I had not the pleasure of meeting Sir Theophilus and have the less repugnance therefore to surmise the condition of his mind when he received the order to go to Pretoria. Had he told me his mind I might have been unable to publish my own surmises. He knew that the native races of the Transvaal unless convinced of the superiority of their white neighbours would ever struggle to prove them inferior,--and that such inferiority if proved would at once be their death-warrant. The Natives had long learned to respect the English and to hate the Dutch;--but even that respect would not restrain them if once they had asserted their masterhood to a white race. And now this state of things was at hand. He was aware that though English troops could be supplied to maintain English authority, English troops would not be lent to fight the battles of the Dutch. There might, nay there probably would be, a native triumph just across our borders which he as a minister in Natal could not interfere to quell,--but which, when a rumour of it should spread among the Zulus on our border, might induce 300,000 coloured subjects to think that they could free themselves by a blow from 20,000 white masters. And he knew the condition which I have attempted to explain,--that these Dutch people in the Transvaal would not pay a stiver of tax, that there was in fact no government, that the gaols were unlocked in order that prisoners might find elsewhere the bread which their gaolers could not get for them, that the posts could not be continued because the Contractors were not paid, that no one would part with a coin which he possessed, that property was unsaleable, that industry was unprofitable, that life was insecure, that Chaos was come upon the land. I do not suppose that Sir Theophilus doubted much when he read the Commission which had been sent to him, or that he thought very much of all the safeguards and provisions. He probably felt, as did everybody else, that the South African Republic had from the first been a failure,--almost a farce,--and that the sooner so expensive a failure could be brought to an end, the better. If indeed the Volksraad would have voted their own extermination that would have been very well; but he could hardly have expected it. As for petitions, and the wish of a “sufficient number” of the inhabitants,--I should imagine that he must have been a little indifferent to that. His mind probably was made up,--with a resolve to give the Volksraad what time might be needed for their deliberations. They did not deliberate,--only deliberated whether they would deliberate or not, and then declined even to deliberate. Whereupon Sir Theophilus said that then and from thenceforth the Transvaal should be British property. So he put up the Queen’s flag;--and the Transvaal is and probably will remain British property.