"The fault lay in the British Government not having consulted the Basutos, their co-treaty power, when they handed them over to the Colonial Government. They should have called together a national assembly of the Basuto people, in which the terms of the transfer could have been quietly arranged, and this I consider is the root of all the troubles, and expenses, and miseries which have sprung up; and therefore, as it is always best to go to the root of any malady, I think it would be as well to let bygones be bygones, and to commence afresh by calling together by proclamation a Pitso of the whole tribe, in order to discuss the best means of sooner securing the settlement of the country. I think that some such proclamation should be issued. By this Pitso we would know the exact position of affairs, and the real point in which the Basutos are injured or considered themselves to be injured. "To those who wish for the total abandonment of Basutoland, this course must be palatable; to those who wish the Basutos well, and desire not to see them exterminated, it must also be palatable; and to those who hate the name of Basutoland it must be palatable, for it offers a solution which will prevent them ever hearing the name again. "This Pitso ought to be called at once. All Colonial officials ought to be absent, for what the colony wants is to know what is the matter; and the colony wishes to know it from the Basuto people, irrespective of the political parties of the Government. "Such a course would certainly recommend itself to the British Government, and to its masters--the British people. "Provided the demands of the Basutos--who will, for their own sakes, never be for a severing of their connection with the colony, in order to be eventually devoured by the Orange Free State--are such as will secure the repayment to the colony of all expenses incurred by the Colonial Government in the maintenance of this connection, and I consider that the Colonial Government should accept them. "With respect to the Loyals, there are some 800 families, the cost of keeping whom is on an average one shilling per diem each family, that is £40 per diem, or £1200 per month, and they have been rationed during six months at cost of £7200. Their claims may therefore be said to be some £80,000. Now, if these 800 families (some say half) have claims amounting to £30 each individually (say 400 families at £30), £12,000 paid at once would rid the colony of the cost of subsistence of these families, viz. £600 a month (the retention of them would only add to the colonial expenditure, and tend to pauperise them).