This restoration of independence to the Boers was viewed both at home and in Cape Colony not only with grave suspicion and distrust, but with high indignation; and so strong was this feeling against the home Government that in a great popular demonstration at Cape Town the effigy of Mr. Gladstone, the Prime Minister, was publicly burned, and the British lion was caricatured, while many English residents in Pretoria and other towns left the country rather than remain under the oligarchical government of the Boers. So ended this part of the Transvaal drama. The action of the British Government was at the time attributed to various motives. By some it was considered the magnanimous action of a strong power, willing to help a weak but struggling state in its efforts at self-government; by others it has been described as a pusillanimous shrinking from a stern duty which it owed to its colonies around the Transvaal. President Brand declared the treaty to be 'in his opinion the noblest act England has ever done'; but the Boers themselves considered the peace as the result of their own efforts and of Britain's fear to prosecute the war. The after results have been most calamitous, and go to show the folly of not facing and overcoming the beginnings of a corrupt system. Captain Wauchope returned on the conclusion of peace in the summer of 1881, having been only a few months abroad, and without engaging in active service. He was chiefly employed on the line of communication as one of {72} the staff. His return home was accompanied with anything but feelings of respect for the Government which had so ingloriously stopped short in their work--a feeling very generally shared by the officers and men. Some years afterwards, when alluding to this episode in his life at a meeting in Edinburgh, he said of it:--'I was in the Transvaal during those terrible times in 1881 when we suffered the terrible disgrace from which all our after-troubles there arose. It was the vacillation and weakness and change of policy that caused all the trouble then.'