of the Convention of 1854. As, however, this objection applies also to the acceptance of Waterboer and his Diamond Fields, we shall deal with it later on.

To the history of these Diamond Fields we now proceed. And here we must first dispose of the delusion that their government is a thing to be coveted. There seems to be a floating supposition that the rulers of the country pocket its precious stones. The reviewer supposes that the temptation of securing to the British Crown the richest diamond fields in the world was too strong for the Colonial Office.' Nothing is more unlike the truth. Under the English system the stones belong, under certain regulations, to those who can pick them up and carry them off. Dutch, English, or native African can alike come and go in this manner, not enriching the country by farming it, but carrying off the very corpus of what is valuable. The Government has only the thankless task of governing and of levying taxes sufficient to pay the cost of doing so. And all this was perfectly understood in Downing Street and at Cape Town. The Home Government positively refused to acquire the district unless the Cape Parliament would promise to take it off their hands. And when the promise was made, Lord Carnarvon found it difficult to get it performed. If the Government was tempted, it was not by cupidity, but by the wish that what the common interest required should be done-even with a high hand.

A temptation of this kind no doubt existed. Everybody knows what a gold field is, and what a diamond field must be a rough and miscellaneous multitude of stout-hearted, stronghanded adventurers, little disposed to stick at trifles and bent on enriching themselves, some by hard work, some by fraud or violence, as fast as possible. At the Cape Diamond Fields such a multitude collected, to the number, soon of 8,000 or 10,000; eventually of 40,000 or 50,000. The sovereignty of the land was in dispute between the Free State and Griqua Chief. Neither was able to compel obedience, and to neither, it was pretty clear, would these 8,000 or 10,000 or 40,000 or 50,000 men submit.

What was to be done? Sir P. Wodehouse, who was then in England, thought the establishment of British authority inevitable; but he thought it should not be hurried. He thought that, for the present, things should be left to take their course.' Sir P. Wodehouse's authority on a matter of this kind is very great. But we feel a profound conviction that if he had been writing, not from the well-earned comfort of the domestic arm-chair, but from the thick of colonial responsi

bilities, his zeal, courage, penetration, and activity would have given a different colour to his advice. Principiis obsta' would then have been the burden of his song. He would have told us that to let things take their course was to allow the growth of complications and animosities which would speedily become unmanageable. He would have bid us imagine the task of a Government called in to punish criminals, suppress insurgent natives, compose national feuds, and adjust de jure and de facto claims, after a mixed multitude, without law, judge, or police, had been allowed for months to acquire what they considered vested rights, how and where they chose, in a country partly private, partly public property, partly inhabited by natives, partly by cattle-farmers, claimed in sovereignty by a native chief, and claimed also by a Dutch Republic, so that every man for himself might defy one authority under cover of acknowledging another. All this was what the Cape Government could not but foresee and had to prevent, and these were the circumstances under which they had to choose their course.*

Certain lands north of the Orange River and extending beyond its tributary the Vaal were indisputably assigned by a treaty of 1838 to one Andreas Waterboer. In part of that territory, and therefore under Waterboer's jurisdiction, one Cornelius Kok had settled himself. In the course of time this Kok had assumed to himself more or less of the position of a chief and being ready to sell land, which Waterboer was not, had procured an inchoate recognition from a British officer, while Major Warden and the landed interest were dominant, and had effected sales of land to farmers, which were readily registered at Bloemfontein. On his death, his relative Adam Kok is alleged to have sold through an English agent all his (Cornelius') rights to the Free State.

In virtue of these purchases (for we neglect arguments which are too transparently bad for discussion), the Free State claimed sovereignty over the lands held by Cornelius. Nicholas Waterboer, the son of Andreas, denied both that Cornelius had ever acquired sovereign rights over the territory, and that such rights had passed to the Free State, either by the particular purchases of farms from Cornelius-which did not carry sovereignty, or by the general purchase from Adam's agent who was not authorised to sell Cornelius' lands. The quarrel was referred after much wrangling to the arbitration of Sir P. Wodehouse; but he left the Colony without disposing of it. And then, in the disputed territory, diamonds were found.

*Parl. Papers on Diamond Fields, passim.

To attempt to convince our readers that one or the other party was clearly right would, we think, be merely to throw dust in their eyes and to become unreadable. The dispute is one which can only be settled by a careful sifting of native customs, and of the conflicting, confused testimony of halfsavage and interested witnesses. What is certain and to the purpose is, it was not got up for the occasion, but had existed long and notoriously. That it was a fit subject to be referred to arbitration was evident, as it had been so referred. we take on us to allege that it was also a question on which the Cape Government, as the case presented itself to them, might without dishonesty hold Waterboer to be probably in the right.

And

This was the state of things on which the Government had to decide, and to decide at once, whether they should deal with the difficulty as if the land were Waterboer's or as if it belonged to the Free State. They adopted, but only provisionally, the former opinion, and treating the Diamond Fields as native territory, sent out a magistrate to exercise jurisdiction over British subjects in pursuance of an Imperial statute, with such further authority over natives and others as he could get from the Chief Waterboer, who was only too desirous for our help, and prayed to be accepted as a British subject.

