danger to the colony itself. That fear had been entertained by the Dutch government even in the seventeenth century, a.n.d had led to stringent regulations by it against emigration into the interior. The result was that Natal, which was one of the earliest settlements of the trekking farmers, was annexed and became a British colony in 1843, and it has remained so ever since. Not many of the Boers remained there. The Boers who had been in Natal pushed still further into the interior, where they joined others who had gone direct to the Orange and Vaal rivers, and the present population of Natal, although to a small extent Dutch, is to a much larger extent of British blood. In the interior two more lasting republics were founded, that of the Orange Free State, between the Orange and the Vaal rivers, and still further north that of the Transvaal beyond the Vaal river. Those two republics were recognized by this country—the Transvaal in 1852[1] and the Orange Free State in 1854. There has been a great deal of fog in some minds as to the effect of this recognition; I mean that some persons have not clearly realized the difference between recognizing the republics as separate states, which was undoubtedly done, and recognizing them, which was not done, as part of the British dominions enjoying a certain amount of self-government. The conventions which were entered into with the two states were not express on the subject, but that they were recognized as separate states is beyond all question from the fact that they were intended to have, and from that time down to the present have had distinct foreign relations. A part of the British dominions, no matter what freedom it enjoys with regard to its internal affairs, can have no foreign relations distinct from those of the United Kingdom. Thus they became separate, or what in recent controversies has been called international, states, and not only that but sovereign
- ↑ The official name of the Transvaal was at first the Dutch African Republic, and was changed in 1858 to the South African Republic.
