From time to time adverse comment has been made on the subject of this undertaking of the Reformers to abstain from further participation in politics.  The position of the Reformers was this:  They had entered upon the movement to obtain the redress of certain matters closely affecting their feelings as men and their interests and business as settlers in the country.  They were disarmed and placed at the mercy of the Boer Government by the action of England’s Representative.  To decline to give the pledge required would entail banishment, which would in many cases mean ruin to them and in all cases would remove them from the sphere in which they might yet contribute to the attainment of the ends they had in view.  The only compensating consideration possible in such a course would be that the redress desired would be effected through the influence of the Imperial Government; but since the Imperial Government had shown that under the circumstances they were neither willing nor able to maintain to a logical conclusion the position which they took up when they secured disarmament, the Reformers concluded that their obvious course was to give the required undertaking.  It is true that several among them did decline to give this undertaking, saying that they would prefer to serve their terms of imprisonment; but they received the answer that after the term of two years’ imprisonment the Government would still require the undertaking or enforce the banishment clause, so that it appeared to them there was no way out of it but to sign what was required and wait patiently.

It is perfectly obvious that one of two alternatives will present itself.  Either the Government will come to regard this provision as a dead letter, and wholly ignore it; or some of the men, in the course of their business and in dealing with economic questions such as they are morally entitled to discuss will fall foul of the ’opinion of the Executive.’  The issue will then be a very clear one, and many of those who were strongly opposed to the Reformers on the premisses on which they started will find themselves in cordial agreement with them in later developments.{40}

The Reform movement closed for the time being with the release of the leaders.  Sixty-four men had been committed for trial.  From four of them the Government had received L100,000, and from fifty-six others L112,000.  One was dead; one had fallen so seriously ill before the trial that he was unable to present himself with the rest, but on recovering and announcing his intention to plead ‘Not guilty’ and fight it out, the case against him was withdrawn.

There remained two men, Messrs. Sampson and Davies, whose case the Government had refused to consider because they declined to appeal.  They had been sentenced on April 28 to two years’ imprisonment and L2,000 fine, or failing payment to another year’s imprisonment, and to three years’ banishment; and under that sentence do they lie at the present moment in the Pretoria gaol, at the mercy of the Boer Government and its very competent representative Mr. Du Plessis.{41}