On this the Free State proclaimed their own jurisdiction, and moved forwards a burgher force to support it. The diggers prepared to resist them, and the Governor of the Cape announced that he would support the British magistrate-still offering arbitration on condition that British authority was meantime to remain in force. The Free State proving impracticable, the Governor obtained authority from home to receive Waterboer as a subject-still leaving the Diamond Field question (which only concerned part of his territory) open to arbitration. Negotiations with this view were resumed (the British always remaining in possession), but there was no coming to terms on details; till at last, Lord Carnarvon invited President Brandt to a personal interview, and the matter was settled by a payment of 90,0001.

It appears to us that whether all these transactions were or were not in all stages of the dispute the most judicious possible, which we neither assert nor deny, there is nothing at all in them to which the epithet 'discreditable' can be justifiably applied, or. which betrays in the British Government or its officers that want of intelligence, honesty, or public spirit which our contemporary imputes to them.

We have, however, still to deal with the climax of the

reviewer's criticisms-the charge of shameful and repeated breach of faith. This is the charge to which we have already referred as applying both to the annexation of Basuto Land and to that of the Diamond Fields. It is brought in the following terms:

'The delegates (of the Orange River) refused pointedly to be parties to the treaty' (the convention of 1854) 'unless the British Government would bind itself not to interfere between them and the natives, and not to enter into any treaties with the natives by which their interests would be prejudiced; and to this Clerk consented. By the first article of the treaty the Boers of the territory were declared to be "to all "intents and purposes free and independent people, and their Govern"ment a free and independent Government." The second article affirms that "the British Government has no alliance whatever with any chiefs or tribes to the north of the Orange River, with the exception of Adam Kok, and Her Majesty's Government have no "wish or intention to enter hereafter into any treaties which might be "injurious or prejudicial to the interests of the Orange River Govern"ment."

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"The words "wish or intention" are accepted in good faith. The correspondence proves beyond a doubt that the British Government had wished finally and definitely to withdraw behind the Orange River. They did not anticipate that a British Governor at the first temptation would construe the words to mean that there was no such wish or intention at the time when the treaty was signed, but that the British Government retained its right to form and act upon such a wish or intention should it be convenient to do so in future. If the ambiguity was intentional it was a fraud; if it was accidental, Englishmen, sensitive for the honour of their country will regret that it should have been taken advantage of."

To us this charge appears, on its very face, wholly unjustifiable. There is no ambiguity whatever in the article of the Treaty. It is quite plain that Sir G. Clerk did not consent to the demands of the Boers. If he had, there would have been no difficulty in employing words which would have expressed that consent. The article would have run thus: The British Government engage not to enter, &c.' Instead of this the article quite unequivocally confines itself to the disclaimer of a wish or intention,' and as unequivocally leaves the Government at liberty thereafter to act as circumstances may render advisable.

What is the alleged course of the negotiation? The Transvaal Boers were British subjects whose conquests, according to recognised British law, we claimed as made for the British Crown, and over whose persons we claimed the rights of sove

reignty. We offered to relinquish these rights, which we had the power to enforce, if they would pledge themselves not to establish slavery on our borders. They professed themselves ready, as our contemporary tells us, to accept these conditions if we would promise not to interfere between them and the natives, or to make treaties by which their interests would be prejudiced.

No sensible negotiator would entangle his country in such a bond. Indian princes, indeed, are placed under an obligation to make no alliances except with Great Britain. But this is in effect an acknowledgment of suzerainty-a concession to superior strength which if not conciliated will find means of making itself felt disagreeably. Great Britain, however, could not have been expected to write itself down vassal to the Boers of the Orange River, or to involve itself, Natal, and the Cape Colony in engagements of which it was impossible to foresee the working. What pourparlers took place we do not know. The result, however, is before us. Every word or phrase which could be construed as involving a prospective promise is excluded from the treaty, and instead of this the article declares that H. M. G. have no wish or intention to enter hereafter into any treaties which may be injurious or prejudicial to the interests of the Orange River Government.'

'No wish or intention.' The very rhythm of the sentence suggests a coming qualification. I have no wish or intention to do anything disagreeable, but I advise you as a friend to 'take care what you are about.' And the limited character of the expectation held out would be peculiarly evident from the pointed contrast between what was asked and what was given. It is impossible that men of sense, who had asked for a prospective promise, should suppose they had got what they asked when they only received a disclaimer of present wish or intention.

If it be said that Sir G. Clerk and the Boers had agreed to impose on the treaty a construction not warranted by the words, the case assumes the aspect of something like a fraud upon the Home Government. For what is it that they do? They send home for the ratification of the Secretary of State an agreement carefully and unequivocally worded and in its natural meaning sensible, harmless, and unobjectionable—a general indication of the course which the British Government wished, intended, and expected to be able to pursue. But this they do with an understanding between themselves that as soon as it has been approved at home, as meaning what it says, it shall be construed to mean something which it avoids saying, a hard pledge of which the future application cannot