2 APRIL 1881, Page 1

Lord Cairns made a slashing attack on the Government on

Thursday, in relation to the negotiations in the Transvaal. Ho maintained that the terms of the Queen's Speech promised a restoration of authority which had not been effected, but rather the very attempt to effect it abandoned. He declared that the word " submission," originally suggested by President Brand, had dropped out of our messages ever since the great reverse on Majuba Hill ; he asserted that if we were prepared to grant such terms as we have granted, the blood of our soldiers had been shed in vain ; he said there was no evidence that the Boers would. ratify the engagement of the leaders who bad acted on their behalf; and he closed a very animated diatribe against the Ministry, by expressing his belief that a worse moment could not have been seized for " dismembering our empire in South Africa," than that selected also for weakening our empire in the East. " You have made that which was already a real shame, a burning shame." " To her Majesty's Government we owe a sensation which in this country of ours is

new, and which certainly is net agreeable. all the ills we ever bore, we groaned, we sighed, we wept, we never blushed before.' "