ird parties
against the previous ruling authority, and, on the other, that, having
no means owing to the _de facto_ British occupation, of raising money by
taxation, the dispossessed governments raised money by selling certain
securities, more especially a large holding of shares in the South
African Railway Company, to neutral purchasers. The British government
repudiated these sales as having been made by a government which the
British government had already displaced. The question of at what point,
in a war of conquest, the state succession becomes operative is one of
great delicacy. As early as the 6th of January 1900, the high
commissioner at Cape Town issued a proclamation giving notice that H.M.
government would "not recognize as valid or effectual" any conveyance,
transfer or transmission of any property made by the government of the
Transvaal republic or Orange Free State subsequently to the 10th of
October 1899, the date of the commencement of the war. A proclamation
forbidding transactions with a state which might still be capable of
maintaining its independence could obviously bind only those subject to
the authority of the state issuing it. Like paper blockades (see
BLOCKADE) and fictitious occupations of territory, such premature
proclamations are viewed by international jurists as not being _jure
gentium_. The proclamation was succeeded, on the 9th of March 1900, by
another of the high commissioner at Cape Town, reiterating the notice,
but confining it to "lands, railways, mines or mining rights." And on
the 1st of September 1900 Lord Roberts proclaimed at Pretoria the
annexation of the territories of the Transvaal republic to the British
dominions. That the war continued for nearly two years after this
proclamation shows how fictitious the claim of annexation was. The
difficulty which arose out of the transfer of the South African Railway
shares held by the Transvaal government was satisfactorily terminated by
the purchase by the British government of the total capital of the
company from the different groups of shareholders (see on this case, Sir
Thomas Barclay, _Law Quarterly Review_, July 1905; and Professor
Westlake, in the same _Review_, October 1905).

In a judgment of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1899
(_Coote_ v. _Sprigg_, A.C. 572), Lord Chancellor Halsbury made an
important distinction as regards the obligations of state succession.
The case in question was a claim of title aga