They observed, however, that "a number of
conditions" which might be used "to take away with one hand what had
been given with the other" were still retained. But they--

"felt assured that the Presid