§ MR. MACFARLANEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, If, before finally entrusting the Government of the Transvaal, and the future welfare and liberty of its large native population to the Boers, he will instruct the Commissioners appointed to settle the conditions of peace to ascertain by plébiscite the wishes of the majority of its people; and if the surrender of the Transvaal, without some such precaution, to a fighting minority would be a fulfilment of the "honourable engagements entered into with the natives" to which he referred on the 25th of May last as a reason for maintaining the annexation, the original policy of which he condemned?
MR. GLADSTONEIt has never been the practice, as far as I know, of the British Government to adopt a plébiscite upon occasions bearing any analogy to the present. There would have been an occasion when the Ionian Islands were surrendered, which would certainly have offered a much easier, better, and more certain opportunity for the application of such a principle; but it was not adopted, and I think was not recommended by anyone. The present occasion, in the view of the Government, would be a very suitable one for attempting to bring into notice the principle of promiscuous popular voting partly among the Boors and partly among the Native population of the Transvaal. With respect to the Question of which the hon. Member has 762 given me private Notice, I certainly am of opinion that the methods which we are engaged in adopting, and which, of course, are not quite fully before the House, are those by which we shall be able most satisfactorily to discharge our engagements to the Native population.