those stipulations was to be measured by the terms of the convention itself and not by any vague reservations outside it[1]. At the same time its old official name, the South African Republic, was restored to the Transvaal, which from that day to this has occupied the legal position so created.
Such has been the history down to the Convention of London, and now I will take first the claims which are supposed to have a legal foundation under that convention and the subordinate position of the South African Republic, and afterwards the considerations arising in a more general way out of the use which the Republic has from 1884 made of that degree of liberty which it possesses. There has been a certain class of claims not made on behalf of individuals, but in which the British government charged the Transvaal government with having violated the convention. There was a law passed by it to regulate the admission of aliens, for the purpose of excluding pauper aliens from its territory, which was said to be contrary to the right of immigration secured by the Convention of London. There was a law on the expulsion of aliens, by which the Boer government received the power of expelling aliens without its being judicially proved against them that they had broken any laws of the state. That was supposed also to be contrary to the right of residence stipulated by the Convention of London. There was a monopoly granted by the Transvaal government to a
- ↑ It has been attempted to introduce a suzerainty controlling the interpretation and operation of the Convention of London, in place of the simple one which results from and is defined by it, by the hair-splitting argument, more appropriate to legal documents at home than to the broad manner in which international documents are usually drawn and construed, that the articles of London are expressed to be substituted for the articles of Pretoria, and not the convention for the convention. But we have seen that even in the preamble of 1881, which it is desired thus to preserve, the self-government subject to suzerainty is stated to be on the terms of the articles. And the consideration that any other suzerainty, a word undefined in international law, would reduce any and every convention to a sham is decisive.
