There is no doubt that the retrocession of the Transvaal was a violation of a series of guarantees which had been previously given. Not only Mr. Gladstone and Lord Kimberley, but also Sir Garnet Wolseley, Sir Bartle Frere, Sir Theo. Shepstone and Sir Owen Lanyon had over and over again declared that the Transvaal would remain English territory, and that under _no_ circumstances could the annexation be reversed. These emphatic utterances were made long before the outbreak of hostilities, and consequently the withdrawal of English rule after the Dutch had gained four signal victories within nine weeks, could be interpreted only by both Dutch and natives as an act, not of principle and equity, but of weakness and defeat. My friend, Mr. C. K. White, one of the nominees appointed by Sir Garnet Wolseley to the legislative council, which he gave as a sop to the Transvaal Boers, in a letter at the time appealed to Mr. Gladstone in the following touching words: “If, sir, you had seen, as I have seen, promising young citizens of Pretoria dying of wounds received for their country, and if you had had the painful duty, as I have had, of bringing to their friends at home the last mementoes of the departed; if you had seen the privations and discomforts which delicate women and children bore without murmuring for upward of three months; if you had seen strong men crying like children at the cruel and undeserved desertion of England; if you had seen the long strings of half desperate loyalists, shaking the dust off their feet as they left the country, which I saw on my way to Newcastle; and if you yourself had invested your all on the strength of the word of England, and now saw yourself in a fair way of being beggared by the acts of the country in which you trusted, you would, sir, I think, be ‘pronounced,’ and England would ring with eloquent entreaties and threats which would compel a hearing.” Mr. Gladstone, however, changed his previously declared convictions. On January 21st, 1880, he stated in the House of Commons: “I must look to the obligations entailed by the annexation, and if in my opinion, and in the opinion of many on this side of the house, wrong was done by the annexation itself, that would not warrant us in doing fresh, distinct and separate wrong by a disregard of the obligations which that annexation entailed;” or again on June 8th, 1880, when in answer to Messrs Kruger and Joubert who had written to him, asking him to rescind the annexation of the Transvaal, he said “our judgment is that the Queen cannot be advised to relinquish her sovereignty over the Transvaal.” Yet little more than a year saw this “pronounced” opinion totally changed, and all confidence in Mr. Gladstone and his ministry almost annihilated throughout the length and breadth of South Africa.