means when he says that I have derived my notions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from the alien journalism of London,' and that I ought to leave this sort of thing to the yellow press of the Metropolis.' While in South Africa I never failed to study my Times, to say nothing of reading or at least skimming the cream, so to speak, of as many other English journals and periodicals as I could find time for in the intervals of daily work; and now that I have more leisure I have taken some pains to ascertain the views of the chief organs of all parties in England and the colonies on the South African question-that is to say, of those papers which undoubtedly guide and instruct, if they do not actually form, public opinion; and I find in the vast majority of them remarkable unanimity in supporting the present policy of Her Majesty's Government. They are certainly, as a general rule, far better informed on South African affairs than was formerly the case.

Mr. Robertson criticises my use of the words 'England' and 'English' instead of Great Britain' or 'the inhabitants of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.' As to this I would merely beg to observe that in writing as in speaking brevity has its advantages; that, after all, England is the predominant partner-n'en déplaise aux autres—and that the greater contains the less. These, however, are trifles light as air compared with the main question, on which Mr. Robertson can tell us nothing new. The grievances of the British residents in the Transvaal are too real and too well known to be any longer denied or ignored. Neither their persons nor their property can be held safe under the existing régime, and this alone, if not thoroughly redressed by the reform of the legislation, the passing of just laws, and the re-establishment of the independence of the Judicial Bench, must be regarded as sufficient ground for the intervention of the Paramount Power in the internal affairs of a State so shamefully misgoverned. Much time, ink, and patience have been wasted over the precise terms of the Conventions of 1881 and 1884. It is quite useless to reiterate for the thousandth time the pros and cons of the wearisome discussion. It is indeed crambe repetita. The matter lies in a nutshell. The Conventions are virtually dead and buried through the acts of the Boers themselves. The pith of the matter was clearly stated in the Queen's last Prorogation speech. Both Conventions were entered into by the British Government in the belief that Mr. Kruger's promise of equality of treatment in all respects for all white men in the Transvaal would be honourably kept. Those solemn promises have been deliberately broken in a way which has raised the question whether so much as is nominally left of either or both Conventions ought not to be formally annulled by Her Majesty's Government. The generosity shown by England to the Transvaal Boers is unparalleled in history, and even now a locus

pænitentia has been offered to them. To say that there is no ground for sending an ultimatum, or that there has not been and there is not now any occasion for warlike action or even for military preparations, is an insult to the common sense of the British public.

To attempt, as Mr. Robertson does, to institute a comparison between the wrongs suffered by British subjects in the Transvaal and the revolutionary demands of Gladstonian Radicals in England is beside the mark. There is no true analogy between the cases. But it is needless to refute each of Mr. Robertson's fallacies in detail. What I chiefly object to in his article is the underlying and most unfair insinuation that I am advocating or trying to urge on war with the Transvaal. So far as I am personally concerned, the exact reverse is the fact. No one would regret such a war more than I should, and I hold that it can only be averted now by absolute firmness on the part of Her Majesty's Government. In my opinion it is already too late for the five years' residential franchise proposed by Sir Alfred Milner. It is the story of the Sibylline books over again. That proposal has been rejected by the Boer Government, and if it becomes necessary to present an ultimatum it should include the furnishing of sufficient guarantees that complete equality, both politically and before the law, should be accorded to every white man in the Transvaal. It is quite clear that the Boers cannot be any longer allowed to exercise absolute power in that country.

I can hardly believe that the great majority of the Transvaal burghers, if they were honestly told the true state of the case, would prove to be so bereft of common sense as to measure their strength against that of Her Majesty's Government, unless they were assured of powerful foreign support such as they are not likely to get. They will dispute every point of every concession demanded from them to the very last, but in the end they must yield. Mr. Kruger's efforts to drag the Orange Free State and the Cape Dutch into his unjust quarrel are by no means certain to be successful. Everything, in my opinion, depends on the degree of determination shown by Her Majesty's Government.

