"The South African Republic will conclude no treaty or engagement with any state or nation other than the Orange Free State, nor with any native tribe to the eastward or the westward of the republic, until the same has been approved by her Majesty the Queen. Such approval shall be considered to have been granted if her Majesty’s Government shall not, within six months after receiving a copy of such treaty (which shall be delivered to them immediately upon its completion), have notified that the conclusion of the treaty is in conflict with the interests of Great Britain, or of any of her Majesty’s possessions in South Africa." When the contents of the treaty were published to the Boer people, many of them objected strongly to this clause, and insisted that it gave the British too great power in the affairs of the republic, and a strenuous effort was made to have the offending clause eliminated. In the year 1883 a deputation, which included Paul Kruger, was sent to London, with a view of obtaining the abolition of the suzerainty. This deputation negotiated a new convention the following year, from which the word "suzerainty" and the stipulations in regard thereto were removed. In their report to the Volksraad, made in 1884, the deputation stated that the new convention put an end to the British suzerainty. February 4, 1884, in a letter to Lord Derby, then in charge of British affairs, the deputation announced to him that they expected an agreement to be contained in the treaty relative to the abolition of the suzerainty. In his reply of a week later, Lord Derby made a statement upon which the Boers base their strongest claim that the suzerainty was abolished. He said: "By the omission of those articles of the convention of Pretoria which assigned to her Majesty and to the British resident certain specific powers and functions connected with the internal government and the foreign relations of the Transvaal state, your Government will be left free to govern the country without interference, and to conduct its diplomatic intercourse and shape its foreign policy, subject only to the requirement embodied in the fourth article of the new draft, that any treaty with a foreign state shall not have effect without the approval of the Queen." For a period of almost ten years the suzerainty of England over the Transvaal was an unknown quantity. With the exception of several Government officials, there were hardly any Englishmen in the country, and no one had the slightest interest in the affairs of the Transvaal Government. When gold was discovered in the Randt in quantities that equalled those of the early days of the California gold fields, an unparalleled influx of Englishmen and foreigners followed, and in several years the city of Johannesburg had sprung up in the veldt.