its foreign relations, although distinct, were to be made for it—its treaties concluded for it—by the Queen, was enough to place it in the position of a dependent state, not an independent one, with the Queen as suzerain or paramount. Besides that, the suzerainty was mentioned in express terms in the preamble of the convention. But it was not to be an indefinite suzerainty: it was expressed in the preamble to be on the terms of the ensuing articles[1]. And indeed the convention, with its long array of articles, would have been a mere sham if any indefinite suzerainty outside those articles had been intended to be reserved.
That lasted for three years, until 1884. Then, in deference to the agitation which the Boer leaders had never ceased to keep up, it was superseded by the Convention of London, which gave to the state a larger amount of freedom. Its foreign relations were no longer to be conducted by the Queen; it was to conduct them itself, subject to the Queen's approval. The necessity of that approval still left it not fully sovereign but semi-sovereign, although a separate and international state. You may say, if you like, that it was still under a suzerainty, but the position of the republic depended upon the terms of the convention itself. Those terms were much more liberal to it than those of the previous convention. Not only was it to conduct its own foreign relations subject to the Queen's approval, but there was no longer to be a British resident at Pretoria with the power to interfere and exercize a surveillance over native affairs either within or without the republic, and there were, as before, certain stipulations as to the treatment of natives, religious liberty, and other matters which are generally included in commercial treaties between two independent states. But the scope of
- ↑ "Complete self-government, subject to the suzerainty of Her Majesty her heirs and successors, will be accorded to the inhabitants of the Transvaal territory, upon the following terms and conditions, and subject to the following restrictions and limitations."
