On the other hand, the Boers pointed to the fact that there was actually a preamble to the second Convention, which would seem, therefore, to have taken the place of the first.

The point is so technical that it appears to be eminently one of those questions which might with propriety have been submitted to the decision of a board of foreign jurists--or possibly to the Supreme Court of the United States.

If the decision had been given against Great Britain, we might have accepted it in a chastened spirit as a fitting punishment for the carelessness of the representative who failed to make our meaning intelligible.

Carlyle has said that a political mistake always ends in a broken head for somebody.

Unfortunately the somebody is usually somebody else.