have
the same number of members as the First; thus the apparent concession
was merely a valueless automatic arrangement, for it is well understood
that the second Volksraad is simply a show institution, devised in 1890.
The various schemes for redistribution lead one to the conclusion that
the number of members in the First Volksraad were to be in inverse ratio
to the population.

The Uitlander looked with mistrust upon a law voted one day which could
be modified the next by a simple resolution of the Volksraad; he
considered it an illusion which might vanish at any moment Mr. Krueger
and his friends thought proper.

4.--_The Joint Commission._

The British Government might have replied that it did not recognise this
law, and have confined itself to the proposals put forward by Sir Alfred
Milner at the Bloemfontein Conference. It did not take this attitude
which, in France, would have been advised by the most half-hearted of
our Nationalists, had the French Government been engaged in similar
negotiations.

In his despatch of July 27, Mr. Chamberlain appears to think that "the
concessions made to the Uitlanders to guarantee them something of the
equality promised them in 1881 were made in good faith; but this law of
July 19th is full of complicated details; he therefore proposes that it
should be examined by a joint commission." In the Colonial Secretary's
despatch of August 2nd to Pretoria, he adds: "It is understood that the
Commission to examine into the question of the Uitlanders' Electoral
rights shall be prepared to discuss every subject that the Government of
the South African Republic may desire to bring before it, including
arbitration, exclusive always of the intervention of Foreign Powers."

5.--_Bargaining._

The Government of Pretoria had put the law in force without waiting to
consider these remarks.

On August 15th a despatch of Sir Alfred Milner's makes mention of a
proposal of the State Attorney to the British Government to waive their
invitation to a joint enquiry, in respect of the concession of a
retrospective Franchise of seven years being substituted for mere
naturalisation, and of an increase in the number of seats. Such a
proposition on the part of the Government of Pretoria shows plainly that
it wished to evade enquiry into a law so fettered with formalities that
its working was chimerical. And when Sir Alfred Milner referred to his
proposal at Bloemfontein, the State Attorney decrea