t, recently exercised, to declare laws, which were in their
opinion inconsistent with the Grondwet (Constitution), to be, to that
extent, invalid. As a protest against this autocratic proceeding the
entire bench of judges threatened to resign, and the courts were
adjourned. The deadlock continued until a compromise was arranged
through the intervention of Chief Justice de Villiers. The President
undertook to introduce a new law providing satisfactorily for the
independence of the Courts, and the judges, on their side, pledged
themselves not to exercise the "testing" right in the meantime. In
February, 1898, Chief Justice Kotze wrote to remind President Krueger
that his promise remained unfulfilled,[35] withdrawing at the same
time the conditional pledge not to exercise the "testing" right given
by himself. The President then dismissed Mr. Kotze under Law No. 1,
compelled a second judge, Mr. Justice Amershof (who had supported the
Chief Justice in the position he had taken up) to resign, and
appointed, as the new Chief Justice, Mr. Gregorowski, who, as Chief
Justice of the Free State, had presided at the trial of the Reformers
in 1896, and at the time of the crisis a year before had declared that
"no honourable man could possibly accept the position of a judge so
long as Law No. 1 remained in force." The judicature was now rendered
subservient to the Executive, and the Uitlanders were thus deprived of
their last constitutional safeguard against the injustice of the Boer
and Hollander oligarchy.

[Footnote 35: There appears to have been some question as to
whether the terms of the President's undertaking bound him to
introduce the proposed measure into the Volksraad in 1897, or
in 1898. Chief Justice de Villiers held that the latter date
was contemplated by the President. But the point is
immaterial, since President Krueger denied in the Volksraad,
after the dismissal of Mr. Kotze, that he had ever given an
undertaking at all to Chief Justice de Villiers or to anybody
else.]

[Sidenote: His reactionary policy.]

This was the position in the Transvaal in February, 1898. President
Krueger had demonstrated by his refusal to carry out the
recommendations of the Industrial Commission, and by the dismissal of
Chief Justice Kotze, that he was determined not merely to set himself
against all measures of reform, but to increase the disabilities und