The question that particularly troubled the Boer mind was a political one. Paul Kruger, the president of the republic, was a man of remarkable character, an astute statesman, a shrewd politician, with an iron will and keen judgment, a personage strikingly capable of dealing with a disturbing situation. While ignorant in book lore, he had associated with him as secretary of state an educated Hollander, Dr. Leyds by name, one of the ablest and shrewdest statesmen in South Africa. The pair of them were a close match for the bold and aspiring Cecil Rhodes, then premier of the Cape Colony. The difficulty they had to deal with was the following: The _Uitlander_(Outlander or foreign) element in the republic had grown so enormously as far to outnumber the Dutch. The country presented the anomaly of a minority of 15,000 ignorant and unprogressive Dutch burghers ruling a majority of four or five times their number of educated, wealthy and prosperous aliens, who, while possessing the most valuable part of the territory, were given no voice in its government. They were not only deprived of legislative functions in the country at large, but also of municipal functions in the city of their own creation, and they demanded in vain a charter that would enable them to control and improve their own city. President Kruger, fearing to have his government overwhelmed by these Anglo-Saxon strangers, sternly determined that they should have no political foothold in his state until after a long residence, foreseeing that if they were given the franchise on easy terms they would soon control the state. In this sense the gold which was making them rich seemed a curse to the Boers, since it threatened to bring them again under the dominion of the hated Englishman. [=The Jameson Raid=] In 1895 the state of affairs reached a critical point. The British in Matabeleland, north of the Transvaal, were in warm sympathy with their brethren in Johannesburg, and between them a plot was laid to overthrow Kruger and his people. An outbreak took place in Johannesburg, led by Colonel F. W. Rhodes, brother of Cecil Rhodes, by whom it was thought to have been instigated. It was quickly followed by an invasion from Matabeleland, led by Dr. L. S. Jameson, Cecil Rhodes' lieutenant in that region. The movement was a hasty and ill-considered one. The invaders were met by the bold Boers, armed with their unerring rifles, were surrounded and forced to surrender, and their leaders were put on trial for their lives.