* MR. J. BRYN ROBERTS (Carnarvonshire, Eifion)called attention to the attitude assumed by the Colonial Secretary in intermeddling with the internal affairs of the Transvaal. He said it was impossible to peruse the Conventions of 1881 and 1884 without coming to the conclusion that we had no right whatever to interfere in the internal affairs of the Transvaal. On the contrary, the Transvaal was absolutely independent in every respect except one, which was that if they concluded a treaty with any foreign Government it was to be submitted to the Queen, and should not be valid if Her Majesty disapproved of it within six months. Under the Convention of 1884 the Republic was, so far, as independent of us as any other Power in the world. It was impossible for any person to say that we had any right over the Transvaal State except such a right as we had with any other State the—right of friendly remonstrance. The questions affecting the Transvaal in which this country was asked to interfere were purely domestic questions, which had troubled the earlier years of every other civilised State. There was not one of the grievances of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal which had not or had in the past its counterpart in England, especially with regard to the franchise, which was only given to the middle classes in 1832, while the working classes only obtained it in 1865 and 1885. Would anybody suggest that that gave a right to a foreign Power to interfere in our affairs? It was weak and imbecile on the part of the Uitlanders to make whining applications to another country 1052 to help them to obtain the franchise. There was the gravest reason for withholding the franchise to some extent from the Uitlander population. It was a mining population who had gone to the Transvaal not for the purpose of settling there, but for the purpose of speculating, making money, and then returning to England. Such persons were not entitled, and ought not to be, to the franchise, which was only intended to be given to those who were resolved to make the country their permanent home. That is why a long term of residence was required before it was granted. He ventured to say that not one per cent. or one in a thousand of the emigrant population ever returned or intended to return to this country when they went to America, except for short visits; but that was not the case in the Transvaal. The Uitlanders were admitted to the franchise for the Second Volksraad within two years, and if they had no voice in the election of the First Volksraad or of the President, Englishmen had no voice in the constitution of the House of Lords or in the appointment of the Head of the State. It was said that the mining industry was taxed beyond endurance. All information coming from South Africa was to be looked on with the gravest suspicion, because the metropolitan papers, with one or two exceptions, were under the control of the Rhodesian capitalists, and misrepresentations of the grossest character were circulated. The taxation on the mining industry was less in the Transvaal than in any other important mining country in the world. An unbiassed investigation of the facts must lead any honest man to the conclusion that we had been trying to pick a quarrel with the Transvaal. As to the petition which had been presented to the Queen, everyone knew how signatures to petitions were obtained. In this country they cost 1s. a hundred; in the Transvaal they cost 4s. The attempt that had been made by certain Rhodesian speculators, who seemed to have a magnetic influence over the Colonial Secretary, would fail; and the country was under a debt of obligation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for standing against the influence of these speculators.