ies; true also that the
mining industry (as will be seen from the figures on p. 301) was
expanding and prospering in spite of them. Furthermore, they were
grievances under which, it might be argued, the immigrants had placed
themselves by coming with notice of their existence, and from which they
might escape by taking a train into the Free State or Natal. And they
were grievances which, however annoying, did not render either life or
property unsafe,[1] and did not prevent the Johannesburgers from
enjoying life and acquiring wealth. Nevertheless, they were such as the
British Government was entitled to endeavour to have redressed. Nor
could it be denied that the state of irritation and unrest which
prevailed on the Witwatersrand, the probability that another rising
would take place whenever a chance of success offered, furnished to
Britain, interested as she was in the general peace of the country, a
ground for firm remonstrance and for urging the removal of all
legitimate sources of disaffection, especially as these re-acted on the
whole of South Africa. The British authorities at the Cape seem indeed
to have thought that the unyielding attitude of the Transvaal Government
worked much mischief in the Colony, being taken by the English there as
a defiance to the power and influence of Britain, and so embittering
their minds.

Among the grievances most in men's mouths was the exclusion of the
new-comers from the electoral franchise. It must be clearly
distinguished from the other grievances. It was a purely internal
affair, in which Britain had no right to intermeddle, either under the
Convention of 1884 or under the general right of a state to protect its
subjects. Nothing is clearer than that every state may extend or limit
the suffrage as it pleases. If a British self-governing colony were to
restrict the suffrage to those who had lived fourteen years in the
colony, or a state of the American Union were to do the like, neither
the Home Government in the one case, nor the Federal Government in the
other would have any right to interfere. All therefore that Britain
could do was to call the attention of the South African Republic in a
friendly way to the harm which the restriction of the franchise was
causing, and point out that to enlarge it might remove the risk of a
collision over other matters which did fall within the scope of British
intervention.

We are therefore, on a review of the whole position, led to conc