The Boers of the Free State and all the Dutch in the Colony as well as in the Fields were in sympathy with the president, and they accused the high commissioner and the secretary of state for the colonies of having shamefully robbed the Free State of the territory for the sake of its diamonds. This charge, I may add, was believed in by a great many beside the Dutch, and it was asserted by some of the most influential journals in England that the home government would never have thought of setting up Waterboer’s claim to the territory in dispute had not diamonds been found to exist in it. This, however, was altogether untrue, for Sir Philip Wodehouse at the time when he was engaged in interviewing the British Kaffrarian annexation delegates at Aliwal North, who were opposed to the proposed absorption of their country by the Cape, was in correspondence with the president on the same subject, and complaining that the Boers of the Free State were encroaching upon Waterboer’s territory, and accused that state of having extended its boundaries beyond those marked out when the sovereignty was abandoned. Moreover, long before any diamonds were discovered, Mr. David Arnott, the agent of Waterboer, had sent numberless protests to the Free State government respecting the Boer encroachments, and at a conference which had taken place on the same subject had produced evidence which he held to be more than sufficient to prove that Waterboer’s claim was incontestable. On the 17th of July, 1871, the Colesberg Kopje, now the Kimberley mine, was discovered, and in November of the same year the whole of the diggings, without regard to title, were proclaimed to be under British rule. This was supposed to have been done in order to enable Sir Henry Barkly to perfect his arrangements for bringing about annexation during the session of parliament in 1872. His excellency little knew then how he was to be sold when the parliament met, but he afterward discovered, as we have seen, with how capricious and unreliable a house of representatives he had to deal. The manner of proclaiming British rule was unique, to say the least of it. The commissioners who were still in power, and a good many not in power, were in a state of mental fever about the hoisting “the flag that braves” and proclaiming British rule. It was all very well for Sir Henry to instruct the commissioners to proclaim British rule, but who was to read the proclamation.