Now, Sir T. Shepstone's despatches show that the ground on which the Transvaal was annexed was because the State was drifting into anarchy, was bankrupt, and was about to be destroyed by native tribes. He said "that most thinking men in the country saw no other way out of the difficulty," and Carlyle has taught us what is the proportion between thinking men and the general public. He also said, in the fifteenth paragraph of his despatch to Lord Carnarvon of the 6th of March 1877, that petitions signed by 2500 people, representing every class of the community, out of a total adult male population of 8000, had been presented to the Government of the Republic, setting forth its difficulties and dangers, and praying it "to treat with me for their amelioration or removal." He likewise stated, and with perfect truth, that many more would have signed had it not been for the terrorism that was exercised, and that all the towns and villages in the country desired the change.
Mr. Gladstone went on to say:—
"We have made war on the Zulus. We have thereby become responsible for their territory; and not only this, but we are now, as it appears from the latest advices, about to make war upon a chief lying to the northward of the Zulus; and Sir Bartle Frere, who was the great authority for the proceedings of the Government in Afghanistan, has announced in South Africa that it will be necessary for us to extend our dominions until we reach the Portuguese frontier to the north. So much for Africa."
At Dalkeith he remarked:—
"If we cast our eyes to South Africa, what do we behold? That a nation whom we term savages have, in defence of their own land, offered their naked bodies to the terribly improved artillery and arms of modern European science, and have been mowed down by hundreds and by thousands, having committed no offence, but having, with rude and ignorant courage, done what were for them, and done faithfully and bravely what were for them the duties of patriotism. You may talk of glory, you may offer rewards,—and you are right to give rewards to the gallantry of your soldiers, who I think are entitled not only to our admiration for courage, but to our compassion for the nature of the duties they have been called to perform—but the grief and pain none the less remain."
At Glasgow he continued in the same strain:—
"In Africa you have before you the memory of bloodshed, of military disaster, the record of 10,000 Zulus—such is the computation of Bishop Colenso—slain for no other offence than their attempt to defend against your artillery, with their naked bodies, their hearths and homes, their wives and families. You have the invasion of a free people in the Transvaal, and you have, I fear, in one quarter or another—I will not enter into details, which might be injurious to the public interest—prospects of further disturbance and shedding of blood."
These speeches, as may be imagined, did an incalculable amount of mischief. Besides fanning the smouldering sparks of discontent, they served up catchwords wholesale for that section of the British public whose political machinery is largely fed by catchwords. But, as has been decided by axiom, "any stick will serve to beat a dog with," and the Transvaal difficulty was a convenient weapon for the attack on the Government. The real feeling of the Boer community was an outside matter, and, as we shall presently see, had nothing to do with the case, though in March 1880 Mr. Gladstone had the satisfaction of receiving a letter from a committee of Boer malcontents, wherein "he was thanked for the great sympathy shown in their fate." The thanks were a little premature. In April 1880 the elections took place, and Mr. Gladstone came into power with a large majority. Then he was asked the great question: Would he maintain his oft-repeated pledge to retain the Transvaal, or would he continue to take up the tone of his Midlothian denunciations?
The riddle was shortly to be solved. In the debate on the Queen's Speech the Prime Minister thus expressed himself: "I do not know whether there is an absolute union of opinion on this side of the House as to the policy in which the assumption of the Transvaal originated. Undoubtedly, as far as I am myself concerned, I did not approve of that assumption. I took no part in questioning it nor in the attempt to condemn it, because, in my opinion, whether the assumption was wise or unwise, it having been done, no good but only mischief was to be done by the intervention of this House. But whatever our original opinions were on that policy—and the opinions of the majority of those who sit on this side of the House were decidedly adverse to it—we had to confront a state of facts; and the main fact which met us was the existence of the large native population in the Transvaal, to whom, by the establishment of the Queen's supremacy, we hold ourselves to have given a pledge. That is the acceptance of facts, and that is the sense in which my right honourable friend, and all those who sit with him, may, if they think fit, say we accept the principles on which the late Government proceeded. It is quite possible to accept the consequences of a policy, and yet to retain the original difference of opinion with regard to the character of that policy as long as it was a matter of discussion."
And shortly after he wrote to Messrs. Kruger and Joubert:—