imposed by the suzerainty clause, were found to be repugnant to the
burghers. Delegates were therefore commissioned to proceed to England in
order to get the treaty so altered as to place the State into the status
provided by the Sand River convention, which conceded absolute
independence. Mr. Jorrison, a violent anti-English Hollander, was the
chief adviser of the members of that delegation.

To that the English Ministry could not assent, but sought to meet the
wishes of the people by agreeing to certain modifications of the
convention of 1881. This was effected with the treaty of 1884. The
delegates had specially urged the renunciation of the suzerainty claim,
but that claim appears not to have been abandoned, to judge from the
absence of such mention in the novated treaty. Had its renunciation been
agreed to, as has been since averred, it is quite certain that the
delegates would not have been content without the mention in most
distinct terms of that, to them, so important point. It may therefore be
assumed as a fact that the negotiations did not result in an active
suspension of the relations as set forth in the convention of 1881, and
that the Transvaal continued in a status of subordinacy to England, but
only with a wider range in regard to conditions of autonomy. To most lay
minds it therefore appears perfectly clear that the Transvaal delegates
had well understood and accepted, and so had also their Government, that
the convention of 1884 was _de facto_ a renewal of that of 1881, with
the only difference that it provided an enlarged exercise of autonomy,
but without in the least abrogating the principles of respective
relations, which were left intact, or at least latent.

It has been averred and a strong point made in the theory of repudiating
suzerainty or over-lordship that Lord Kimberley had given the assurance
that the right of Transvaal autonomy and independence was meant to equal