Mr. Chamberlain's assumption.
On July 13th, Lord Milner sent warning telegrams to Mr. Chamberlain,[114] pointing out specific defects in the Franchise Bill, and showing how seriously President Krüger's proposals fell short of the Bloemfontein minimum. Five days later the Volksraad accepted the final amendments. The face value of the Bill, as it now stood to be converted into law, was a seven years' franchise, prospective and retrospective. When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain heard this same day (July 18th) that the Volksraad had accepted the bill in this form with only five dissentients, he seems to have assumed that a really considerable concession had been made by President Krüger at the last moment, and that, with the President and the Volksraad in this mood, still further concessions would be forthcoming. Under this impression he informed the House of Commons lobby correspondent of The Times that "the crisis might be regarded as at an end." His words were reproduced in The Times on the day following (July 19th), and at once cabled to South Africa.
It is impossible for any one who has not lived in South Africa to realise the sickening distrust and dread produced in the minds of the loyal subjects of the Crown by this statement. War they were ready to face. But to go back to every-day life once again bowed down with the shame of a moral Majuba, to meet the eyes of the Dutch once more aflame with the light of victory, to hear their words of insolent contempt—was ignominy unspeakable and unendurable. The Uitlander Council at once cabled an emphatic message of protest[115] to Mr. Chamberlain, and every loyalist that had a friend in England telegraphed to beg him to use all his influence to prevent the surrender of the Government. How near the British population in South Africa were to this ignominy may be gathered from the fact that on this day Lord Milner received a telegram in which Mr. Chamberlain congratulated him upon the successful issue of his efforts. Lord Milner's reply was one that could have left no doubt in Mr. Chamberlain's mind as to the gravity of the misconception under which he laboured. It was, of course, beyond the High Commissioner's power to prevent the Home Government from accepting the Franchise Bill; but he could at least remove the impression that he was anxious to participate in an act, which would have made the breach between the loyalists of South Africa and the mother country final and irrevocable.
The relapse in England.
It is scarcely possible to believe that Mr. Chamberlain, with Lord Milner's telegrams before him, was himself prepared to accept President Krüger's illusory franchise scheme. The source of the weakness of the Government in the conduct of the negotiations, no less than in its refusal to make adequate preparations for war, is to be found in the inability of the mass of the people of England to understand how completely British power in South Africa had been undermined by the Afrikander nationalists during the last twenty years. How could the average elector know that the refusal or acceptance of the Volksraad Bill, differing only from the Bloemfontein minimum in an insignificant—as it seemed—particular of two years, would, in fact, make known to all European South Africa whether President Krüger or the British Government was master of the sub-continent? In view of this profound ignorance of South African conditions, and the consequent uncertainty of any assured support, even from the members of their own party, the Salisbury Cabinet may well have argued: "Here is something at last that we can represent as a genuine concession. Let us take it, and have done with this troublesome South African question; or leave it to the next Liberal Government to settle."
If the Cabinet did so reason to themselves, what English statesman could have "cast the first stone" at them? But how profound is the interval between the spirit of the policy of "the man on the spot," with his eyes upon the object, and the spirit of the policy of the island statesman with one eye upon the hustings and the other strained to catch an intermittent glimpse of an unfamiliar and distant Africa!
Lord Milner's anxiety.
This 19th of July was a dark day for the High Commissioner. In the morning came Mr. Chamberlain's telegram with its ominous suggestion of a change for the worse in the attitude of the Home Government. And this change in the Cabinet was, as Lord Milner knew, only the natural reflection of a wider change, which had manifested itself among the supporters of the Government and in the country at large since the publication, on June 14th, of his despatch of May 4th. Private letters had made him aware that to men to whom Dutch ascendancy at the Cape and Boer tyranny in the Transvaal, Afrikander nationalism and Boer armaments, were meaningless expressions, his resolute advocacy of the Uitlanders' cause and his frank presentation of the weakness of Great Britain had seemed the work of a disordered imagination or a violent partisanship. Nor was his knowledge of the relapse in England limited to the warnings or protests of his private friends. The South African News, the ministerial organ, which of late had filled its columns with adverse criticisms taken from the London Press, this morning contained a bitter article on him reprinted from Punch, which had arrived by the yesterday's mail. After all, it seemed, the long struggle against mis-government in the Transvaal was going to end in failure; and the British people would once more be befooled. With such thoughts in his mind, Lord Milner must have found the work of making up the weekly despatches for the Colonial Office—for it was a Wednesday[116]—a wearisome and depressing task. The mail was detained until long past the customary hour. But before it left, in spite of discouragement and anxiety, Lord Milner had gathered together into a brief compass all the documents necessary to put Mr. Chamberlain in possession of every material fact relative to the new law—passed only on the day before—and to the proceedings of the Transvaal Executive and the Volksraad between the 12th and the 19th. And, in addition to this, he had written a fresh estimate of the Franchise Bill in its latest form, in which he emphasised his former verdict that the proposals which it contained were not such as the Uitlanders would be likely to accept. And in particular he pointed out that the fact of the final amendment being thus readily adopted by the Volksraad disposed of the contention, upon which President Krüger had laid so much stress at Bloemfontein, that his "burghers" would not permit him to make the concessions which the British Government required. He wrote:
"On July 12th Her Majesty's Government requested the Government of the South African Republic to give them time to consider the measure and communicate their views before it was proceeded with. To this the Government of the South African Republic replied, on July 13th, with a polite negative, saying that 'the whole matter was out of the hands of the Government, and it was no longer possible for the Government to satisfy the demands of the Secretary of State.' The State-Attorney informed Mr. Greene[117] at the same time that 'the present proposals represented absolutely the greatest concession that could be got from the Volksraad, and could not be enlarged. He personally had tried hard for seven years' retrospective franchise, but the Raad would not hear of it, and it was only with difficulty that the present proposals were obtained.' This was on the 12th, but within a week the seven years' retrospective franchise had been adopted. Indeed, the statement of the absolute impossibility of obtaining more than a particular measure of enfranchisement from the Volksraad or the burghers has been made over and over again in the history of this question—never more emphatically than by the President himself at Bloemfontein—and has over and over again been shown to be a delusion."[118]
Mr. Chamberlain's statement.