which looked into the raid, and in its report he accused Rhodes of covert imperialist aims and requested that parliament abolish the privileges of Rhodes's Chartered Company. He also stated that the Transvaal should be reformed politically, rather than annexed by the British. In a letter to President Steyn (11 March 1898) he explained: "The greatest danger to the future lies in the attitude of President Kruger, and his vain hope of building up a State on a narrow, unenlightened minority." Thereafter he became an ever-greater opponent of the mining interests and British imperialism in Southern Africa. This gradually regained him the sympathy and cooperation of the Afrikaner Bond led by Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr. Boer War and aftermath (1899–1908) He again served as Treasurer General of the Cape in the ministry of W.P. Schreiner from 1898 to 1900. He tried but failed to prevent the Second Boer War, travelling to London with JW Sauer in attempt to dissuade the British Government from war. However they were publicly accused of being "Pro-Boer", the House of Commons refused them a hearing, and the public meetings that they held were disrupted by increasingly large numbers of violent pro-war demonstrators. Schreiner's liberal but indecisive government fell in 1900, due to its opposition to disfranchising the "Cape rebels". With jingoist feeling running high from the Boer War, anti-war politicians suffered electoral losses across the Cape in the following years, and Merriman even lost his seat in parliament for a brief period. In 1904 he returned however, took over leadership of the new "South African Party" from his friend and ally James Molteno, and with Molteno and Sauer, led the opposition to the ensuing exclusively-British government of Leander Starr Jameson in the lead up to the crucial national elections of January 1908. Prime Minister (1908–1910) In 1908 his South African Party together with the Afrikaner Bond won control of the Assembly and he served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony for two years, from 1908 until the formation of the Union of South Africa on 31 May 1910. He was a leading figure in the National Convention which brought about this Union. During the union negotiations, he fought to extend the multi-racial "Cape Qualified Franchise" system (whereby suffrage qualification applied equally to all male citizens, regardless of race) to the rest of South Africa. This failed, as it was strongly opposed by the other constituent