8 



AFRICA, SOUTHERN, COLONIES IN. 



the Cape ministers, but on receiving the telegraph 

 summary made known at once the uncompromis- 

 ing policy of the Imperial Government. Not one 

 of the ministers was willing to submit to the 

 Cape Parliament a measure of the character de- 

 manded by the Secretary of State. Premier 

 Schreiner and Attorney-General Solomon were 

 willing to disfranchise the rebels for five years 

 and compensate the loyalists for their losses, but 

 they could not get any of their colleagues nor 

 more than half a score of their followers even 

 to agree to that measure of punishment for any 

 except ringleaders. The Afrikander Bond was 

 willing to accept a bill indemnifying the Govern- 

 ment and the military authorities for acts com- 

 mitted under martial law and to grant compensa- 

 tion for property commandeered by the Boers, but 

 only on condition of a full amnesty to the rebels 

 who furnished a guarantee of good behavior. Min- 

 isters Merriman, Sauer, and Te Water vehemently 

 opposed the Premier's proposed compromise, and 

 saw no ground for punishing men for taking up 

 arms in what they considered a righteous war. 

 The deadlock in the Cabinet could not be broken. 

 Mr. Schreiner, who before the war incurred the 

 animosity of the English party through his efforts 

 to bring about an understanding and preserve the 

 peace of South Africa, had during the progress of 

 the war given deep offense to the more earnest 

 Afrikanders by countersigning the proclamations 

 of the High Commissioner, in taking off the meat 

 duties for the particular benefit of the refugee 

 Uitlanders and to the detriment of the colonial 

 producers, and for recruiting bodies of troops in 

 the colony to fight on the British side, and espe- 

 cially for raising native levies in the native re- 

 serves. Mr. Solomon offended the majority of the 

 supporters of the ministry when, instead of inter- 

 fering to secure the constitutional rights of citi- 

 zens who fell into the hands of the military, he 

 gave full consent to the operations of martial law. 

 Some of the acts of the military tribunals seemed 

 monstrous to the Afrikanders, and the prospect 

 of obtaining a bill of indemnity ratifying the acts 

 done and sentences passed during the period of 

 martial law was not promising. The courts-mar- 

 tial had sentenced men to do convict labor for 

 five or ten years in districts where they had been 

 held in honor and had sanctioned the looting of 

 homesteads and farms on the ground that it was 

 the property of rebels. Boer farmers were arrested 

 wholesale, herded together for weeks in noisome 

 cells, and finally released for want of evidence. The 

 evidence of Kailirs was taken against their masters. 

 The secretary and other members of the South 

 African League and some of the Johannesburg 

 reformers went into the rebel districts as they 

 were reoccupied and took the lead in the investi- 

 gations, a volunteer committee for what the Dutch 

 called smelling out rebels. No sentence or act of 

 military courts or military officers, if justified only 

 by martial law, is legal according to English law, 

 and officers who carry out the decrees of military 

 tribunals are liable to prosecution for wrongful 

 assault or illegal detention unless the proceedings 

 are ratified by a special act of the Legislature. The 

 Dutch colonists regarded many of the sentences 

 and acts of confiscation to which their kinsfolk 

 were subjected as barbarous, and wished to pre- 

 serve for them the right of appeal. The charges of 

 treason brought against many members of the 

 Cape Parliament reduced the Bond majority in 

 the Assembly to only 4 votes. Mr. Schreiner at- 

 tempted to form a coalition ministry, having the 

 assistance of Mr. Ko-i lum-s. \ v ho urged the Pro- 

 gressives to support Mr. Schreiner in a policy of 

 moderation and conciliation, giving the special 



tribunal full discretion in punishing the ring- 

 leaders, but subjecting the others to only tem- 

 porary disfranchisement. The South African 

 League, which controlled the Progressive party, 

 would not consent to a coalition with the mod- 

 erate members of the Bond, and the Progressive 

 leaders, expecting a speedy termination of the 

 war, were willing to accept the responsibilities of 

 office, since the support or even the abstention of 

 Mr. Schreiner's handful of followers would give 

 them a majority to start with. On June 13 Mr. 

 Schreiner, seeing the attitude of the Progressives 

 and the impossibility of his forming a coalition 

 Cabinet and hoping that Mr. Rose-Inness could 

 form one, instead of accepting the resignation of 

 the dissentient ministers and endeavoring to re- 

 construct his Cabinet by the inclusion of moderate 

 Progressives, placed the collective resignation of 

 the ministry in the Governor's hands. Mr. 

 Schreiner, although the parliamentary leader of 

 the Bond party, never identified himself with the 

 principles of the Bond. As the war progressed 

 he co-operated more heartily with Sir Alfred 

 Milner, his chief anxiety having been throughout 

 to save the colony from civil war. A conciliation 

 movement that was started by the Bond after the 

 capture of Cronje at Paardeberg left little doubt 

 of the ultimate defeat of the republics, which had 

 for its objects the preservation of the independence 

 of the republics and immunity for all who had 

 taken part in the rebellion, received no counte- 

 nance from Mr. Schreiner nor from Mr. Solomon, 

 who proposed to appoint a judicial commission to 

 visit the rebel districts and put the rebels on trial. 

 At a conciliation congress at Graaff Reinet the 

 Bond leaders demanded the unqualified independ- 

 ence of the republics, a permanent' arbitration 

 treaty, and the withdrawal of British troops from 

 South Africa. This led to Mr. Schreiner's con- 

 voking a conference of the party, at which his 

 policy was condemned by three fourths of the 

 delegates. The resignation of the ministry fol- 

 lowed necessarily this action of the caucus. 



Sir Alfred Milner accepted Mr. Schreiner's resig- 

 nation and called on Sir Gordon Sprigg to form 

 a ministry. The Progressive leader first proposed 

 to Mr. Solomon that he should continue in the 

 office of Attorney-General, but it was finally de- 

 cided that he should form a purely Progressive 

 ministry. In this he succeeded, and on June 18 

 the new Cabinet was announced as follows: Pre- 

 mier and Treasurer, Sir J. Gordon Sprigg; Colonial 

 Secretary, T. L. Graham; Attorney-General, J. 

 Rose-Inness; Commissioner of Public Works, Dr. 

 Smartt; Secretary for Agriculture, Sir Pieter H. 

 Faure ; without portfolio, J. Frost. The chief task 

 of the new ministry, that of framing the laws 

 dealing with the rebels, was thus given to Mr. 

 Rose-Inness, who enjoyed the confidence of the 

 moderate Afrikanders. Even after deducting the 

 members of the Bond party who were in prison 

 on charges of treason or had escaped from South 

 Africa the Progressives were in a minority of 5. 

 Parliament was opened on July 20. The Attorney- 

 General brought in a comprehensive bill for the 

 indemnification of acts done in good faith under 

 martial law, and confirming the sentences of the 

 military tribunals for the punishment of rebels, 

 and for the coinpensation of loyalists who hud 

 sustained direct losses during the war through 

 military operations or the acts of the enemy or 

 of rebels. The new Cabinet had adopted Mr. 

 Solomon's measures just as lie had drafted them. 

 The special tribunal with the powers of a judge 

 and the functions of a jury was to try only ring- 

 leaders. The sentence of disfranchisement was to 

 be pronounced by commissions with quasi-judicial 



