rsary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest
but fussy and faddy minority.

It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their petition
praying for protection to their native country. Since the April previous
a correspondence had been going on between Dr. Leyds, Secretary of State
for the South African Republic, and Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary,
upon the existence or non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one hand,
it was contended that the substitution of a second convention had
entirely annulled the first; on the other, that the preamble of the
first applied also to the second. If the Transvaal contention were
correct it is clear that Great Britain had been tricked and jockeyed
into such a position, since she had received no _quid pro quo_ in the
second convention, and even the most careless of Colonial Secretaries
could hardly have been expected to give away a very substantial
something for nothing. But the contention throws us back upon the
academic question of what a suzerainty is. The Transvaal admitted a
power of veto over their foreign policy, and this admission in itself,
unless they openly tore up the convention, must deprive them of the
position of a sovereign State.

But now to this debate, which had so little of urgency in it that seven
months intervened between statement and reply, there came the bitterly
vital question of the wrongs and appeal of the Uitlanders. Sir Alfred
Milner, the British Commissioner in South Africa, a man of liberal
politics who had been appointed by a Conservative Government, commanded
the respect and confidence of all parties. His record was that of an
able, clear-headed man, too just to be either guilty of or tolerant of
injustice. To him the matter was referred, and a conference was arranged
between President Kruger and him at Bloemfontein, the capital of the
Orange Free State. They met on May 31, 1899.

There were three different classes of subject which had to be discussed
at the Conference. One included all those alleged breaches of the
Convention of London which had caused so much friction between the two
Governments, and which had thrice in eighteen years brought the States
to the verge of war. Among these subjects would be the Boer annexations
of native territory, such interference with trade as the stopping of the
Drifts, the question of suzerainty, and the possibility of arbitration.
The second class of questions would deal with the g