These speeches, as may be imagined, did an incalculable amount of mischief. Besides fanning the smouldering sparks of discontent, they served up catchwords wholesale for that section of the British public whose political machinery is largely fed by catchwords. But, as has been decided by axiom, "any stick will serve to beat a dog with," and the Transvaal difficulty was a convenient weapon for the attack on the Government. The real feeling of the Boer community was an outside matter, and, as we shall presently see, had nothing to do with the case, though in March 1880 Mr. Gladstone had the satisfaction of receiving a letter from a committee of Boer malcontents, wherein "he was thanked for the great sympathy shown in their fate." The thanks were a little premature. In April 1880 the elections took place, and Mr. Gladstone came into power with a large majority. Then he was asked the great question: Would he maintain his oft-repeated pledge to retain the Transvaal, or would he continue to take up the tone of his Midlothian denunciations? The riddle was shortly to be solved. In the debate on the Queen's Speech the Prime Minister thus expressed himself: "I do not know whether there is an absolute union of opinion on this side of the House as to the policy in which the assumption of the Transvaal originated. Undoubtedly, as far as I am myself concerned, I did not approve of that assumption. I took no part in questioning it nor in the attempt to condemn it, because, in my opinion, whether the assumption was wise or unwise, it having been done, no good but only mischief was to be done by the intervention of this House. But whatever our original opinions were on that policy--and the opinions of the majority of those who sit on this side of the House were decidedly adverse to it--we had to confront a state of facts; and the main fact which met us was the existence of the large native population in the Transvaal, to whom, by the establishment of the Queen's supremacy, we hold ourselves to have given a pledge. That is the acceptance of facts, and that is the sense in which my right honourable friend, and all those who sit with him, may, if they think fit, say we accept the principles on which the late Government proceeded. It is quite possible to accept the consequences of a policy, and yet to retain the original difference of opinion with regard to the character of that policy as long as it was a matter of discussion." And shortly after he wrote to Messrs. Kruger and Joubert:--