On Wednesday in the House of Lords Lord Lovat raised
an important discussion on the position of settlers in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies. He asked that the settler should be given a fair chance of fighting his own way and not be allowed to be squeezed out by the Boer. Lord Elgin having announced that the Government had not been able as yet to coins to a final decision, Lord Milner rose, and in a very earnest and powerful speech pleaded the cause of the men for whose settlement he was responsible. The question, he said, was one of vital urgency, for the settlers would have no representation in the coming Transvaal Parliament. They had brought these men to the country on promises which must be fulfilled. It was not a question of privileges, but merely of sympathetic treatment, which would be secured to them by an Imperial Board. We are strongly in favour of protecting the just rights and interests of the settlers, and see little force in Lord Courtney's argument that settlement means the driving of a wedge between Boer and Briton. It means precisely the opposite, the provision of some means of uniting the two races by the creation of a common interest. So long as the industrial population is wholly British and the rural wholly Boer, amalgamation is unthinkable. Besides, if we are to win the Boer as a friend, it is as well to show him that our friendship has some value by standing by those who have trusted in us.
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