Mr. Chamberlain's speech was also very adroit, and candid enough
in its admission of the manifold difficulties of the situation, and able in its exposition of the reasons for delaying the change of front 80 long,—which reasons were, in brief, the erroneous information which was received from the various officers of the Government in South Africa as to the probability of maintaining the annexation, without exciting any insurmount- able resistance on the part of the Boers. The first overture made on the part of the Boers had been welcomed, he said, and welcomed long before the defeats of Sir G. Colley, and it would have been disgraceful to make these defeats the ground of a change of base. Mr. Gladstone's speech was very powerful. He en- larged on the impossibility of performing our obligations to the natives and the loyal Boers—a most difficult task in any case, unless, indeed, we were prepared almost to exterminate the Boers —half so thoroughly by keeping the Transvaal, and giving the Boers free representative institutions, as we can perform it now, by help of a fresh treaty, and by using the influence of a suzerain Power. He pointed out the admirable results of the retrocession of the Orange Free State in 1852,—a piece of genuine Con- servative statesmanship,—and he spoke with proud disdain of the course of saying to the Boers, in reference to Sir G. Colley's defeats, "Although we might have treated with you before these miscarriages, we cannot do so now, until we have offered
up a certain number of victims until Moloch has been appeased." The division resulted in a majority of 109 for the Government,-314 to 205.
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