is, however, only just to admit, that the Boers on their side were hardly in a position to appreciate the true character of the Reform agitation. After the wont of foreigners, they were utterly unable to appreciate the lack of solidarity between British subjects abroad and the British Government at home. In their eyes the members of the Reform Committee were unavowed agents of Great Britain, and were therefore actuated by a desire to restore the Transvaal to the British Empire. Moreover, the agitation at Johannesburg happened to be contemporaneous with the development of the Chartered Company, and was regarded in Pretoria as forming part and parcel of an elaborate scheme initiated by Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the known champion of British supremacy in South Africa, and as being supported secretly by the Mother Country with a view to the suppression of Boer independence. We at home who know how vacillating and how purposeless our Colonial policy has been, under each party in turn, can hardly imagine that we are credited abroad with a policy in Foreign and Colonial affairs combining the astuteness of a Machiavelli with the unscrupulous determination of a Bismarck. Such, however, is the case. We can hardly wonder if the Boers holding these views absolutely declined to entertain the idea of a compromise, such as, at that time, would have deprived the Uitlander agitation of its reasonable being.

The

At this period, therefore, the position stood thus. redress of the Uitlander grievances by means of constitutional agitation had signally failed. The Boers had not only refused to make any concession, but had told the Uitlanders distinctly that they had nothing to hope for in the future. Things in fact had come to a dead lock; and the only courses left open to the Uitlanders were either to abandon the agitation altogether or to substitute action for agitation. Judging by subsequent events, we incline to think that the Johannesburg Reformers would have decided, for the time at any rate, on a policy of masterly inaction,' if the Boers on their side had been content to leave things as they were. The apparent collapse of the Reform agitation seems to have misled the Government of Pretoria, while the extraordinary success of Mr. Rhodes's policy, as Premier of the Cape Colony, and the rapid extension of Rhodesia, had increased their alarm. Be this as it may, the attitude of passive ill-will towards Johannesburg which had hitherto been adopted by the South African Republic was exchanged for one of aggressive hostility.

Difficulties and delays without end were offered, directly and still more indirectly, to the construction of the rail

ways

ways connecting Johannesburg with the British ports of Capetown, Port Elizabeth, and Durban. Everything was done to favour the rival Delagoa Bay line, which was being constructed by the Netherlands Railway Company, and to secure for it a virtual monopoly of the Transvaal traffic. All the efforts of the mining community to obtain a full supply of native labour, by removing the various obstacles artificially placed in the way of the natives accepting engagements to work in the mines, and to secure the efficiency of native labour by diminishing the facilities for obtaining drink, were baffled by the action of the Government, acting in the interests of the Boer farmers in the former case and of the distillery monopoly in the latter. All proposals to reduce the cost of mine work by modifying the dynamite concession were refused a hearing. The system of taxation was further manipulated so as to throw the burden of providing the revenue still more exclusively upon the Uitlanders, while the Boers were exempted from any additional payments. This manipulation of the taxes was in distinct defiance of the spirit, if not the letter, of the Treaty of Pretoria. Nor could it be justified on the salus reipublicæ suprema lex principle. The Transvaal Treasury, thanks to the Uitlanders, was already glutted with gold; thanks too to them, the credit of the Republic was such that it could now borrow money abroad on most moderate and reasonable terms. Yet the greed of the Transvaal seemed to be continually on the increase. This greed was not only corporate but individual. In all transactions with the Government the demands of persons in favour with the administration had to be conceded in order to secure the successful issue of the transactions in question. Every day also the difficulties in the way of the Uitlanders obtaining justice at the hands of the Boer tribunals, appeared to grow greater and greater. Such, roughly speaking, was the state of things with which the mining community of the Randt was confronted, when it became clear that the Transvaal Government had definitely made up their minds to reject all proposals tending to give the Uitlanders any share in the administration of public affairs.

From this period dates the inception of the idea which culminated in the Jameson Raid. When all appeals to the President and the Volksraad had proved unavailing, the Uitlanders began to speculate on the possibility of obtaining by action what they had failed to obtain by argument. We do not deny that, in extreme instances, an appeal to arms may be justified; but no accumulation of vexatious restrictions on the development of trade, in our opinion, affords an adequate

excuse for private persons assuming the responsibility of commencing a war which, even if successful, must have involved their native land, as well as their adopted country, in serious difficulties. On the other hand, human nature, and above all British human nature, being what it is, it is not difficult to understand how the more hot-headed Uitlanders should have been led to regard overt action against the administration of the Transvaal as the only possible solution of the BoerUitlander problem. At the outset, however, the idea of an insurrection had assumed no definite form or shape, and up to the very last the insurrectionary movement was, we repeat, never intended to bring about the downfall of the Republic, but simply to effect a change in the manner in which the Republic was administered.

