rs, who
seriously attempt to show that the Transvaal had any prospect of
prolonging its existence as an independent State for more than a few
months when Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed it in 1877. The
following picture is from a book published by the late Alfred
Aylward, the Fenian, more anti-British than the Boer himself, who was
present at the time, and wrote his book in order to enlist sympathy
for the movement then (1878) organized to obtain a cancellation of
the annexation. The value of Aylward's testimony would not be fairly
appreciated without some explanation.

Sir Bartle Frere describes him (and quotes Scotland Yard authorities
who knew him well) as one of the party who murdered the policeman at
Manchester, and one of the worst and most active of the dynamiting
Irishmen--a professional agitator, who boasted of his purpose to
promote the Transvaal rebellion. Major Le Caron, too, stated on oath
before the Parnell Commission that money was sent by the Irish Rebel
Societies, through Aylward, to stir up the Transvaal rebellion. This
is what Aylward says:

All South Africa was for the moment at rest, with the exception of
the district of Utrecht, where an old-standing grievance with
Cetewayo was the cause of some little alarm and excitement (_i.e._,
Cetewayo's threatened invasion). Still, the Transvaal was disturbed
throughout its whole extent by the expectation of some pending
change--a change coming from the outside, which had been invited by
an active, discontented party, chiefly foreigners, dwellers in towns,
non-producers, place-hunters, deserters, refugees, land-speculators,
'development-men,' and pests of Transvaal society generally, who
openly preached resistance to the law, refusal to pay taxes, and
contempt of the natural and guaranteed owners of the country in
which they lived, in the distinctly expressed hope that foreign
intervention would fill the country with British gold, and conduce
to their own material prosperity. The Boers, spread over a country
larger than France, were stunned into stupor by the demonstrative
loudness of the party of discontent. In some districts they (the
Boers) were poor, and could not readily pay the taxes imposed upon
them by the wars and railway projects of the Government. Their
Volksraad was in Session, but its every action was paralyzed by the
gloom of impending dissolution.

The Republic owed L215,000, which it had no immediate means of
paying. Its creditors were c