on the following Monday (the prisoners would then have been three weeks in gaol) orders for their release would be issued by Monday night.  In order to secure a favourable reception of this suggestion it was arranged that the clergyman who was to conduct Divine service on Sunday in the gaol would deliver this message from the President to the prisoners at the conclusion of the service, and urge the men for their own sakes and for the sake of their families and of their friends to abandon the position which they had taken up and to sign declarations of the nature required, and so secure their release.  Nor was this all.  Outside the gaol the wives of those men who stood out against the petition movement were informed by Government officials that unless the demands of the Government were complied with by their husbands they would serve the full period of their sentence.  Pressure was brought to bear upon these ladies and special facilities were given them to visit the gaol, avowedly in order to bring about the desired end.

Eleven of the prisoners—­apart from the four whose punishment in substitution for death had not been decided upon, and who were therefore not concerned in the petitions—­declined to reconsider their decision, and elected rather to serve their term of two years; and they expressed the conviction at the same time that these promises of the President would not be kept any more than others had been.  The result justified their judgment.  After a postponement of two days on some flimsy pretext the official intimation of the commutations was given to the prisoners on Wednesday, May 20.  Instead of the release positively and definitely promised the term of imprisonment was reduced in the following degree:  Ten men were released, twenty-four men were condemned to three months’, eighteen to five months’, and four to one year’s imprisonment; and the clemency of the Government towards the four leaders was indicated by a sentence of fifteen years each.

Even a short period of imprisonment under the existing conditions meant certain death to a proportion of the men sentenced, and it is not to be wondered at that the ‘magnanimity’ displayed by the Government after the disappointments and delays seriously affected the health of a number of the men, following as it did closely upon the tragic affair already alluded to.

With regard to Messrs. Sampson and Davies no decision was announced, it being intimated by Dr. Leyds that, as they had made no petition, their case had not been brought before the Government, and the Executive had therefore no official knowledge of their existence.  But the extent of the Government’s magnanimity was even then not fully known.  On the following day it was announced to the prisoners that they had been misinformed with regard to the five and twelve months’ commutations—­that the intention and resolution of the Executive was merely to grant these men permission to appeal at the end of the periods named to the aforesaid magnanimity.