the prisoners themselves.  It was represented by these agents that it would be worse than useless for some of the prisoners to petition if many others refused to do so and stood out.  Some of the prisoners did actually petition—­a course of action which was strongly condemned by others; but it should be borne in mind that there were among the prisoners many men who were in bad health and poor circumstances, who had heavy responsibilities in private life, and who were not only unable to pay their fines, but even unable to make any provision for their families during incarceration.  Such conditions would tend to shake the nerve of most men.

With this nucleus to work upon the Government through their agents began a system of terrorism by which they hoped to establish conditions under which their ‘magnanimity by inches’ would appear in the most favourable possible light.  The first petition presented for the signature of the prisoners was one in which they were asked to admit the justice of their sentences, to express regret for what they had done and to promise to behave themselves in the future.  The document closed with an obsequious and humiliating appeal to the ‘proved magnanimity of the Government.’  The reception accorded to this was distinctly unfavourable, copies of the petitions being in some instances torn up and flung in the faces of those who presented them.  The great majority of the prisoners refused to have anything to do with them, and on representing the view that any appeal so couched was not consistent with their self-respect, they were informed that the petition had already been shown to the President and members of the Executive Council and had been approved by them and that it would not look well to alter it now.

Every effort was made for some days to induce the prisoners to sign this document, but they refused.  A certain number of the men were opposed to signing anything whatever, even the most formal appeal to the Executive Council for a revision of sentence.  They based their refusal upon two reasons:  1st, that they had been arrested by an act of treachery and tried by a packed Court, and if the Executive recognized the injustice of the sentence they might act spontaneously without petition from the prisoners; 2nd, that they believed that any document however moderate which they might sign would only be the thin end of the wedge by which the Government hoped to introduce the principle of individual statements and pleas—­that is to say each one to excuse himself at the expense of his neighbour, and thus enable the authorities to establish by the prisoners’ own confessions the extent of the guilt and complicity which they had been unable to prove.