This estimate of the guilt of the Cape rebels—moderate in the light of British colonial history, merciful beyond dispute as judged by the practice of foreign States—failed to commend itself to the Afrikander Ministry. On May 29th, when the full text of the Cape ministers' minutes and enclosures had reached the Colonial Office, Lord Milner inquired of Mr. Chamberlain, on behalf of his ministers, whether the disfranchisement proposed was for life or for a period only; and further, whether, in view of their fuller knowledge of the representations of the Cape Ministry, the views of the Home Government were still to be accepted as those expressed in the despatch of May 4th. To these questions Mr. Chamberlain replied, by telegram, on June 10th, that the Government continued to hold the opinion that the policy already suggested should be substantially adhered to; while, as to the period of disfranchisement, he pointed out that—
"conviction and sentence for high treason carried with it disfranchisement for life, and if the offenders were spared the other and severer penalties of rebellion, justice seemed to demand that they should suffer the full political penalty. Disfranchisement for life did not seem to Her Majesty's Government to be a very serious punishment for rebellion."
Mr. Schreiner resigns.
On June 11th Lord Milner was informed by Mr. Schreiner that ministers were hopelessly divided on the subject of the treatment of the rebels, and that their differences could not be composed, and on the following day he replied that, if he could not receive the support of a unanimous Cabinet to which he, as Governor, was constitutionally entitled, he would be compelled, in the discharge of his duty, to seek it elsewhere. Mr. Schreiner's resignation, which was placed in Lord Milner's hands on the next day, was followed by the appointment, on June 18th, of a Progressive Ministry with Sir Gordon Sprigg as Prime Minister and Sir James Rose Innes as Attorney-General. Mr. Schreiner, in his memorandum of June 11th, had forwarded to Lord Milner documents containing particulars of the individual views of the members of his Cabinet. Mr. Solomon, the Attorney-General, was prepared to adopt a policy in respect of the treatment of the rebels, and the machinery by which that policy was to be carried out, which appeared to him to involve nothing that would prevent "complete accord between Her Majesty's Government and this Government on the question." And in this view both Mr. Schreiner and Mr. Herholdt concurred. But the remaining members of the Cabinet were entirely opposed to any policy other than that of granting a general amnesty to all rebels except the "principal offenders," and allowing these latter to be tried by the machinery of justice already in existence—i.e. by Afrikander juries. The minutes which they respectively addressed to the Prime Minister were bitter invectives directed alike against the Home Government and Lord Milner.
"We are asked," Mr. Merriman wrote, on his own and Mr. Sauer's behalf, with reference to the suggestions of the Home Government, "to deal with a number of men who have, at worst, taken up arms in what they, however erroneously, considered to be a righteous war—a war in which they joined the Queen's enemies to resist what prominent men both here and in England have repeatedly spoken of as a crime.... These men, irrespective of class, we are asked to put under a common political proscription, to deprive them of their civil rights, and by so doing (in fact, this is the main commendation of the measure to the "loyals") to deprive their friends and kinsfolk, who have rendered the Colony yeoman service at the most critical time, of that legitimate influence which belongs to a majority. We are asked, in fact, to create a class of political 'helots' in South Africa, where we are now waging a bloody and costly war ostensibly for the purpose of putting an end to a similar state of affairs."
Of course, all this and much more might have been read at any time since the war began in the columns of The South African News, but in a minister's memorandum to the Prime Minister, and over the signature "John X. Merriman," its naked hostility arrests the mind. Dr. Te Water's memorandum, although much shorter than that of Mr. Merriman, is even more outspoken. To him, the direct representative of the republican nationalists in the Afrikander Cabinet, amnesty for the rebels is the "sound and proper policy." And naturally, since in his eyes the rebels themselves are—
"British subjects of Dutch extraction who, after vainly endeavouring, by all possible constitutional means, to prevent what they, in common with the rest of the civilised world, believe to be an unjust and infamous war against their near kinsmen, aided the Republics in the terrible struggle forced upon them."[225]
A progressive ministry.
This is vitriol-throwing, but it is none the less significant. These three men formed half of the six ministers to whom collectively, Lord Milner, as Governor of the Cape Colony, had to look for advice during the two critical years that the Afrikander party was in power. Fortunately, in his capacity of High Commissioner for South Africa, he was free to act without their advice, as the representative of the Queen. Even so, his achievement is little less than marvellous. Aided by Mr. Schreiner's pathetic sense of loyalty to the person of the sovereign, he had kept the Cape Government outwardly true to its allegiance. The long hours of patient remonstrance, the word-battles from which the Prime Minister had risen sometimes white with passionate resentment, had not been useless. By tact, by serenity of disposition, by depth of conviction, and latterly by sheer force of argument, Lord Milner had won Mr. Schreiner, not indeed to the side of England, but at least to the side of that Empire-State of which England was the head. With the Prime Minister went Sir Richard Solomon, Mr. Herholdt, and one or two of the Afrikander rank and file. Thus reinforced, the Progressives commanded a working majority in the Legislative Assembly, and the ascendancy of the Afrikander party was at an end.
Apart from the secession of Mr. Schreiner and his immediate followers, the Parliamentary strength of the Afrikander party was lessened by another circumstance, to which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman referred in the debate on the South African Settlement in the House of Commons on July 25th. Certain members of the Cape Parliament, said the leader of the Liberal Opposition, had been arrested for high treason, with the result that the Afrikander party was deprived of their votes, and the balance of power between that party and the Progressive party was upset. And he protested against this manner of turning an Afrikander majority into a minority. The reply which these remarks on the part of this friend of the Afrikander party in England drew from the Government is instructive: