before the Parnell Commission that money was sent by the Irish Rebel
Societies, through Aylward, to stir up the Transvaal rebellion. This
is what Aylward says:

All South Africa was for the moment at rest, with the exception of
the district of Utrecht, where an old-standing grievance with
Cetewayo was the cause of some little alarm and excitement (_i.e._,
Cetewayo's threatened invasion). Still, the Transvaal was disturbed
throughout its whole extent by the expectation of some pending
change--a change coming from the outside, which had been invited by
an active, discontented party, chiefly foreigners, dwellers in towns,
non-producers, place-hunters, deserters, refugees, land-speculators,
'development-men,' and pests of Transvaal society generally, who
openly preached resistance to the law, refusal to pay taxes, and
contempt of the natural and guaranteed owners of the country in
which they lived, in the distinctly expressed hope that foreign
intervention would fill the country with British gold, and conduce
to their own material prosperity. The Boers, spread over a country
larger than France, were stunned into stupor by the demonstrative
loudness of the party of discontent. In some districts they (the
Boers) were poor, and could not readily pay the taxes imposed upon
them by the wars and railway projects of the Government. Their
Volksraad was in Session, but its every action was paralyzed by the
gloom of impending dissolution.

The Republic owed £215,000, which it had no immediate means of
paying. Its creditors were clamorous; whilst the Executive, turn to
which side it would, found itself confronted by threats, reproaches,
accusations of slavery and cruelty based upon hearsay, and which,
like the annexation that steadily approached, could not be met,