risoners 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