We greatly doubt ourselves whether the idea in question would for a long period have proceeded beyond the stage of academic discussion, if it had not been for two causes to which we shall refer presently. The normal conditions of the Uitlander community were manifestly unfavourable to any revolutionary movement. The community was composed in the main of capitalists, engineers, stockbrokers, doctors, and lawyers, clerks, shopmen, and skilled artisans; that is, in the main of men employed in sedentary occupations, of little or no military experience, and unaccustomed to the use of arms. There were no leaders at Johannesburg qualified by virtue of their position to act as officers in an insurgent army; and, what is more important still, there was no class of men calculated to form the rank and file of such an army. In the mining centres of America and Australia, the actual work of mining is carried on by white men of the 'navvy' class,-a class which, even without any military training, has a natural aptitude for fighting. But in Johannesburg the 'navvy' is practically unknown. The main d'œuvre is exclusively supplied by the Kaffirs; and we should question whether in the whole of the Transvaal there is a single white man to be found working in the mines as a common labourer, or indeed in any other capacity than that of a foreman or overseer over black workmen. Now these conditions were even more patent to the Uitlanders than they were to the outer world. The leading personages in the Randt, whatever their other demerits may have been, were certainly not men lacking in common sense or business capacity. They were not enthusiasts, fanatics, or even ardent patriots. They were, as a body, shrewd, clear-headed men of the world, averse by training, by occupation, and by personal interest to violent and precipitate action. No doubt there were in Johan

nesburg

nesburg a certain number of young men who, after the wont of all youthful Britons, are fond of adventure, high-spirited, and ready to engage in any daring enterprise, however foolhardy. But, so far as we can learn, this class did not exercise any dominant influence in the Randt; and we are convinced that the Reform agitation would never have been carried to the length of overt action if action had not been countenanced by the general sense of the community.

Except upon the hypothesis of judicial blindness, the abortive insurrection of Johannesburg can only be accounted for in our judgment by the two causes to which we have referred above. The first of these causes was to be found in the apprehension on the part of the Uitlanders that grave immediate danger to their vital interests was imminent at the period when the Reform Committee gave the signal for action. The second of these causes was the expectation on their part that this action would meet with such support from without as to render success probable, if not certain. It remains to indicate what was the general character of these apprehensions and these expectations.

It was the well-nigh universal belief in Johannesburg towards the close of last year, that the Government of Pretoria was endeavouring to obtain foreign aid, so as to render impossible any attempt on the part of the Uitlanders to assert their rights by action, and to prevent any possible intervention on the part of their fellow-countrymen in South Africa or of the Mother Country. We may hope, even if we do not expect, that the researches of the impending Commission of Enquiry will throw some light on the truth or falsehood of this belief. But, in order to form a fair opinion as to the action of the Uitlanders, the question to be considered is not so much whether their belief was correct, as whether they had reasonable cause for so believing. We cannot but think that this question must be answered in the affirmative. The Government of Pretoria during the year 1895 had done everything, short of repudiating the Treaty of Pretoria, to encourage the impression that the Republic was looking to Germany for support against Great Britain. The German, in contradistinction to the British Uitlanders, were treated on the footing of the most favoured nation. Exceptional facilities were given to German manufacturers in preference to British. Concessions were refused by the State to British speculators and accorded to Germans. Negotiations were reported to be carried on between Pretoria and Berlin by the Secretary of State, Dr. Leyds, the most Anglophobe of Boers; and, according to current report, steps were being taken to organize a foreign legion, commanded by German officers, and composed

of

of German emigrants who had just completed their terms of military service. Plans, too, were said to be rife for building fortifications, not only at Pretoria but at Johannesburg. Now, as subsequent events demonstrated, the idea which underlay the scheme of an armed demonstration on the part of the Uitlanders was based on the assumption that the volunteer forces which the Reform Committee hoped to raise would be strong enough to hold their own against the Boers, until such time as assistance could be rendered by the British colonists in the Cape and in Natal. Obviously this idea would become impracticable if once the Government of Pretoria had in its service a trained body of European troops. If, therefore, an armed demonstration was to be made at all, no time was to be lost.

The second cause which, in the opinion of the Uitlanders, militated in favour of immediate action, was the expectation that the proposed demonstration would meet with prompt and effective support from without. Pending the result of the enquiry now about to commence, it would be out of place to express any opinion, one way or another, as to the extent to which the Reform Committee were justified in relying on the aid of the Cape Colony, in whose Government the then Premier was supreme. We hope that Mr. Rhodes, considering the position he occupied at the time, may be able to purge himself from the charge of direct complicity with an armed insurrection against the government of a friendly State. But at all events the leaders of this Uitlander movement had reason to know that Colonel Frank Rhodes, the Premier's brother and representative at the gold-fields, as well as Dr. Jameson, the Administrator of the Chartered Company in Rhodesia, were in full accord with the project of making an armed demonstration, and were prepared in case of need to support it in their own persons. On the strength of these two facts alone, the authors of the insurrection at Johannesburg might well flatter themselves that, in the event of a rising, they would have the support of the Cape Colony under Mr. Rhodes's Premiership.

It is not necessary for our purpose to recite again the wellworn narrative of the sudden rise and the still more sudden collapse of the armed demonstration. Whether the insurrection could or could not have succeeded under any possible circumstances, must be matter of guesswork. Enough, however, is already known to indicate what the plan of the Uitlanders was, and what was the immediate cause of their disastrous failure. A Provisional Government was to be established; and on the arrival of the expected reinforcements, a proclamation was to Vol. 184.-No. 368.

2 P

⚫ be