A similar suggestion was made to several of the Reformers at the time of the judicial crisis by one of the judges of the Transvaal High Court, when it was hoped to enlist the sympathies of the Uitlanders with a movement to curtail President Kruger’s power and to establish republicanism on a firmer basis in South Africa.  In order to forestall an obvious comment, it may be said that discussion was in both cases declined on the ground that it would be participating in politics in the sense forbidden by President Kruger’s three years’ ban.

The year 1896 was a very bad one for the whole of South Africa.  Besides the Raid and the suspense and disorganization entailed by the prolonged trial, the terrible dynamite explosion in Johannesburg,{44} the still more terrible rebellion and massacre in Rhodesia, and the crushing visitation of the great cattle scourge, the Rinderpest, helped to produce a deplorable state of affairs in the Transvaal.

Then there was another thing which rankled badly:  Messrs. Sampson and Davies were still in gaol.{45} The feeling throughout South Africa was reflected in the monotonous announcement which appeared in the Cape Times week by week for thirteen months:—­’To-day Messrs. Sampson and Davies complete the—­week of their imprisonment in Pretoria gaol for the crime of not signing a petition.’  It seemed scarcely credible that the President should still harbour any illusions about his magnanimity; nevertheless, for some weeks before the celebration of the Queen’s Record reign it was rumoured that the two prisoners were to be released upon that occasion as a mark of his Honour’s sympathy.  Opinion had not been unanimous upon the attitude of either the President or the prisoners; but an ugly incident silenced most of the President’s apologists.  Gold stealing and the purchase of stolen gold were being carried on such a scale and with such impunity that at last, in desperation, the directors and officials of one of the big mining companies (the City and Suburban G.M.  Co.), at the risk of being shot by desperadoes, took upon themselves the functions of the detectives and police.  They caught ‘red-handed’ two notorious characters and delivered them over, with the gold in their possession, to the authorities.  The thieves actually boasted then that nothing would happen to them as they had ‘made it all right;’ and a few days later one of them was allowed to escape out of the Court-house buildings which stand in the middle of a large square.  The other was convicted and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment.  He was a criminal of a bad and dangerous type, the head of a gang known to be concerned in gold stealing and burglary as a profession.  The penalty was regarded by all parties as most inadequate and the judge himself commented adversely upon the drafting of the law which tended to screen the prisoner.  Not one mitigating circumstance was forthcoming!  And yet, whilst ignoring a fresh outburst of protest