Owing partly to the poverty of the country until the great influx of British and foreign colonists, generally called 'Uitlanders,' and the development of the gold and diamond mines after 1884-5, the politics of the Transvaal created little or no attention in England till about 1895, when Boer raids into Bechuanaland and elsewhere obliged the British authorities on the spot to protect our Colonial interests against their further advances. But then came the Jameson Raid at the very end of that year, which, though universally condemned both by the British Government and people as an infraction of international law, was yet the outcome of deep-rooted discontent in the Transvaal by the English and other settlers there. The 'Raid' was the turning-point in recent Transvaal history. In the first place, it attracted the attention of the whole civilised world, and placed the Transvaal, the Uitlanders, and the relationship of Great Britain both to the one and to the other in the full glare of day. From {174} the date of the raid the difficulties of the position were more and more accentuated, and the designs of President Kruger for entire independence were hastened to a consummation. By the Boer government the course of justice was perverted, and the Chief-Justice was made subordinate to the will of the Executive. Owing to insecurity to life and property, mine owners could scarcely get a supply of labourers. Kruger and his Hollanders ran the country for their own benefit. They taxed and plundered the Uitlanders, while neglecting such matters as roads, bridges, railways, sanitary and educational schemes, but took care to arm the Boers while they fattened on monopolies, and kept the Uitlanders from any share in the government. In short, the Transvaal was a Republic in nothing but the name. It was really a corrupt oligarchy, in which a privileged minority made laws to suit themselves, and put the whole burden of taxation on the shoulders of a majority who were deprived of the franchise. [Sidenote: Uitlander grievances]