but it was always possible to point to the raid as justifying everything.  Were the Uitlanders to have the franchise?  How could they expect it after the raid?  Would Britain object to the enormous importation of arms and obvious preparations for war?  They were only precautions against a second raid.  For years the raid stood in the way, not only of all progress, but of all remonstrance.  Through an action over which they had no control, and which they had done their best to prevent, the British Government was left with a bad case and a weakened moral authority.

The raiders were sent home, where the rank and file were very properly released, and the chief officers were condemned to terms of imprisonment which certainly did not err upon the side of severity.  Cecil Rhodes was left unpunished, he retained his place in the Privy Council, and his Chartered Company continued to have a corporate existence.  This was illogical and inconclusive.  As Kruger said, ’It is not the dog which should be beaten, but the man who set him on to me.’  Public opinion—­in spite of, or on account of, a crowd of witnesses—­was ill informed upon the exact bearings of the question, and it was obvious that as Dutch sentiment at the Cape appeared already to be thoroughly hostile to us, it would be dangerous to alienate the British Africanders also by making a martyr of their favourite leader.  But whatever arguments may be founded upon expediency, it is clear that the Boers bitterly resented, and with justice, the immunity of Rhodes.

In the meantime, both President Kruger and his burghers had shown a greater severity to the political prisoners from Johannesburg than to the armed followers of Jameson.  The nationality of these prisoners is interesting and suggestive.  There were twenty-three Englishmen, sixteen South Africans, nine Scotchmen, six Americans, two Welshmen, one Irishman, one Australian, one Hollander, one Bavarian, one Canadian, one Swiss, and one Turk.  The prisoners were arrested in January, but the trial did not take place until the end of April.  All were found guilty of high treason.  Mr. Lionel Phillips, Colonel Rhodes (brother of Mr. Cecil Rhodes), George Farrar, and Mr. Hammond, the American engineer, were condemned to death, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to the payment of an enormous fine.  The other prisoners were condemned to two years’ imprisonment, with a fine of 2000 pounds each.  The imprisonment was of the most arduous and trying sort, and was embittered by the harshness of the gaoler, Du Plessis.  One of the unfortunate men cut his throat, and several fell seriously ill, the diet and the sanitary conditions being equally unhealthy.  At last at the end of May all the prisoners but six were released.  Four of the six soon followed, two stalwarts, Sampson and Davies, refusing to sign any petition and remaining in prison until they were set free in 1897.  Altogether the Transvaal Government received in fines from the reform prisoners the enormous sum of 212,000 pounds.  A certain comic relief was immediately afterwards given to so grave an episode by the presentation of a bill to Great Britain for 1,677, 938 pounds 3 shillings and 3 pence—­the greater part of which was under the heading of moral and intellectual damage.