With regard to Mr. Kruger himself I desire to add a few words. His own people naturally admire his apparent strength of will and what they regard as his success. That he is in many respects a very remarkable man; that in his best days he has given proofs of determination, personal courage, natural ability, and great cunning in dealing with men, must be admitted; but none the less he is an ignorant, obstinate, narrow-minded man thrust by force of circumstances and the blindness of British statesmen into a position which he ought never to have occupied. His government of the Transvaal for the last eighteen years, if judged by its fruits, must be pronounced a dead failure. It has indeed enriched the members

and hangers-on of a corrupt oligarchy through the plundering of the stranger within their gates; but it has kept the whole country back in every conceivable way, and has actually brought it to the verge of a civil war which might spread through the whole of South Africa. It may be that Mr. Kruger at his present advanced age cannot, if he would, control the monstrous government he has created, or it may be that he would not if he could. In either case, if his boasted patriotism be anything but a pretext and a sham, his duty to his country in the present crisis is clear. What he cannot or will not do, others both can and will. Let him prove that he has some sense of honour and justice left in him, and resign bona fide, and not merely in a Bismarckian sense, the office he is so manifestly unfit to hold. He is face to face now with a crisis which, if Her Majesty's Government and representatives do their duty, can only end in one of two ways. As far as Mr. Kruger is personally concerned, he ought either to do now what he could have done with far better grace just after the collapse of the Jameson raid-that is to say, fulfil his original promises by honestly carrying out the principle of equality of political and legal rights for all white men in the Transvaal—or, failing this, to resign the Presidency. If he cannot or will not secure the introduction of the necessary reforms, it is only by prompt resignation that he can hope to save his people from the horrors of war. As far as he is personally concerned the loss of office would be no great hardship. He is said to be more or less unnerved. He is an old man who has long since made his mark, and he has, moreover, made what is for a Boer a very large fortune. He lags superfluous on the stage. He might rest and be thankful if by resignation he could indirectly be the means of preserving peace and securing such a measure of internal independence for the Transvaal as his long suffering and generous Sovereign might still be willing on certain conditions to vouchsafe. Such a consummation is devoutly to be wished by all friends of peace.

There are, of course, hot-headed youngsters in all countries, and the Transvaal youths are much given to swaggering and bragging, but I can scarcely believe that the majority of the older and wiser burghers, the true fathers of the country, have any wish to provoke a war with Great Britain—a war which, as they must know, can only end in the total loss of their imaginary but highly prized independence, or at best in the substitution for their so-called Republic of a Responsible Government under the British Crown similar to that of the Cape Colony.

In our present preparations for war I see the best hope for permanent peace throughout South Africa. The Transvaal Boers will doubtless refuse to sanction the necessary reforms as long as they see the slightest chance of having their own way through Radical or Fenian support in England or otherwise, but when at length they

realise that Her Majesty's Government is in earnest, that they have no foreign support to expect, and little or nothing to hope for in the way of active assistance from their friends and neighbours in the Orange Free State, the Cape Colony, and Natal, they will show themselves to be greater fools than I take them for if their natural shrewdness does not teach them to bow to the inevitable, and agree with their adversary quickly while they are in the way with him, lest a worse thing befall them.

SIDNEY SHIPPARD.

THE IMPERIAL FUNCTION OF TRADE

THERE are those who speak of trade as if it were always carried on among entirely free agents, people bound to one another by no financial obligations, influenced by no tastes or prejudices. They declare that, even in such an empire as ours, trade does not follow the flag, but the price-list. It is possible that in a world of economic automata everyone would resign themselves cheerfully to buy in the cheapest and to sell in the dearest market. The British Empire, however, is not composed of economic automata, but of men and women, who are influenced in all their business transactions by circumstances and conditions far more numerous and complicated than can be taken into account in any price-list.

What strikes one most in studying Imperial trade is that it throbs with life, that in the variety of its activities, of its thousand changing forms, it mirrors the mind and the nature of our race. And if it mirrors Anglo-Saxon human nature, its movements are likely to be as sensitive to prejudice and to sentiment as they are to calculation.

As a matter of fact, experience confirms this supposition, for the colonies in which Imperial trade is most progressive, most expansive, and in which the proportion of trade carried on with the mother country shows the most pronounced signs of increase, are just those colonies which are inhabited by people of our own race, people who are as well able to calculate and to estimate their own interests as we are ourselves, whose tastes, habits and prejudices are very like our own, among whom fashions follow the same course, and popular demand is and remains much the same as popular demand at home.

After all, commerce is but one branch of human activity; it does not stand apart from the rest of life. It is influenced by the same feelings, motives, and considerations as all other branches of human activity. In ranging over Imperial questions we might I think, expect to find Imperial trade show signs of the same movements of opinion and sentiment which we see at work in Imperial politics.

Nothing has been more remarkable in recent years than the growth of the idea of Imperial unity, the spread of the desire