from being hounded on to war among themselves by their Chiefs. The Dutch rule in the Transvaal was an incentive to war which was already operating. The house was on fire and could only have been put out by us. As to the good done to the English of the Transvaal it is hardly necessary that any arguments should be used. We had abandoned the country to Dutch rule in 1852, and it was natural that the Dutch should consider only themselves--and the Natives. After what we had done we clearly had no right to take back the Transvaal by force in order that we might protect the interests of Englishmen who were living there. But it is matter of additional satisfaction that we have been enabled to re-establish a basis of trade in the country;--for the trade of the country has been in the hands of English, Germans, or newly arrived Hollanders, and not in those of the Boers to whom the country was given up. I do not remember to have found a shop or even an hotel all through the Transvaal in the hands of a Dutch Boer. But the man who has cause to rejoice the most,--and who as far as I could learn is wide awake to the fact,--is the Boer himself. He is an owner of land,--and on the first of January 1877 his land was hardly worth having. Now he can sell it, and such sales are already being made. He was all astray even as to what duty required of him. Ought he to pay his taxes when no one around him was paying? Of what use would be his little contribution? Therefore he did not pay. And yet he had sense enough to know that when there are no taxes, then there can be no government. Now he will pay his taxes. Ought he to have fought, when those wretched Natives, in their audacity, were trying to recover the land which he had taken from them? Of what use could fighting have been when he had no recognised leader,--when the next Boer to him was not fighting? Now he knows that he will have a leader. Why cultivate his land, or more of it than would feed himself? Why shear his sheep if he could not sell his wool? Now there are markets for him. It was to this condition of not paying, not fighting, and not working that he was coming when British annexation was suggested to him. He could not himself ask to be expatriated; but it may well be understood that he should thoroughly appreciate the advantage to himself of a measure for which as a Dutchman he could not ask. What was wanted was money and the credit which money gives. England had money and the Boer knew well enough that English money could procure for him that which a national flag, and a gold coinage, and a code of laws, and a promised railway could not achieve. It was almost cruel to ask him to consent to annexation, but it would have been more cruel not to annex him.