might be was left to the discretion of the Commissioner. But he was only to do this in compliance with the wishes of the people themselves. He was to take temporary possession,—only temporary possession,—of a part of the Transvaal should the people desire it, and in the event of such a measure being approved by a distant Governor,—unless the circumstances were such as to make him think it expedient to do it without such approval. Such was the nature of the Order, and I think that any one reading it before the event would have said that it was not intended to convey an authority for the immediate and permanent annexation of the whole country.
But Sir Theophilus, after a sojourn of ten weeks at Pretoria, in which the question of the annexation was submitted to the Volksraad and in which petitions and counter-petitions were signed, did annex the whole country permanently, without any question of provisional occupation, and without, as far as I have been able to learn, any sanction from the Governor of the Cape Colony. As to conditions limiting Her Majesty's power, the mere allusion to such a condition of things seems to be absurd now that we know what has been done. "Now therefore I do . . . proclaim and make known that from and after the publication hereof the territory heretofore known as the South African Republic . . . shall be, and shall be taken to be, British territory." These are the words which contain the real purport of the Proclamation issued by Sir Theophilus Shepstone at Pretoria on 12th April, 1877. Was ever anything so decided, so audacious, and apparently so opposed to the spirit
