Adamantia : the truth about the South African diamond fields : or, a ...

336 'rHE RIGHT TO ADAKANTIA ABSOLUTELY PROVED.in their toords, of the grounds and arguments mentionedin the protest of the V olksraad . . . but it eontaina on(I/a partiaZ statement of those grounds and arguments."Instead of attempting to prove or establish the mainquestion-Waterboer's claim to the lands seized fromthe Free State, and the right of the Colonial Governmentto annex those lands to the Colony-it dealsmainly with the past and obsolete history of thecountry, as to what was or was not the territory madeover to the Free State at the abandonment of theSovereignty by the British Government. And althoughon this point Mr. Southey's quotations and argumentswere singularly incorrect and fallacious, the Free Statecan afford even to admit them all (although the replydemolished them), for it is quite sufficient for theirclaim that the fact cannot be denied, namely, that byArticle 4 of the Convention of 1854 it was stipulatedby H.B.M.'s Special Commissioner that such personsas had been living under the British rule, ",lwuld becOWliderea to be guaranteed in the po"es8ion of their eatatabU the Ne1II Orange River Government j" and that thiswas done in the case of no fewer than thirty-threeBritish land certificate farms over the boundary nowclaimed and seized for W aterboer, besides, also, in thecase of many of the remainder of the 143 farms soscandalously and openly stolen.Perhaps it did not really take Mr. Southey from the26th of December, 1871, until the 25th of April, 1872,whioh latter is the date of his memorandum, to concoet80 poor a production; perhaps, instead, we can makea shrewd guess that he only got it up as a Parliamentarydodge, in order to influence members, prejudicetheir minds against the Free State, and makeDigitized by Goog Ie .