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sistently opposed the annexation in hie place in Parliament, is known to have been in correspondence with the disaffected Boers, but as his letters have not been published, their purport can only be surmised. But in that which is popularly known as "the Mid-Lothian campaign," Mr. Gladstone, in order to damage the Government of Lord Beaconsfield, did not scruple to condemn in strong language the annexation of the Transvaal, declaring that "we, the free subjects of a Monarchy, had coerced the free subjects of a Republic," with other language but too well calculated to encourage the disaffected Boers to persevere in their agitation. Let this be noted. Mr. Gladstone's speeches in the winter of 1879 were printed and circulated in South Africa in 1880. In the latter part of the same year the Boers broke out into open rebellion.
Meanwhile, the general election of April, 1880, had taken place, and the orator of Mid-Lothian had become the Prime Minister of England with a large Parliamentary majority. Is it wonderful that the expectations of the Boers were greatly raised? We know this to be the fact from their address to Mr. Gladstone, published in the blue books; and if the disappointment of those expectations was the approximate cause of their open rebellion and the consequent loss of life, can the statesman who beyond all doubt encouraged those expectations, fairly cast upon other shoulders the responsibility for subsequent events?
It should here be stated that during the Parliamentary session of 1877, many discussions took place upon South African affairs, and one debate specially upon the subject of the annexation of the Transvaal. During these debates Mr. Gladstone never opened his mouth to say one word against annexation. Mr. Courtney, then a very recently elected member, was only supported by two or three of the Irish Home Rule Party, whilst the step taken by Lord Carnarvon was not only unopposed by any leading member of the Liberal Party, but was deliberately endorsed and approved by those who had represented the Colonial Department under Mr. Gladstone's former government. It is, therefore, an undoubted fact that the annexation was acquiesced in by the Liberals as a party, and that it is only due to subsequent events that they have discovered objections to it which were never before in their minds. Until and after the change of Government in April, 1880, the loyal portion of the inhabitants of the Transvaal were again and again assured by British officials of high rank that the Transvaal would certainly continue to be a part of Her Majesty's dominions; upon the faith of these assurances many men invested their money and settled in the Transvaal, and as late as the 8th June, 1880, Mr. Gladstone added to the assurances already given by a letter containing these words: "Our judgment is, that the Queen cannot be advised to relinquish her sovereignty over the Transvaal." And even after the rebellion had broken out, as late as January in the present year, the Government put in the mouth of the Sovereign,
