The circumstances of the military operations and of the Majuba peace were vehemently denounced in Parliament by the Conservative party. Lord Randolph Churchill seems to have taken little part in these debates. Three years afterwards he condemned the Boers in strong terms for their treatment of the natives, and when the Majuba peace had passed out of the circle of real and burning questions and had become part of the ordinary stock-in-trade of party patter and recrimination, he seems to have bestowed upon it more than one passing taunt. But at the time, vigilant as he was to seize every foothold for attacking Mr. Gladstone’s Government, he neglected this large opportunity. His silence finds an explanation in the following curious letter to Sir Henry Wolff, written, be it remembered, at a time when England was ringing with denunciations of Boer ‘treachery’ in the ‘massacre’ at Bronker’s Spruit:-- University Club: December 27, 1880. I attach the greatest importance to this news from South Africa, and am of opinion that the question of reducing the Boers will divide the Liberal party by a sharper and more insuperable line than any Irish question. The arguments that formerly were of force for the annexation of the Transvaal, can no longer be used with effect. The Zulus are broken, and Secocoeni and his tribe gone, and there is no danger of a native irruption into Natal. The Boers, on the other hand, cannot be said to have ever ceased to be an independent nationality, and are showing now their perfect fitness to take care of themselves. Your natural and marvellous ingenuity will show you how the strength of this position may be developed. Courtney, if he decides to oppose the ‘coercion’ of the Boers, will have a great following of Liberals and the entire Irish party. The Fourth Party are individually and collectively unpledged to the annexation of the Transvaal, and it occurs to me one of us (like a thunderbolt in a clear sky) should on the Address pronounce for the independence of the Boers, and protest against British blood and treasure being wasted in reducing a gallant nationality which is perfectly able to take care of itself, taking into consideration the immense difficulties which beset the Home Government in Ireland, the East of Europe, Afghanistan, and Basutoland. Think this over in your ‘anxious mind,’ and consider the numerous advantageous features which the position offers.