tues 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, on account of a disagreement as to which
flag they were to rise under, it appears that Jameson (with or without
the orders of Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading
the country with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had
taken in hand. Five hundred policemen and two field-guns made up the
forlorn hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal
border upon December 29, 1895. On January 2 they were surrounded by the
Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many of
their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent horses,
they were compelled to lay down their arms. Six burghers lost their
lives in the skirmish.

Determined attempts have been made to connect the British Government
with this fiasco, and to pretend that the Colonial Secretary and other
statesmen were cognisant of it. Such an impression has been fostered by
the apparent reluctance of the Commission of Inquiry to push their
researches to the uttermost. It is much to be regretted that every
possible telegram and letter should not have been called for upon that
occasion; but the idea that this was not done for fear that Mr.
Chamberlain and the British Government would be implicated, becomes
absurd in the presence of the fact that the Commission included among
its members Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Sir William Harcourt. Is it
conceiv