In reference to our foreign policy, the General spoke in the highest terms of Lord Salisbury's dealing with the Soudan question, as compared with that of Mr. Gladstone's Government, when divisions in the Liberal party had led to so much loss of life and money without corresponding results. And in regard to the Transvaal question, then beginning once more to attract public attention, he insisted strongly that his great anxiety was that peace should be preserved. There was no man, he said, who was a greater lover of peace than he was, but he deprecated the vacillation and weakness and change of policy of 1881 that caused all the trouble then, and from which all the present trouble had arisen. What he wanted to see now was a strong and firm line taken, and he believed matters there would be put right. It could not be to the advantage of the Transvaal that British subjects should be treated as they were being treated now. What he wanted was that their people should be treated as human beings, and have the same voice in the government of the country as was given them in any other civilised country.' He admitted that the Jameson Raid was a most unwise and wicked proceeding, and had done a great deal to damage their {169} relationship with the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Dutch portion of South Africa; 'but although that was true, it did not remove the fact that the position of their countrymen in the Transvaal had not been improved. The great mass of them had nothing to do with the Jameson Raid. They were British subjects, who went out there under the _ægis_ of the British Crown, and surely it was their bounden duty as a nation to see that their rights were respected.' The poll was taken on 19th June, with the result that Mr. Dewar, the Liberal candidate, was returned with a majority of 831 over 4989 votes given for General Wauchope. The General in a manly speech at the close assured his supporters 'they had no cause to be discouraged, for they had only to gird up their loins, and victory would one day rest with them. He felt no bitterness whatever in regard to this fight. He was honoured by their call, and they had told him he had not dishonoured them. They had fought a square fight on both sides, and if he was right in his estimate of the citizens of South Edinburgh, they would very soon put matters right. It was only the difference of 400 men going from the one side to the other, and he would, so far as in him lay, do his very utmost at any time to stand by and aid them.'