The British population, although it provided no such displays of racial passion, was in an equally determined mood. Undismayed by the threats of the Boers, the Uitlander Council continued calmly to analyse the Franchise Bill in each successive phase--an unostentatious but very useful service, which materially assisted Lord Milner in following the windings and doublings of Boer diplomacy. After the great meeting at Johannesburg (June 10th), the British centres in the Cape Colony, Natal, and Rhodesia gave similar demonstrations of their confidence in Lord Milner's statesmanship, and their conviction of the justice and necessity of the five years' franchise demanded by the Imperial Government. On the other hand, the irritation against British intervention was growing daily in the Free State; and the Dutch Reformed Church and the Bond had organised a counter-demonstration in the Cape Colony. The Synod of the former, meeting on June 30th, drew up an address protesting that the differences between Lord Milner's franchise proposals and those of President Krüger were not sufficient to justify the "horrors of war," and requested the Governor to forward it to the Queen. At Capetown (July 12th) and in the Dutch districts throughout the Colony, Bond meetings were held at which resolutions were passed in favour of a "compromise" as between Lord Milner's five years' franchise and the scheme embodied in President Krüger's law. More sinister was the circumstance that the information, that a consignment of 500 rifles and 1,000,000 cartridges, landed at Port Elizabeth on July 8th, had been permitted by the Cape Government to be forwarded through the Colony to the Free State, only came to the ears of the High Commissioner by an accident. In the meantime, more definite evidence of the almost unanimous approval of Lord Milner's policy by the British population in South Africa was forthcoming. In all three British colonies petitions to the Queen praying for justice to the Uitlanders, and affirming absolute confidence in Lord Milner, were signed. The Natal petition contained the names of three-fourths of the adult male population of the Colony, while the signatures to the joint petition of the Cape and Rhodesia had already reached a total of 40,500 before the end of July. In other respects the testimony of Natal was clear and unmistakable. In this predominantly English Colony identical resolutions supporting the action and policy of the Imperial Government, were carried unanimously in both Chambers of the Legislature. [Sidenote: Hofmeyr's warning.]