Mr. Chamberlain said in the Commons that Lord Curzon should have been overruled; an inexplicable remark from a man who had had the courage to say to the miners that it was better they should be governed from Downing Street than from Park Lane. In December 1903 General Ben Viljeon informed a labour commissioner that a petty chief had told him recently that if he sent 100 boys to the Rand only 66 returned, and some of them had scurvy. It was not wonderful, therefore, that black labour was scarce; but it was wonderful that his Majesty's Government did not take steps to put an end to a state of things which they must have known to be terrible, instead of merely substituting for the ill-used, underpaid, criminally-treated but free labouring Kaffirs Chinamen who were to be nothing better than slaves. But the drawing up of the draft Ordinance went forward. It was hurried on at an incredible rate. Until the last minute it was kept back from Parliament, and the Blue-book dealing with the alleged necessities for introducing yellow labour was only placed in the hands of the members of the House of Commons a few days before Mr. Herbert Samuel moved his famous amendment to the King's Address--"It is highly inexpedient that sanction should be given to any Ordinance permitting the introduction of indentured Chinese labourers into the Transvaal Colony until the approval of the colonists has been formally ascertained." At one end of the cable sat Lord Milner, pricked on by the Rand lords, at the other end sat the Colonial Secretary, anxious to be fair, anxious to be humane, anxious to do nothing contrary to the historic principles of British rule, but bemused by the clamour of the Transvaal, and seeing in the protests against the Ordinance only party moves and party partisanship. The clamour for the Ordinance increased day by day. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had managed to extract a pledge from the Government, by which Lord Milner was instructed to introduce into the Ordinance a clause suspending its operation pending further instructions from home. But it was pointed out that the matter was of such great urgency that his Majesty's Government could not undertake to postpone their decision longer than the termination of the debate on the Address. As a matter of fact, they had already made up their minds. It was stated that if a colony desired Chinese labour it was not for the Imperial Parliament to interfere. To have done so would have been contrary to the traditions of Imperial Government. But when Mr. Herbert Samuel asked that the Ordinance should not be permitted until the approval of the colonists in the Transvaal had been formally obtained by the natural expedient of a referendum, Lord Milner asserted that to hold a referendum was impossible--it would occupy too much time, that at any rate it was an expedient unknown in any part of the British Empire.