The Earl of Rosebery, under date of October 11, 1899, wrote that he could speak "without touching politics, for a situation had been created beyond party polemics, and it was needless to discuss how we could best have attained our simple and reasonable object of rescuing our fellow-countrymen in the Transvaal from intolerable conditions of subjection and injustice, and of securing equal rights for the white races in South Africa, for an ultimatum has been addressed to Great Britain by the South African Republic which is in itself a declaration of war." Lord Rosebery continued that the people would close their ranks and relegate party controversy to a more convenient season, and there was in addition this to say: "Without attempting to judge the policy which concluded a peace after the reverse at Majuba Hill, I am bound to state my profound conviction that there is no conceivable Government in this country which could repeat it." In a speech at Bath, unveiling the mural tablets to the Earl of Chatham and William Pitt, Mr. Gladstone's brilliant lieutenant and successor said of the Boer ultimatum, it was such as, he thought, the proudest empire in the world would have hesitated about sending. But since the commencement of the war the Boers had engaged in the strange policy of issuing decrees of annexation of British territory, which were, apparently, desirable additions to the Republic of the Transvaal. [Sidenote: Lord Rosebery's Speech at Bath] There had been a great misunderstanding about the Majuba Hill transaction. It was a mere skirmish, and concurrently with that there was an attempt on the part of the then Government to settle peaceably the issue in the Transvaal. Now, whatever they might think of the result of that attempt, the thing in itself was a sublime experiment. Mr. Gladstone, with his overpowering conviction of the might and power of England, thought that she could do things which other nations could not do, and, therefore, endeavored to treat with the Boers after the reverse which took place. We knew how Mr. Gladstone's magnanimity was rewarded. He (Lord Rosebery) felt a deep misgiving at the time in respect to this course of policy, and his fears had been realized in the result. The Boers had regarded that magnanimity as a proof of weakness, and they rewarded Mr. Gladstone's magnanimity with a deliberate and constant encroachment on the terms of the settlement. Then there came the discovery of gold. If they might judge from all that they had read, the income secured by the discovery of gold produced great corruption in the Transvaal. The bill of salaries--public salaries in the Transvaal--amounted, on a calculation, to about £40 a head of the population, and it could not but be considered that that was a liberal allowance for the working of so simple a republican Government. The Jameson raid was not merely a deplorable incident from a diplomatic point of view, but