Notwithstanding their native love of independence, and their protest to the British throne against the act of annexation, the Africanders of the Transvaal might have acquiesced in the British rule had they been fairly treated. There was a good promise of peace at first. The finances of the country were at once relieved by the expenditure of English money in liberal amounts. Numbers of the leading Africanders retained their official positions at the request of the British commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shepstone. It is only reasonable to suppose that the people at large would have settled down to permanent content as British subjects had the affairs of the newly constituted colony been administered to the satisfaction of the leaders. But, instead of following a policy dictated alike by wisdom and righteousness, the very opposite seems to have been the rule observed in the attempt to govern these new and most difficult subjects of the British crown. A number of mistakes—so called—were made which, as even Canon Knox Little admits, were a sufficient justification of the Africander leaders in plotting and agitating against the British connection. The first of these mistakes was the too early recall of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who had so deftly managed the bloodless though arbitrary annexation, who knew the country well and was much respected by the people. In place of his rule as special commissioner was substituted an administration under Sir Bartle Frere as governor of Cape Colony and British High Commissioner for South Africa. There being no representative government in the Transvaal after annexation, the administration became, perhaps necessarily, autocratic both in form and in spirit. Sir William Owen Lanyon, who had been appointed governor of the Transvaal, was an officer of some renown in dealing successfully with native uprisings, but proved totally unfit for the delicate management required in governing the Africanders. He has been described as haughty and arrogant in mind, indisposed to excuse the rudeness of the Transvaal farmers, and incapable of tolerating the social equality so dear to them. His swarthy complexion, also, made against his popularity, for it suggested the possibility of a strain of black blood in his veins—a blemish unpardonable in the eyes of any slaveholding people. Under his rule complaints were ignored, taxes were levied and peremptorily collected by distraint, and soon the latent discontent broke out into open and active disaffection. The second mistake—if it does not deserve a harsher name—was the failure to institute the local self-government by representatives promised by Sir Theophilus Shepstone when he proclaimed annexation. The text of that part of the proclamation reads thus: