white horse that he has not ridden for eight years. But all the same I am sorry for you all."
The wives of the Boers are very powerful, and it is possible that Mrs. Kruger may have prevailed in some way over her husband, for at last, after five weary months of imprisonment, after delays, suspenses, and alarms too numerous to be here recounted, the prisoners, on the 11th of June 1896, were released. They were required to pay a fine of £2000, and to sign a pledge not to interfere with politics for three years. It was owing to this pledge that the valuable book, "The Transvaal from Within," which has here been quoted, was not published till affairs therein set forth had come in 1899 to the painful climax of war! Mr. Lionel Phillips, however, was not so wise as Mr. Fitzpatrick. When Sir John Willoughby in 1897 attacked the Reform Leaders of Johannesburg in the Nineteenth Century, Mr. Phillips replied to it in the same Review, August 1897, defending himself and his comrades from the charges made. In consequence of this action Mr. Phillips was considered to have broken his pledge and was condemned by the Transvaal Government to banishment. Doubtless it was without much regret that he shook the dust of that ill-conditioned State from off his shoes.
THE ULTIMATUM
After the turmoil of 1896 affairs declined from bad to worse. The state of tension between the oppressed Uitlanders and the now suspicious Boers became from day to day and year to year more acute, till at last it was almost unbearable. The incompetence of the police showed that robbery, and even murder, might at any moment be perpetrated and go unpunished, and alarm on this score was not allayed by the action of a constable in shooting dead a Uitlander named Edgar for having met his insults with a blow.
To thoroughly appreciate the misery and insecurity of the Uitlanders, the atrocity of the Government, and the uncloaked hostility to Great Britain that has existed till now, we may quote a description of the situation given last year by Professor James Liebmann. He wrote:—
"In the Transvaal a state of things reigns supreme which cannot be surpassed by the most corrupt of South American Republics. There the Boer shows his character in its most unpleasant features. Low, sordid, corrupt, his chief magistrate as well as his lowest official readily listens to 'reasons that jingle,' and, like the gentleman in the 'Mikado,' is not averse to 'insults.' He calls his country a republic—it is so in name only. The majority of the population, representing the wealth and intelligence of the country—the Uitlanders—are refused almost every civil right, except the privilege of paying exorbitant taxes to swell an already overgorged treasury. Under this ideal(?) government, which is really a sixteenth-century oligarchy flourishing at the end of the nineteenth, and is, certainly not a land where
'A man may speak the thing he will,'
you have a press censorship as tyrannical as in Russia, a State supervision of telegrams, a veto on the right of public meeting, a most unjust education law, and an Executive browbeating the Justiciary; and, in order to accomplish so much, the Transvaal has closed its doors to its kinsmen in Cape Colony—for you must not forget that the oldest Transvaalers, from President Kruger downwards, are ex-Cape Colonists, and quondam British subjects—and imported a bureaucracy of Hollanders to plait a whip wherewith to castigate her children.
"On the Rand, at present, the Uitlanders are voiceless, voteless, and leaderless, whilst, on the other hand, large quantities of arms have been introduced into the country, and the burghers, every one of them, trained in the use of these weapons. Fortifications have been raised at Johannesburg and Pretoria, to cowe those who are putting money into the State's purse, and for this purpose the President has acquired the services of German military officers who will find congenial employment in thus dragooning defenceless citizens.
"This is the state of affairs in the South African so-called Republic in this year of grace (1898), which, according to the Convention, granted equal rights to Briton and to Boer."
This being no exaggerated picture of the situation, it is small wonder that at last the Uitlanders determined to bear the burden no longer, but set their grievances before the Queen. Early in the new year the following petition was forwarded to her Majesty:—
"Humble Petition of British Subjects resident on the Witwatersrandt Gold Fields to her Britannic Majesty Queen Victoria.
"1. Your loyal subjects on these fields are by law denied the free right of possessing such arms as may be necessary to protect their lives and property, and such obstacles are placed in their way as to render the obtaining of the necessary official permit almost impossible. Consequently the Uitlander population of this State is to all intents and purposes an unarmed community.
"2. On the other hand, the whole of the burgher section of the community, irrespective of age, are permitted to possess and carry arms without let or hindrance, and are, in fact, on application, supplied with them by the Government free of charge.
"3. The police force of this State is exclusively recruited from the burgher element, many of the police being youths fresh from rural districts, without experience or tact, and in many instances without general education or a knowledge of the English language; therefore, as a whole, entirely out of sympathy with the British section of the community, which forms the majority of the population.
"4. The foot police of Johannesburg, in whose appointment and control we have no voice, is not a military force; yet its members not only carry batons, but are also armed with six-chambered military revolvers, invariably carried loaded.
"5. Under these circumstances, given an unarmed community policed by a body of inexperienced rustics carrying weapons of precision and utterly out of sympathy with the community they are supposed to protect, it is not surprising that the power placed in the hands of this police force should be constantly abused.
"6. For years past your subjects have in consequence had constantly to complain of innumerable acts of petty tyranny at the hands of the police.
"7. During the last few months, however, this antagonistic attitude of the police has assumed a much more serious and aggressive aspect. Without warrant they have invaded private houses and taken the occupants into custody on frivolous and unfounded charges never proceeded with; violently arrested British subjects in the streets on unintelligible charges: and generally display towards your Majesty's subjects a temper which undoubtedly tends to endanger the peace of the community. In adopting this demeanour the police are supported, with but a few honourable exceptions, by the higher officials, as instanced by the continual persecution in the Courts of many of your Majesty's coloured subjects at the very time when negotiations are proceeding between your Majesty's Representative and the Transvaal Government with regard to their status. This feeling is also strongly evidenced in the particular case which we now bring to your Majesty's notice.
"8. The lamentable tragedy which has been the immediate cause of this our humble Petition cannot, therefore, be regarded as incidental, but symptomatic.
"9. This case is that of the shooting of Tom Jackson Edgar, a British subject, by Police-Constable Barend Stephanus Jones, a member of the Johannesburg Constabulary.
"10. From the accompanying affidavits, already published and sworn by eye-witnesses of the tragedy, it would appear that the deceased, while in the occupation of his own house, was shot dead by Police-Constable Barend Stephanus Jones as the latter was in the act of unlawfully breaking into the house of deceased without a warrant.
"11. Police-Constable Barend Stephanus Jones, though in the first instance placed in custody on a charge of murder, was almost immediately afterwards let out on bail by the Public Prosecutor, who, without waiting for any Magisterial inquiry, reduced the charge, on his own initiative, to that of culpable homicide.
"12. The bail on which the prisoner was released was the same in amount—namely, £200—as that required a few days previously from an Uitlander charged with a common assault on a Member of the Government Secret Service, and the penalty for which was a fine of £20.
"13. The widow and orphan of the late Tom Jackson Edgar have been left absolutely destitute through the death