s,
and this petition had been scornfully rejected, one member saying, with
no disapproval from his colleagues, that if the strangers wanted to get
what they called their rights they would have to fight for them. Their
agitation had been conducted publicly and on constitutional lines,
without threats of force. It was becoming plain, however, in 1895, that
some at least of the leaders were now prepared to use force and would
take arms whenever a prospect of success appeared. But under what flag
would they fight? Would they adhere to their original idea, and maintain
an independent South African Republic when they had ejected the dominant
oligarchy and secured political power for all residents? Or would they
hoist the Union Jack and carry the country back under the British
Crown? No one could speak positively, but most thought that the former
course would be taken. The Americans would be for it. Most of the Cape
people who came of Dutch stock would be for it. Even among the pure
English, some talked bitterly of Majuba Hill, and declared they would
not fight to give the country back to Britain which had abandoned it in
1881.

The motives of these Reformers were simple and patent. Those of them who
had been born and lived long in Africa thought it an intolerable wrong
that, whereas everywhere else in South Africa they could acquire the
suffrage and the means of influencing the government after two or three
years' residence, they were in the Transvaal condemned to a long
disability, and denied all voice in applying the taxes which they paid.
Thinking of South Africa as practically one country, they complained
that here, and here only, were they treated as aliens and inferiors.
Both they and all the other Uitlanders had substantial grievances to
redress. Food was inordinately dear, because a high tariff had been
imposed on imports. Water-supply, police, sanitation, were all
neglected. Not only was Dutch the official language, but in the public
schools Dutch was then the only medium of instruction; and English
children were compelled to learn arithmetic, geography, and history out
of Dutch text-books. It was these abuses, rather than any wish to bring
the Transvaal under the British flag, or even to establish a South
African Confederation, that disposed them to revolt against a Government
which they despised.

The mine-owning capitalists were a very small class, but powerful by
their wealth, their intelligence, and their infl