permanent.  It was a small minority of the Uitlanders who had any desire to come into the British system.  They were a cosmopolitan crowd, only united by the bond of a common injustice.  But when every other method had failed, and their petition for the rights of freemen had been flung back at them, it was natural that their eyes should turn to that flag which waved to the north, the west, and the south of them—­the flag which means purity of government with equal rights and equal duties for all men.  Constitutional agitation was laid aside, arms were smuggled in, and everything prepared for an organised rising.

The events which followed at the beginning of 1896 have been so thrashed out that there is, perhaps, nothing left to tell—­except the truth.  So far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their action was most natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to exculpate themselves for rising against such oppression as no men of our race have ever been submitted to.  Had they trusted only to themselves and the justice of their cause, their moral and even their material position would have been infinitely stronger.  But unfortunately there were forces behind them which were more questionable, the nature and extent of which have never yet, in spite of two commissions of investigation, been properly revealed.  That there should have been any attempt at misleading inquiry, or suppressing documents in order to shelter individuals, is deplorable, for the impression left—­I believe an entirely false one—­must be that the British Government connived at an expedition which was as immoral as it was disastrous.

It had been arranged that the town was to rise upon a certain night, that Pretoria should be attacked, the fort seized, and the rifles and ammunition used to arm the Uitlanders.  It was a feasible device, though it must seem to us, who have had such an experience of the military virtues of the burghers, a very desperate one.  But it is conceivable that the rebels might have held Johannesburg until the universal sympathy which their cause excited throughout South Africa would have caused Great Britain to intervene.  Unfortunately they had complicated matters by asking for outside help.  Mr. Cecil Rhodes was Premier of the Cape, a man of immense energy, and one who had rendered great services to the empire.  The motives of his action are obscure—­certainly, we may say that they were not sordid, for he has always been a man whose thoughts were large and whose habits were simple.  But whatever they may have been—­whether an ill-regulated desire to consolidate South Africa under British rule, or a burning sympathy with the Uitlanders in their fight against injustice—­it is certain that he allowed his lieutenant, Dr. Jameson, to assemble the mounted police of the Chartered Company, of which Rhodes was founder and director, for the purpose of co-operating with the rebels at Johannesburg.  Moreover, when the revolt at Johannesburg was postponed,