There was a fair chance at the time of the utterance of the Mid-Lothian
speeches that the agitation would, by degrees, die away; Sir G. Wolseley
had succeeded in winning over Pretorius, and the Boers in general
were sick of mass meetings. Indeed, a memorial was addressed to Sir G.
Wolseley by a number of Boers in the Potchefstroom district, protesting
against the maintenance of the movement against Her Majesty's rule,
which, considering the great amount of intimidation exercised by the
malcontents, may be looked upon as a favourable sign.
But when it slowly came to be understood among the Boers that a great
English Minister had openly espoused their cause, and that he would
perhaps soon be all-powerful, the moral gain to them was incalculable.
They could now go to the doubting ones and say,--we must be right about
the matter, because, putting our own feelings out of the question,
the great Gladstone says we are. We find the committee of the Boer
malcontents, at their meeting in March 1880, reading a letter to Mr.
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