The continental Uitlanders were more patient of that which was unendurable to the American and the Briton.

The Americans, however, were in so great a minority that it was upon the British that the brunt of the struggle for freedom fell.

Apart from the fact that the British were more numerous than all the other Uitlanders combined, there were special reasons why they should feel their humiliating position more than the members of any other race.

In the first place, many of the British were British South Africans, who knew that in the neighbouring countries which gave them birth the most liberal possible institutions had been given to the kinsmen of these very Boers who were refusing them the management of their own drains and water supply.

And again, every Briton knew that Great Britain claimed to be the paramount power in South Africa, and so he felt as if his own land, to which he might have looked for protection, was conniving at and acquiescing in his ill treatment.
As citizens of the paramount power, it was peculiarly galling that they should be held in political subjection.