It Cannot Be Denied That The Jameson Raid And The
Incomplete Manner In Which The Circumstances Connected With It Had
Been Investigated Had Weakened The Force Of Those Who Wished To
Interfere Energetically On Behalf Of British Subjects.
There was a
vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists were
engineering the situation for their own ends.
It is difficult to
imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a
state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely
it is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances
of the Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him
would be to remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did
exist among those who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the
remote, and throughout the negotiations the hand of Great Britain
was weakened, as her adversary had doubtless calculated that it
would be, by an earnest but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and
a morbid, restless conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous
evils from which a modern progressive State has to suffer.
It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their
petition praying for protection to their native country. Since the
April previous a correspondence had been going on between Dr.
Leyds, Secretary of State for the South African Republic, and Mr.
Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, upon the existence or
non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one hand, it was contended
that the substitution of a second convention had entirely annulled
the first; on the other, that the preamble of the first applied
also to the second.
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