to Pretoria to mediate in the matter. Jameson was tried and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment; Rhodes, who was at the time of the raid the Prime Minister of Cape Colony, resigned. A parliamentary investigation was held in London and the following note of censure against Mr. Rhodes adopted: "Whatever justification there may have been for action on the part of the people of Johannesburg, there was none for the conduct of a person in Mr. Rhodes's position."

The raid itself, the trials of Dr. Jameson and the leaders of the rebellion, and the parliamentary investigation in England let loose a mass of imperialist sentiment and aroused public interest in the Transvaal as nothing else could have done. Moreover, the whole incident had succeeded in involving the British government directly in the affairs of Mr. Rhodes and the South African Republic. While there is no evidence that the British government was privy to Mr. Rhodes's scheme before the raid, as the Boers believed, certain ministers, especially Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary, very warmly defended Mr. Rhodes afterward; and on the surface of things it looks as if Mr. Rhodes now succeeded in enlisting the coöperation of Mr. Chamberlain and the British government in his determination to annex the Boer state. There is as yet no definite proof of this, but Mr. Chamberlain's moves during the next few years appear to be conscious plays in a game to get what Mr. Rhodes wanted, through a war of conquest if necessary.

Public opinion in England, stirred up by the Jameson raid, was now worked up to a pitch of intense excitement by detailed descriptions of the wrongs of the Uitlanders in being refused the franchise, the corruption of the Boer government, the outrages and atrocities of the South African police, and allegations of a widespread conspiracy against the British empire on the part of the corrupt Boer politicians. Such stories went the rounds of the Cape press, reprinted in eight newspapers owned by Rhodes and his associates, gaining authority as they went, and were eventually reproduced in the English newspapers with all the appearance of truth which is given by repetition. The Boer government played Rhodes's game by attempting to muzzle the English press in its territory through the arrest of editors, one of the most unspeakable offenses in late nineteenth century free England; and by such stories and incidents the conscience of Great Britain was conquered and made ready and eager for a war.

Meantime, Mr. Chamberlain had begun to interfere in the

matter directly by sending Sir Alfred Milner to South Africa as a High Commissioner. He was an official of the most unbending type with a certain frigid punctiliousness which in itself alarmed the Boers. When he demanded the franchise for the Uitlanders, the Boers were alarmed, especially because of a recent speech of Mr. Rhodes in which he spoke of "constitutional means" to carry out his projects, apparently meaning the annexation of the Transvaal through the votes of the Uitlanders. President Kruger was stubborn and obscurantist; he put himself in the wrong many times during the negotiations, but at last yielded on the subject of the franchise, provided that Great Britain drop the claim of suzerainty, which had been brought up, and give up the right to interfere in the internal affairs of the country. Further negotiations made no progress; and, when Chamberlain declared that the British government would itself in due course announce the terms of settlement, war broke out.

During the war the imperialistic spirit reached the zenith of its development. A good many people were led, however, to question the value of imperialism in view of the loss of thousands of lives and the expenditure of £250 million. Some of the best Englishmen were rather alarmed by the excesses which the war spirit called forth, especially the wild orgy of joy which followed the relief of Mafeking, a garrison under Colonel Baden-Powell besieged by the Boers 218 days and relieved May 18, 1900. Many more were shocked and alarmed by the horrible cruelties incident to the final subjugation. In 1902 Lord Kitchener undertook to clean up the straggling guerrilla commandoes still in the field. In order to deprive these bands of supplies and bases, he undertook to turn the country into a desert by burning every farm house and driving off all the stock. The policy was successful, but many men in England asked whether it was worth it, and there was generally less enthusiasm for a repetition of such a measure wher the ghastly facts became known in England. The net result of the whole matter was that Mr. Rhodes had his way, and both the Transvaal and the Orange River State were conquered and incorporated into the British empire, where their later history will be studied in another connection.

THE BRIGHTER SIDE OF IMPERIALISM

In spite of the completely selfish impulses which led to the new colonial acquisitions of this period, there was a brighter side

to the whole movement which must not be neglected. In South Africa, for example, much may be said for the annexation of the two Dutch provinces to the British empire. Under the conditions which prevail there, the negro races greatly outnumber the Europeans; and, if white civilization is to survive in South Africa, the two peoples, the Dutch and the British, must not exhaust themselves in conflicts with one another, such as those which sapped their energies before their union. In a more general way, British and European rule in the new colonial areas has led to progress in civilization and advances in the lives of the people. The various forms of mechanical apparatus which the capitalists laid down in the new lands, such as roads, railroads, and harbor works, soon began the transformation of primitive societies. In the British colonies, moreover, the colonial administrators have been men of high type, imbued with a desire for extending every possible benefit to the peoples over whom they rule. Slavery in its more primitive form has been abolished by them, ancient cruelties, such as flogging, have been banned, tribal wars ended, tropical diseases studied and checked, economic life, in the case of the Sudan, stimulated by an elaborate system of state socialism, and peaceful development with the assurance of speedy and swift justice to the humblest savage made possible in many areas in which every imaginable wrong was formerly current.

