rest of the negotiations consisted in offering a five years' franchise law without hampering conditions, but only upon other conditions which they knew that this government would not accept. Finally, the position of the Transvaal government is contained in their notes of 19th and 21st August, in which they offer seemingly most favourable terms, terms which if they had been offered without conditions would have been most favourable. They offered a five years' franchise, retrospective, eight new seats for the Rand, and not only a vote for the volksraad but also for the elections of the President and Commander-in-Chief, and they expressed a willingness to receive and to consider friendly suggestions as to the franchise law to be passed. Now come to the conditions. One of them was that the British government should promise in future never to interfere in their internal affairs, that this should be a final interference once and for all; secondly, not to insist further on the existence of a suzerainty, and, thirdly, to agree to arbitration on particular matters. Mr Chamberlain's answer to that expressed satisfaction with the terms themselves, apart from the conditions. With regard to the condition not to insist further on the existence of a suzerainty, he referred to the previous correspondence in which, while insisting—theoretically insisting—upon a vague suzerainty, he had said that since the republic was prepared to abide by the convention of 1884 there was no controversy as to the essential point[1]. As to the condition to agree to arbitration on par-
- ↑ In a despatch of 16th October 1897 Mr Chamberlain had refused to agree to a proposal of arbitration, which I understand to have included an arbitration on the general relations between the United Kingdom and the South African Republic, as being improper where there was a suzerainty. On 16th April 1898 Dr Leyds, the state secretary of the republic, replied that the suzerainty reserved by the preamble of the convention of 1881 no longer existed, and that it would be no reason against arbitration if it did. On 15th December 1898 Mr Chamberlain argued that the suzerainty of the preamble of 1881 still existed, but added: " Her Majesty's government have taken note of the assurance, once more repeated at the commencement of Dr Leyds's note,
