Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XI

In the meantime Lord Milner had returned to Johannesburg. His "hard-begged" holiday had proved a change of occupation rather than a respite from work. Before he left England (August 10th), he had made known to the Home Government the actual condition of the infant administrations of the new colonies, and obtained a provision for their immediate wants. The Letters Patent constituting him Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony had been passed under the Great Seal; and these and other instruments creating a system of Crown Colony Government, with Executive and Legislative Councils in both colonies, had been sent to him in readiness for use "whenever it might be thought expedient to bring them into operation."[298] And on August 6th the House of Commons had voted £6,500,000 as a grant in aid of the revenues of the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. Of this sum £1,000,000 was required for the purchase of fresh rolling-stock for the Imperial Military Railways, still placed under the direction of Sir Percy (then Colonel) Girouard, and £500,000 was assigned to "relief and re-settlement," an item which included the purchase of land and other arrangements for the establishment of suitable British settlers on farms in both colonies. The debate on the vote afforded a significant exhibition of the spirit of mingled pessimism and distrust in which the Liberal Opposition approached every aspect of the South African question. The idea of the Transvaal ever being able to repay this grant-in-aid out of the "hypothetical" development loan appeared ridiculous to Sir William Harcourt. "Why," asked the Liberal ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, "was not the money required for the South African Constabulary put forward in a supplementary military vote, instead of being proposed in this form and, under the grant-in-aid, subject to future repayment by the Transvaal, in which nobody believed?"[299]