Finally, it must be kept in mind that, as British society was organized in the nineteenth century, imperialism was one of the solutions of the problem of restoring prosperity after the crises of the seventies.

By the later 1880's Englishmen could congratulate themselves that the turn in the tide had come. The well-being of the middle Victorian period was regained; England was again as prosperous as she had been in the middle years of the century. Yet before long it was suddenly brought to the notice of statesmen and "the public" how shallow this prosperity was, how small a percentage of the people of England shared in her wealth, and how wretched the mass of the population really was. While imperialism had done much for British business, it had not helped the people. These revelations were probably the most momentous political discoveries of the century and had effects of the most far reaching sort in politics and thought and social organization. After some attention to the problem of Ireland, to which a brief reference has already been made in this chapter in connection with Gladstone's work, the newly discovered social

problem and the attempts to provide a solution wil be taken up in detail in Chapter XXVI.

SUGGESTED BOOKS FOR CHAPTER XXIV

POLITICAL AND NARRATIVE HISTORY.

R. H. Gretton, A Modern History of the English People, 1880-1910.
J. McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times.

Herbert Paul, History of Modern England.

S. Walpole, The History of Twenty-five Years, 1856-1880.

T. H. Ward, The Reign of Queen Victoria.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS.

A. L. Bowley, Wages in the United Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century.
T. Escott, Social Transformations in the Victorian Age.

C. R. Fay, Cooperation at Home and Abroad.

H. B. Gibbins, English Social Reformers.

G. J. Holyoake, The History of Cooperation.

B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison, A History of Factory Legislation.
Holbrook Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties.

W. T. Layton, An Introduction to the Study of Prices of the Nine. teenth Century.

J. R. McCulloch, Dictionary of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. R. H. Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy.

R. W. C. Taylor, Introduction to a History of the Factory System.

S. and B. Webb, The History of Trade Unionism.

IMPERIALISM.

A. C. Doyle, The War in South Africa.

H. H. Johnston, History of the Colonization of Africa.

The Opening up of Africa.

C. K. Hobson, The Export of Capital.

J. A. Hobson, Imperialism.

The War in South Africa.
L. Woolf, Empire and Commerce in Africa.
BIOGRAPHY.

J. Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography.
G. Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury.

E. Fitzmaurice, The Life of Earl Granville.

A. G. Gardiner, The Life of Sir William Vernon Harcourt.

J. L. and B. Hammond, The Earl of Shaftesbury.

B. Holland, The Life of Spencer Compton, Eighth Duke of Devonshire.

H. Johnston, The Story of My Life.

G. Le Sueur, Cecil Rhodes, the Man and His Work.

E. T. Raymond, Portraits of the Nineties.

G. W. E. Russell, Portraits of the Seventies.

A. L. Thorold, The Life of Henry Labouchere.

A. Watson, A Great Labour Leader: The Life of Thomas Burt.

B. Williams, Cecil Rhodes.

CHAPTER XXV

THE LIBERALS AND THE PROBLEM OF IRELAND,

1868-1914

In point of time this chapter goes back over the same period as the last chapter, but extends beyond it to 1914. The governments which ruled Great Britain from 1868 to 1902 have already been listed; between 1902 and 1914 the ministries were led by

Arthur J. Balfour (Conservative), 1902-1905

Henry Campbell-Bannerman and

Herbert H. Asquith (Liberal), 1905-(1916)

On Lord Salisbury's resignation in 1902, he arranged to have his nephew, Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, succeed him. He held office until the end of 1905, when he resigned, and the Liberals were called in to take over the government under the leadership of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. On Sir Henry's death in 1908, he was succeeded as Prime Minister by Mr. Herbert Asquith, who remained in the office until December 1916.

In the even flow of English life in the prosperous mid-Victorian age, politics had a certain unreality. It often seemed like an amusing game played between friendly groups of the same upper class, to win the applause and admiration of the great London hostesses to whose houses lords, ministers, and Parliamentarians flocked nightly to recount their triumphs, to retell scandal, to learn secrets, and to get some of their best advice. The one note of passion from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the end of the century was struck by the Irish problem. Ireland gave interest to parliamentary debates whenever she was mentioned; Ireland eventually split parties and turned Liberals into Conservatives; Ireland provided a real issue by which the whole of political life was stirred and excited.

The fundamental Irish grievance was English domination. In the eighteenth century it took the form of protest against the Declaratory act of 1719; in the nineteenth century it was directed against the act of Union of 1800, by which the Irish Parliament was merged with that of Great Britain. The United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland contained 100 Irish members in the House of Commons and 28 Irish peers in the House of Lords. Since the Irish were always in a minority,