Such was the condition of the territory when the English determined that they would signify to their runaway subjects that they were regarded as free to manage themselves as they pleased across the Vaal. Of what use could it be to follow these Dutchmen beyond that distant river, when, if so persecuted, they would certainly "trek" beyond the Limpopo? Further back than the Limpopo were the Zambesi and the Equator. And yet as matters then stood a certain unpronounced claim was implied by what had been done between the Orange and the Vaal. A treaty was therefore made with the people in 1852, and for the making of the treaty Messrs. Hogge and Owen were despatched as Her Majesty's Commissioners to meet Pretorius and a deputation of emigrant farmers, to settle the terms on which the Republic should be established. There were two clauses of special interest. One prohibited slavery in the new Republic,—a clause so easy to put into a treaty, but one of which it is so impossible for an outside power to exact the fulfilment! Another declared that the British would make no alliances with the natives north of the Vaal river,—a clause which we have also found to be very inconvenient. It would have been better perhaps merely to have told these Boers that if we found slavery to exist we should make it a casus belli, and to have bound ourselves to nothing. This would have been "high-handed,"—but then how much more high-handed have we been since?
Andreas Pretorius was the first President of the now established and recognised nationality which, with a weak ambition which has assisted much in bringing it to its ruin, soon called itself the South African Republic,—as though it
