At the present moment Great Britain is paying the Transvaal bill. The marching to and fro of the soldiers, the salaries of the Governors and other officials, the debts of the late Government, the interests on loans already made, the sums necessary for the gradual redemption of loans, I fear even a pension for the late President, are provided or are to be provided out of British taxes. The country was annexed on 12th April. On 8th June a letter was written from the Colonial Office to the Treasury, showing that we had annexed an existing debt of £217,158 for which we were responsible, and that we had expended £25,000 in marching troops up to the Transvaal for the sake of giving safety to the inhabitants and their property. The report then goes on to its natural purpose. “Lord Carnarvon is of opinion that it may be possible to meet the more immediate requirements of the moment if their Lordships will make an advance of £100,000 in aid of the revenues of the Transvaal, _to be repaid as soon as practicable_. Unless aid is given at once the new province would be obliged to endeavour to borrow at a ruinously high rate of interest.” I doubt whether the idea of repayment has taken so strong a hold of the people in the Transvaal, as it has of the officials in Downing Street. In a former paragraph of the report the Secretary of State thus excuses himself for making the application. “It is with great unwillingness that Lord Carnarvon feels himself compelled to have recourse to the assistance of the Imperial Treasury in this matter, but he is satisfied that the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury will readily acknowledge that in this most difficult case he has had no alternative. The annexation of the Transvaal with all its consequent liabilities, political as well as financial, _has been neither coveted nor sought by him_;”--the italics here and above are my own;--“and it is only a sincere conviction that this step was necessary in order to prevent most serious danger to Her Majesty’s Colonies in South Africa which has persuaded him to approve the late action of Sir T. Shepstone.”