The State Attorney and Secretary of State replied that “although the objects of this meeting were naturally distasteful to the Transvaal Government, they did not forbid the meeting.  Only, all persons who should commit acts of violence, or who should make use of seditious language, would be held personally responsible.”

Ladies were invited to attend the meeting, which was held at four o’clock in the afternoon.  The members of the League were unarmed.

When they arrived, they found the hall already in possession of three or four hundred burghers, who had been recruited by Papenfus, Acting Road Inspector, and were acting under the orders of Mr. Broeksma, Third Public Prosecutor, and Mr. de Villiers, Second Public Prosecutor.  These men were placed in groups about the Amphitheatre.  No sooner had the meeting begun, than, on a signal given by Mr. Broeksma, chairs were broken, and, under the orders of Sergeant Smith, of the municipal police, of Erasmus, of the special police, Lieutenants Murphy and Keller of the secret police, and, with the assistance of policemen in uniform, they commenced an assault upon the members.  Lieutenant Posthuysen, on horseback in the arena, encouraged the rioters.

Nothing could show Dr. Kuyper’s manner of stating and interpreting facts better than the following sentence:—­

“It was simply a matter of the careful protection of British subjects, or rather of the worthy apostles of Johannesburg, who had begun by saying to the magistrates of the Transvaal ’keep away your police!’ and who, later, crawling back from this meeting, after being well thrashed, complained bitterly that the police had not protected them.”

Dr. Kuyper seems to think it highly amusing that the “worthy apostles of Johannesburg had been well thrashed.”

When we find a European Dutchman, a man of letters, showing such animus in the examination of facts, one may judge of what the Boers are capable, ignorant and rough as they are, and inflated with the conviction that they are the elect people.

[Footnote 11:  Le Siecle, March 31st, 1900.]

2.—­Different modes of estimating bail.

We have seen that one of the objects of the meeting had been to protest against the arrests of Messrs. Dodd and Webb.  These two gentlemen had been arrested as the organisers of an illegal meeting in the public market square, a public place, where no speeches had been made, but where the petition to the Queen had been openly read, before they had taken it to the British Vice-Consul.  To obtain their release they had each to find sureties of L1,000, while Jones, Edgar’s murderer, had been set at liberty on bail being found for L200 unpaid.

3.—­The Uitlanders’ Petition.

These proceedings only resulted in more signatures to the petition addressed to the Queen.  When Sir Alfred Milner, March 28th, 1899, forwarded a copy to Mr. Chamberlain it contained 21,684 signatures.  Sir Alfred Milner did not undertake to guarantee the authenticity of them all, but gave reasons for considering the greater number as bona fide.