It is difficult to convey any adequate impression of the atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue by which Lord Milner was surrounded. The Dutch party was in the ascendant in the Colony. The Cape Civil Service was tainted throughout with disaffection. Even the _personnel_ of the Government offices at Capetown, although it contained many excellent and loyal men, included also many who were disaffected or lukewarm. It is characteristic of the situation that during the most critical period of the negotiations with the Transvaal, the ministerial organ, _The South African News_, permitted itself to indulge, where Lord Milner, was concerned, not only in the bitterest criticisms but in outspoken personal abuse. To have abused the representative of the Sovereign in a British colony of which one-half of the population was seething with sedition, while a part had been actually armed for rebellion by the secret emissaries of a state with which Great Britain was on the verge of war, is an act which admits of only one interpretation. Lord Milner was to be got rid of at all costs; for the policy which _The South African News_ was intended to promote was that not of Great Britain, but of the Transvaal. The paper was directly inspired--it is indeed not unlikely that the articles themselves were written--by some of the members of the Ministry, Lord Milner's "constitutional advisers," whom throughout he himself treated with the respect to which their position entitled them. But nothing, perhaps, shows more vividly how extraordinary was the position in which Lord Milner found himself than the fact, which we have already noted, that the passage of the large consignment of 500 Mauser rifles and 1,000,000 cartridges for the Free State, to which the Prime Minister's attention was "drawn specially, because it was large," on July 15th, was not made known to him, the Governor of the Cape Colony, until August 9th, and then only by accident.[157] There is only one explanation of this remarkable incident: the interests of the Dutch party were different from those of the British Government. The Cape Colony was only in name a British colony. Under the guise of constitutional forms it had attained independence--virtual, though not nominal. If Lord Milner had contracted the habit of Biblical quotation from the Afrikander leaders, he might well have quoted the words of the psalmist: "Many bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round."[158] Even the approaches to Government House were watched by spies in President Krüger's pay, who carefully noted all who came and went. Members of the Uitlander community were the special subjects of this system of espionage. [Footnote 157: See letters between Lord Milner and Mr. Schreiner in Cd. 43, p. 13.] [Footnote 158: Psalm xxii. 12.] [Sidenote: Spies round Government House.]