Mr.Cecil Rhodes, Premier of the British Cape Colony, millionaire, creator and managing director of the territorially-immense and financially unproductive South Africa Company; projector of vast schemes for the unification and consolidation of all the South African States, one imposing commonwealth or empire under the shadow and general protection of the British flag, thought he saw an opportunity to make profitable use of the Uitlander discontent above mentioned--make the Johannesburg cat help pull out one of his consolidation chestnuts for him.

With this view he set himself the task of warming the lawful and legitimate petitions and supplications of the Uitlanders into seditious talk, and their frettings into threatenings--the final outcome to be revolt and armed rebellion.

If he could bring about a bloody collision between those people and the Boer government, Great Britain would have to interfere; her interference would be resisted by the Boers; she would chastise them and add the Transvaal to her South African possessions.

It was not a foolish idea, but a rational and practical one.
After a couple of years of judicious plotting, Mr.Rhodes had his reward; the revolutionary kettle was briskly boiling in Johannesburg, and the Uitlander leaders were backing their appeals to the government--now hardened into demands--by threats of force and bloodshed.

By the middle of December, 1895, the explosion seemed imminent.