The Government of India have repeatedly urged upon the Imperial Government the gravity of this question, and Lord Curzon especially pressed upon his friends, when they were in office, the vital importance of effecting some acceptable settlement whilst the Transvaal was still a Crown Colony, and, therefore, more amenable to the influence of the Mother Country than it would be likely to prove when once endowed with self-government. Yet the Imperial Government after a succession of half-hearted and ineffective protests have now finally acquiesced in the perpetuation and even the aggravation of wrongs which some ten years ago they solemnly declared to be intolerable. Apart from the sense of justice upon which Englishmen pride themselves, it is impossible to overlook the disastrous consequences of this _gran rifiuto_ for the prestige of British rule in India. One of the Indian Members of Council, Mr. Dadabhoy, indicated them in terms as moderate as they were significant:-- In 1899 Lord Lansdowne feared the moral consequences in India of a conviction of the powerlessness of the British _Raj_ to save the Indian settlers in the Transvaal from oppression and harsh treatment. That was when there was peace all over this country, when sedition, much more anarchism, was an unheard-of evil. If the situation was disquieting then, what is it now when the urgent problem of the moment is how to put down and prevent the growth of unrest In the land? The masses do not understand the niceties of the relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies; they do not comprehend the legal technicalities. The British _Raj_ has so far revealed itself to them as a power whose influence is irresistible, and when they find that, with all its traditional omnipotence, it has not succeeded in securing to their countrymen --admittedly a peaceable and decent body of settlers who rendered valuable services during the war--equal treatment at the hands of a small Dependency, they become disheartened and attribute the failure to the European colonist's influence over the Home Government. That is an impression which is fraught with incalculable potentialities of mischief and which British statesmanship should do everything in its power to dispel. The present political situation in India adds special urgency to the case. No comments of mine could add to the significance of this warning. The measure contemplated by Mr. Gokhale's resolution may have some direct effect upon Natal, whose leading statesmen have repeatedly acknowledged the immense value of Indian indentured labour to the Colony, and may indirectly affect public opinion in the Transvaal. But behind the immediate question of the worse or better treatment of Indians in South Africa stand much larger questions, which Mr. Gokhale did not hesitate to state with equal frankness:--