In The Meantime, Both President Kruger And His Burghers Had Shown A
Greater Severity To The Political Prisoners From Johannesburg Than
To The Armed Followers Of Jameson.
The nationality of these
prisoners is interesting and suggestive.
There were twenty-three
Englishmen, sixteen South Africans, nine Scotchmen, six Americans,
two Welshmen, one Irishman, one Australian, one Hollander, one
Bavarian, one Canadian, one Swiss, and one Turk. The prisoners were
arrested in January, but the trial did not take place until the end
of April. All were found guilty of high treason. Mr. Lionel
Phillips, Colonel Rhodes (brother of Mr. Cecil Rhodes), George
Farrar, and Mr. Hammond, the American engineer, were condemned to
death, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to the payment of
an enormous fine. The other prisoners were condemned to two years'
imprisonment, with a fine of 2000 pounds each. The imprisonment was
of the most arduous and trying sort, and was embittered by the
harshness of the gaoler, Du Plessis. One of the unfortunate men cut
his throat, and several fell seriously ill, the diet and the
sanitary conditions being equally unhealthy. At last at the end of
May all the prisoners but six were released. Four of the six soon
followed, two stalwarts, Sampson and Davies, refusing to sign any
petition and remaining in prison until they were set free in 1897.
Altogether the Transvaal Government received in fines from the
reform prisoners the enormous sum of 212,000 pounds. A certain
comic relief was immediately afterwards given to so grave an
episode by the presentation of a bill to Great Britain for 1,677,
938 pounds 3 shillings and 3 pence - the greater part of which was
under the heading of moral and intellectual damage.
The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes
which produced them both remained. It is hardly conceivable that a
statesman who loved his country would have refrained from making
some effort to remove a state of things which had already caused
such grave dangers, and which must obviously become more serious
with every year that passed. But Paul Kruger had hardened his
heart, and was not to be moved. The grievances of the Uitlanders
became heavier than ever. The one power in the land to which they
had been able to appeal for some sort of redress amid their
grievances was the law courts. Now it was decreed that the courts
should be dependent on the Volksraad. The Chief Justice protested
against such a degradation of his high office, and he was dismissed
in consequence without a pension. The judge who had condemned the
reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the protection of a
fixed law was withdrawn from the Uitlanders.
A commission appointed by the State was sent to examine into the
condition of the mining industry and the grievances from which the
newcomers suffered. The chairman was Mr. Schalk Burger, one of the
most liberal of the Boers, and the proceedings were thorough and
impartial.
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