and the less easily disturbed since it was the result of their sturdy valour. The restraining conditions of the 1881 Convention were still further attenuated by the London Convention of February 27, 1884, in which with further fatuity the Government of the day accorded unnecessarily to the Transvaal state the extravagant title of “The South African Republic.” Perhaps this is the most remarkable act of abnegation which has ever occurred in the history of the British Empire; and it must have seemed to the inhabitants of British South Africa like the admission of a rival ruling power into the British sphere south of the Zambezi. By this 1884 Convention (worthless for that purpose, as are all treaties and conventions when the force to maintain them is not apparent) the geographical limits of the Transvaal state were clearly defined, and the Boers engaged to keep within them. Encouraged by this diplomatic success, and the feeble manner in which the Imperial Government had permitted them to carve out a fresh state in the heart of Zululand, the Boers of the Transvaal now determined to add Bechuanaland to their dominions; thus possibly to cut off British expansion towards the Zambezi, and to make their western frontier coincident with the natural limits of that Protectorate which Germany had just established, north of the Orange River. But public opinion in Great Britain was becoming intolerant of any further sacrifices of British aspirations in South Africa or of breaches of faith on the part of the Boers, and forced the Government of the day to assert itself. A strong expedition was sent out under Sir Charles Warren at the end of 1884, which finally secured for Great Britain the Protectorate of Bechuanaland, and the restraining of the Transvaal within its proper limits. Nevertheless, in 1894 a fresh concession was made to that state by the withdrawal of British opposition to its absorption of a little enclave of Zulu country known as Swaziland. In excuse for the British Government it must be pointed out that the Swazi chiefs had previously made over to Transvaal subjects so many rights and concessions that any other solution than the further cession of the administration was rendered difficult under the existing conditions. [The detachment of Swaziland as a small native state, administered by Imperial officials, was effected in 1902.]