Constitutional agitation was laid aside, arms were smuggled in, and everything prepared for an organised rising.
The events which followed at the beginning of 1896 have been so thrashed out that there is, perhaps, nothing left to tell--except the truth.

So far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their action was most natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to exculpate themselves for rising against such oppression as no men of our race have ever been submitted to.

Had they trusted only to themselves and the justice of their cause, their moral and even their material position would have been infinitely stronger.

But unfortunately there were forces behind them which were more questionable, the nature and extent of which have never yet, in spite of two commissions of investigation, been properly revealed.

That there should have been any attempt at misleading inquiry, or suppressing documents in order to shelter individuals, is deplorable, for the impression left--I believe an entirely false one--must be that the British Government connived at an expedition which was as immoral as it was disastrous.
It had been arranged that the town was to rise upon a certain night, that Pretoria should be attacked, the fort seized, and the rifles and ammunition used to arm the Uitlanders.