On coming into power, the Gladstone government found the official evidence all to the effect that the political aspect of the Transvaal was decidedly improving. The commissioners, the administrators, the agents, were unanimous. Even those among them who insisted on the rooted dislike of the main body of the Boers to British authority, still thought that they were acquiescing, exactly as the Boers in the Cape Colony had acquiesced. Could ministers justify abandonment, without far stronger evidence than they then possessed that they could not govern the Transvaal peaceably? Among other things, they were assured that abandonment would be fatal to the prospects of confederation, and might besides entail a civil war. On May 7, Sir Bartle Frere pressed the new ministers for an early announcement of their policy, in order to prevent the mischiefs of agitation. The cabinet decided the question on May 12, and agreed upon the terms of a telegram(14) by which Lord Kimberley was to inform Frere that the sovereignty of the Queen over the Transvaal could not be relinquished, but that he hoped the speedy accomplishment of confederation would enable free institutions to be conferred with promptitude. In other words, in spite of all that had been defiantly said by Lord Hartington, and more cautiously implied by Mr. Gladstone, the new government at once placed themselves exactly in the position of the old one.(15)
The case was stated in his usual nervous language by Mr. Chamberlain a few months later.(16) “When we came into office,” (M13) he said, “we were all agreed that the original annexation was a mistake, that it ought never to have been made; and there arose the question could it then be undone? We were in possession of information to the effect that the great majority of the people of the Transvaal were reconciled to annexation; we were told that if we reversed the decision of the late government, there would be a great probability of civil war and anarchy; and acting upon these representations, we decided that we could not recommend the Queen to relinquish her sovereignty. But we assured the Boers that we would take the earliest opportunity of granting to them the freest and most complete local institutions compatible with the welfare of South Africa. It is easy to be wise after the event. It is easy to see now that we were wrong in so deciding. I frankly admit we made a mistake. Whatever the risk was, and I believe it was a great risk, of civil war and anarchy in the Transvaal, it was not so great a danger as that we actually incurred by maintaining the wrong of our predecessors.” Such was the language used by Mr. Chamberlain after special consultation with Lord Kimberley. With characteristic tenacity and that aversion ever to yield even the smallest point, which comes to a man saturated with the habit of a lifetime of debate, Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Chamberlain (June 8, 1881): “I have read with pleasure what you say of the Transvaal. Yet I am not prepared, for myself, to concede that we made a mistake in not advising a revocation of the annexation when we came in.”