conflict to work together for the making of a united state. In looking
over the list of them and reflecting on the part that they played
toward one another in the past, one realizes that we have here a grim
irony of history. Among them is General Louis Botha, Prime Minister at
the moment of the Transvaal, and now the first prime minister of South
Africa. Botha, in the days of Generals Buller and the Dugela, was the
hardest fighter of the Boer Republic. Beside him in the convention was
Dr. Jameson, whom Botha wanted to hang after the raid in 1896. Another
member is Sir George Farrar, who was sentenced to death for complicity
in the raid, and still another, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, once the
secretary of the Reform League at Johannesburg and well known as the
author of the "Transvaal from Within." One may mention in contrast
General Jan Smuts, an ex-leader of the Boer forces, and since the war
the organizing brain of the Het Volk party. There is also Mr. Merriman,
a leader of the British party of opposition to the war in 1899 and
since then a bitter enemy of Lord Milner and the new regime.

Yet strangely enough after some four months of session the convention
accomplished the impossible by framing a constitution that met the
approval of the united delegates. Of its proceedings no official
journal was kept. The convention met first at Durban, October 12, 1908,
where it remained throughout that month; after a fortnight's interval
it met again at Capetown, and with a three weeks' interruption at
Christmas continued and completed its work at the end of the first week
of February. The constitution was then laid before the different
colonial parliaments. In the Transvaal its acceptance was a matter of
course, as the delegates of both parties had reached an agreement on
its terms. The Cape Parliament passed amendments which involved giving
up the scheme of proportional representation as adopted by the
convention. Similar amendments were offered by the Orange River Colony