six months will have to fulfil the
conditions applying to new comers."

Look at the trickery of this regulation. A man must apply for his
naturalisation six months beforehand, and he is bound to be naturalised
within six months of the promulgation of the law. If he does not make
his application on the very day of the promulgation, he loses all the
advantages of his residence in the Transvaal before 1890, and he must
wait another seven years. Note, that on the actual day of promulgation
the administration of the Transvaal could never, even in good faith,
have dealt with the 20,000 or 30,000 declarations that would have been
made; and Mr. Krueger calmly proceeds to adjourn to another seven years
the Uitlanders who had already put in nine years of residence, total 16
years. Yes, Mr. Krueger is very clever to have invented such a skilful
contrivance; to have had the audacity to propound it; and to hold the
opinion of Europe in such contempt that he could think it possible to
make the majority of people the dupe of such schemes; and he has
succeeded!

Sir Alfred Milner replied in the courteous language of diplomacy that
after the interchange of these two propositions, Mr. Krueger and himself
found themselves on exactly the same ground as before the Conference,
and that, therefore, there was no object to be gained by prolonging it.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FRANCHISE.

AFTER THE CONFERENCE OF BLOEMFONTEIN.[20]

1.--_A Krueger Trick._

The Anglophobe Pro-Boers of course blame Mr. Chamberlain for the rupture
of the Bloemfontein Conference, and extol the forbearance of Mr. Krueger,
who carried off his proposal to have it passed by the Volksraad, and
"his" burghers.

They do not reflect, that, had he honestly desired to put the matter on
the road to settlement, Mr. Krueger should first have come to an
understanding upon it. By passing it through the Volksraad as law, he
should have cut the cable, were he in reality, anything but an autocrat,
and such ratifications anything but mere formalities.

Mr. Krueger had the condescension to say to England, "So you will have
none of my proposals which compel those already in the Transvaal to an
eleven or twelve years' residence, coupled with impossible formalities,
before obtaining the franchise? Very well, I will renew my offer to you
in the name of the Volksraad and of "my" burghers, and if you are not
satisfied, leave me alone to hoodwink a large proportion of enlighte