(shortly before) been further incensed by the demand of the Government
that they should, although debarred from the suffrage, serve in a
military commando sent against the Kafir chief Malaboch. Despairing of
constitutional agitation, they began to provide themselves with arms and
to talk of a general rising. Another cause, which I have not yet
mentioned, had recently sharpened their eagerness for reforms. About
1892 the theory was propounded that the gold-bearing reefs might be
worked not only near the surface, but also at much greater depths, and
that, owing to the diminution of the angle of the dip as the beds
descend into the earth, a much greater mass of gold-bearing rock might
be reached than had been formerly deemed possible. This view, soon
confirmed by experimental borings, promised a far longer life to the
mines than had been previously expected. Those who had come to the Rand
thinking they might probably leave it after a few years now conceived
the idea of permanent residence, while the directors of the great mining
companies, perceiving how much their industry might be developed,
smarted more than ever under the maladministration and exactions from
which the industry suffered.

These were the events and these the causes that had brought about the
state of things which a visitor saw at Pretoria and Johannesburg in
November, 1895. Revolution was already in the air, but few could guess
what form it would take. The situation was a complicated one, because
each of the two main sections of the population, Boers and Uitlanders,
was itself subdivided into minor groups. The Uitlanders were of many
nationalities; but those who spoke English were so much the most
numerous that I shall speak of them only, dismissing the remainder with
the remark that while many of them sympathized with the Reform movement,
few of them gave it active support, while most of the Germans, moved by
anti-British feeling, favoured President Kruger's Government.

The English section, including Cape and Natal men, Australians and
Americans, consisted of three sets of persons: the middle classes, the
capitalist mine-owners, and the working men. The middle class people,
traders, professional men, engineers, and the like, either belonged to
or were in sympathy with the National Union. It was they who had formed
it. They had recently presented to the Volksraad a petition, signed by
thirty-eight thousand non-enfranchised residents, asking for reform