A brief consideration of the facts referring to these three matters will show how unfounded are the accusations of Her Majesty's Government.
With reference to the Lombard incident, this Government wishes to point out that no complaint was lodged with any official in this Republic for a full month after the illtreatment of Cape coloured people was alleged to have taken place, and that neither the Government nor the public was aware that anything had taken place. The whole case was so insignificant that some of the people who were alleged to have been illtreated declared under oath at a later period before a court of investigation that they would never have made any complaint on their own initiative. What happened, however?
About a month after the occurrence the South African League came to hear of it; some of its officials sent round to collect evidence from the parties who were alleged to have been illtreated, and some sworn declarations were obtained by the help of Her Majesty's Vice-Consul at Johannesburg (between whom and this League a continual and conspicuous co-operation has existed). Even then no charge was lodged against the implicated officials with the judicial authorities of the country, but the case was put in the hands of the Acting British Agent at Pretoria.
When the allegations were brought under the notice of this Government, they at once appointed a commission of enquiry consisting of three members, namely, Landdrost Van der Berg, of Johannesburg, Mr Andries Stockenstrom, barrister-at-law of the Middle Temple, head of the Criminal Section of the State Attorney's Department, and Mr. Van der Merwe, mining commissioner, of Johannesburg; gentlemen against whose ability and impartiality the Uitlander population of the Republic have never harboured the slightest suspicion, and with whose appointment the Acting British Agent also expressed his entire satisfaction. The instructions given to these officials were to thoroughly investigate the whole case, and to report the result to the Government; and they fulfilled these instructions by sitting for days at a time, and carefully hearing and sifting the evidence of both sides. Every right-minded person readily acknowledges that far greater weight ought to be attached to the finding of this Commission than to the declarations of the complainants, who contradicted one another in nearly every particular, and who caused the whole enquiry to degenerate into a farce.