ABSTRACT
In the opinion of the Congress all taxation on food and industries is a retrograde step, reactionary legislation and unsound fiscal policy, extremely dangerous to the nation’s highest interest, and an interference with the doctrines of free trade, which should be resented by the working classes. He loudly praised Mr. Gladstone, Liverpool’s most famous son, but pronounced that his Home Rule Bills were dead and buried. Rosebery approved Government’s negative to a late Dutch approach on behalf of the Boers but found that he himself would not ignore, as Government was proposing to do, the Boer delegates in Europe. On March 23rd the war-situation began to lose its most critical aspects for Ministers, for on that day the Boer “Government” of the Transvaal arrived at Pretoria under a flag of truce and with a request to be permitted to consult with President Steyn of the Free State.
