We could certainly annex the Republic by force,--as we have done the Transvaal. If we were to send a High Commissioner to Bloemfontein with thirty policemen and an order that the country should be given up to us, I do not know that President Brand and the Volksraad could do better than comply,--with such loudest remonstrance as they might make. “The Republic cannot fight Great Britain,” President Brand might say, as President Burgers said when he apologised for the easy surrender of his Republic. But there are things which a nation can not do and hold up its head, and this would be one of them. There could be no excuse for such spoliation. It is not easy to justify what we have done in the Transvaal. If there be any laws of right and wrong by which nations should govern themselves in their dealings with other nations it is hard to find the law in conformity with which that act was done. But for that act expediency can be pleaded. We have taken the Transvaal not that we might strengthen our own hands, not that we might round our own borders, not that we might thus be enabled to carry out the policy of our own Cabinet,--but because by doing so we have enabled Englishmen, Dutchmen! and natives to live one with another in comfort. There does seem to have been at any rate expedience to justify us in the Transvaal. But no such plea can be put forward in reference to the Free State. There a quiet people are being governed after their own fashion. There a modest people are contented with the fruition of their own moderate wealth. There a secure and well ordered people are able to live without fear. I cannot see any reason for annexing them;--or any other excuse beyond that spirit of spoliation which has so often armed the strong against the weak, but which England among the strong nations has surely repudiated. The Legislature of the Orange Republic consists, as I have said, of a single House called the Volksraad, which is elected for four years, of which one half goes out at the end of every two years, so that the change is not made all at once as with us, half the House being dissolved at the end of one period of two years, and half at the end of another. The members are paid 20s. a day while the House is sitting. The House elects its own Speaker, at the right hand of whom the President has a chair. This he may occupy or not as he pleases; but when he is not there it is expected that his place shall be filled by the Government Secretary. The President can speak when he likes but cannot vote. The House can, if it please, desire him to withdraw, but, I was informed, had never yet exercised its privilege in this respect.