§ MR. TOMLINSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether it is the intention of the Government, before the debate on the Transvaal is resumed, to lay upon the Table of the House any Papers demonstrating the inability of the Transvaal Government to restrain those agencies which have been productive of crime and outrage in Bechuanaland, and have aggravated its disorder, or showing that Bechuanaland was in a state of disorder before those crimes and outrages took place?
MR. GLADSTONE, in reply, said, that, with respect to this Question, there were no further Papers to lay on the Table in regard to the Transvaal. The subject in the first part of the Question, whether the Transvaal Government had or had not been able to restrain certain agencies on the frontier, was a matter of opinion without doubt; but it was a matter of opinion with reference to which they thought sufficient evidence was to be 935 drawn from the Papers on the Table. With regard to the second part of the Question, which related to the condition of Bechuanaland, as being a country subject to disorder, that was a matter which had been amply illustrated by the Papers which had been presented from time to time. There was rather a large literature on the matter; and, not to go back beyond recent years, he might supply the following references to the hon. Member:—C. 2,220—[Laughter]—he did not mean it was necessary to see so many as 2.220 papers, but that was the number of the Paper issued by command in 1879; also, C. 2,252 and 2,454 in the same year. In those Papers the hon. Member would, he thought, find much that bore on the matter.