12242.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
miinilin
C.O. 885
Reference :-
11 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
7
No. 535.
(CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.)
QUEEN'S ADVOCATE to FOREIGN OFFICE.
Temple, October 27, 1868. MY LORD,
I AM honoured with your Lordship's commands, signified in Mr. Hammond's letter of the 15th instant, stating that he was directed to transmit to me a letter from the Colonial Office, enclosing copies of a Despatch from the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope and a proclamation by the President of the Transvaal Republic, together with a copy of the Convention of 1852, under which the Boers who settled beyond the Three Confidential Despatches River Vaal were recognised as a separate Government.
from Her Majesty's Commissioner at the Cape, illustrative of the present state of the slave question in the Transvaal Republic, were also enclosed, and Mr. Hammond was pleased to request that I would furnish your Lordship with my opinion as to the legality of the proposed annexation, and as to the attitude which Her Majesty's Government would be at liberty to assume with regard to it.
I am also honoured with Mr. Hammond's letter of the 21st October, transmitting a further letter from the Colonial Office, enclosing a copy of a Despatch from the Lieutenant-Governor of Natal relating to this case.
In obedience to your Lordship's commands I have the honour to
Report
That the proclamation alleged to have been recently issued by the President of the Transvaal Republic cannot of itself, according to the acknowledged law and usage of nations, be regarded as founding a title on the part of that Republic to the territories described in that proclamation, which were not proclaimed to be the Republic in 1858. What was the nature of the proclamation in 1858 I am not informed, but I assume that no question is raised at the present time in regard to that proclamation.
With regard to the recent proclamation, it can only be regarded as a notification on the part of the Transvaal Republic of its intention to appropriate to its own purposes the territory described in it. It is not, however, competent for that Republic to appro- Its title to any further territory than was pro- priate territory by mere proclamation. claimed the Republic in 1858, assuming the Republic at that time to have been right- fully proclaimed, must depend upon the fact whether the Republic is in rightful possession of such territory either by settlement in the case of unoccupied land or by cession or conquest in the case of territories already inhabited.
I consider that the terms of the Convention of 1852 would preclude Her Majesty's Government from disputing any title which the Transvaal Republic may have acquired to land on the north side of the River Vaal either by treaty with the Native Chiefs or by conquest, and that it leaves the Republic free to extend itself indefinitely by settlement in the interior country to the north of the River Faal, where no nation has previously established itself; but I do not consider that the Republic can set up in the year 1868 a title by discovery alone to any part of the interior country which would entitle it, according to international usage, to exclude by mere proclamation any other nation from making settlements in it.
I presume that at the time when the Convention of 1852 was signed the sources of the Vaal River had been explored, so that the territory described in the Convention as "the country to the north of the Vaal River" had known geographical limits to the eastward (for instance, the "Mont aux Sources" in about 30° Ě. longitude), and that Her Majesty's Government did not intend to recognise any title on the part of that or "Quathlamba" range Republic to territory on the east side of the "Drakenberg
"
"1
of mountains beyond the sources of the Vaal, such, for instance, as seems to be now set up by the Volksraad of the Republic in respect of the territory in which the River 64 Umzuti takes its rise. What may be the precise grounds upon which the Republic lays claim to the territory "in which that river has its origin" does not appear, but if it rests upon settlement alone made before October 1867, such settlement would be an encroachment on British right, as it is admitted by the Volksraad that the mouth of the "Umsuti" River was under British sovereignty prior to October 1867, and it is an acknowledged rule of public law that the possession of a line of seacoast and of the mouths of the rivers on such line of coast gives to the nation in possession of them a right to exclude all other nations from the interior country watered by such rivers. In fact, it would appear that as the abandonment of the mouth of the River Umzuti" by
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16978,-111. 23.--5/86.