Throughout the period prior to the main trial, President Kruger continued to use with great effect ’the wishes and intentions of his burghers.’  When bail was first refused to the leaders this course was justified on the grounds that the burghers were strongly against it, and that the President could not act against their wishes.  When at a later stage a petition was presented by a number of burghers more or less in touch with the Uitlander community, who felt that the treatment of the leaders was having a bad effect, counter petitions came in within a day or two urging the Government on no account to extend the privilege of bail to these men.  Oddly enough, these petitions were got up and signed by relatives and near connexions of the President himself.

During this period another petition was presented which is surely without parallel in a civilized state; but it illustrates admirably the Boer idea of right and liberty.  Fifty burghers in the district of Standerton addressed the Government, pointing out the undesirability of allowing a ’certain Advocate Wessels to defend the Jameson rebels,’ and praying that the Government would put him over the border, ’which is the slightest punishment that can be inflicted upon him.’  The receipt of this petition was announced in the Government organ, the Press, on March 25.

At about this time another incident occurred which excited considerable feeling.  Commandant Henning Pretorius, one of the most prominent Boer officials, having paid a visit to his native district in the Cape Colony shortly after the Jameson raid, purchased from the owner of a farm at Cookhouse Drift the beam from which the five Boers had been hanged at Slagter’s Nek for rebellion in the year 1816.  Reference has already been made in the first chapter to this deplorable affair.  The beam (which had been built into the house) was brought up by the purchaser to Pretoria.  He states, and no doubt truly, that he obtained the historical relic for the purpose of adding it to the National Museum; but it must be added that the time was not well chosen unless the intention was to rouse feeling.  The Volksstem, the Hollander-Boer organ, in an extremely violent article, described in detail the Slagter’s Nek executions, and called upon the burghers to avenge on the persons of the Reformers their murdered countrymen; and it is a fact vouched for by persons by no means friendly to the Uitlander that certain Boers approached President Kruger, intimating to him that the beam had arrived, that it would not be necessary to bother about a trial, but that the four men should be hanged out of hand from the same scaffold which had served for their compatriots.  It is but right to say that President Kruger’s reply was a severe reprimand, and a reminder that they were not a barbarous people, but should comply with the law.  The matter having been brought to the notice of Mr. Chamberlain, strong representations were made upon the subject, to which