With a largely increased revenue, President Kruger found he could now indulge his hostility to this country and his long-cherished hopes of independence by providing for a possible struggle. As Lord Selborne said, 'the money was used to turn the whole of the Boer population into soldiers; it was used to stock the whole country with millions of cartridges, to buy battery after battery of guns, to buy rifles enough to arm every Boer four or five times over, to build things previously unknown in South Africa, namely, great fortresses in the middle of the country, at Pretoria and at Johannesburg--such fortresses as were not to be seen in England except to guard the public dockyards, and such as could only be seen on the frontier between France and Germany.' The course of the war has abundantly shown that these enormous preparations {175} had been made in view of other than mere native aggression; that, in fact, nothing less than the entire subversion of British authority over our South African Colonies was to be aimed at. So intolerable had the oligarchy at Pretoria made the position of the Uitlanders, that these at length petitioned the Queen for some redress of their grievances. This document, signed by 40,000 persons, 21,000 of whom were British subjects in the Transvaal, was handed to the British Agent in Pretoria for transmission to the High Commissioner, and was forwarded by Mr. Conyngham Greene in the ordinary official course to the Government. The petition showed that for many years discontent had existed among the Uitlanders, who are mostly British subjects. The Uitlanders possessed most of the wealth and intelligence in the country, and they had no voice in its government. In spite of the promises of the Transvaal Government and the petitions addressed to the President, there had been no practical reforms. The discontent culminated in the insurrection of 1895. The people then placed themselves in the hands of the High Commissioner, and President Kruger promised reforms. Since then their position had been worse. Legislation had been unfriendly. The petition cited as examples the Aliens' Immigration Act, withdrawn at the instance of the British Government; the Press Law, giving the President arbitrary powers; the Aliens' Expulsion Law, permitting the expulsion of British subjects at the will of the President without appeal to the High Court, while burghers cannot be expelled, this being contrary to the Convention. The municipality granted to Johannesburg was worthless. It was entirely subject to the Government. Half of the councillors are necessarily burghers, though the {176} burghers and Uitlanders number 1000 and 23,000 respectively. The Government rejected the report of the Industrial Commission, which was composed of its own officials. The High Court had been reduced to a condition of subservience, the revenues of the country had been diverted for the purpose of building