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 (9) efficient civil service, with adequate provision for pay and pension; (10) free trade in South African products. That is what we want. There now remains the question which is to be put before you at the meeting of the 6th of January, viz. How shall we get it? To this question I shall expect from you an answer in plain terms according to your deliberate judgment.

The Jameson conspiracy fared no worse and no better than the great majority of conspiracies in history. It failed in its immediate object. Jameson did not obtain more than 500 men. Johannesburg had the greatest difficulty in smuggling in and distributing the rifles with which the insurgents were to be armed. The scheme to seize the Pretoria fort had to be abandoned, as at the time fixed Pretoria was thronged with Boers. Finally, to make confusion worse confounded, Jameson, becoming impatient of delay, in spite of receiving direct messages from the leaders at Johannesburg telling him on no account to move, marched into the Transvaal.

The policy of delay in the execution of the plot which the Uitlander leaders found themselves compelled to adopt was determined by a variety of causes. Apart from the difficulty of obtaining arms, a serious question arose at the eleventh hour which filled some of the Uitlanders with mistrust. The reform leaders in the Transvaal, down to and including the Johannesburg rising, had always recognized as a cardinal principle the maintenance of the independence of the state. From Cape Town it was now hinted that the movement in which Jameson was to co-operate should, in Rhodes’s view, be carried out under the British flag. A meeting of Uitlander leaders was hastily summoned on the 25th of December. Two messengers were that night dispatched to interview Rhodes, who then gave the assurance that the flag question might be left to a plebiscite of the inhabitants of the Transvaal (see Blue-book, 1897, 165, p. 21). It was determined nevertheless to postpone action; however, on the 29th of December, Jameson started, and the news of his having done so reached Johannesburg from outside sources. A number of leading citizens were at once formed into a reform committee. In the absence of Charles Leonard, who had been sent as one of the delegates to Cape Town to interview Rhodes, Lionel Phillips, a partner in Messrs Eckstein & Co., the largest mining firm on the Rand, was elected chairman. Phillips had been for three years in succession chairman of the chamber of mines, and he had persistently for several years tried to induce Kruger to take a reasonable view of the requirements of the industry. Under the supervision of the reform committee, such arms as had been smuggled in were distributed, and Colonel Frank Rhodes was given charge of the armed men. A large body of police was enrolled, and order was maintained throughout the town. On the end of January 1896 Jameson, who found himself at Doornkop in a position surrounded by Boers, surrendered. Jameson and his men were conveyed to Pretoria as prisoners, and subsequently handed over to the high commissioner (Sir Hercules Robinson, who had succeeded Sir Henry Loch in June 1895).

Significant of the attitude of Germany—whose “flirtation” with the Transvaal has been noted—was an open telegram sent by the emperor William II. the day after the surrender of Jameson congratulating Kruger that, “without appealing to the help of friendly powers” he had repelled the raiders. The British government rejoined by commissioning a flying squadron and by calling attention to the London Convention, reserving the supervision of the foreign relations of the Transvaal to Great Britain. In Johannesburg meanwhile the Kruger government regained control. The whole of the reform committee (with the exception of a few who fled the country) were arrested on a charge of high treason and imprisoned in Pretoria. In April, at the trial, the four leaders—Lionel Phillips, Frank Rhodes, J. H. Hammond and George Farrar, who in conjunction with Charles Leonard had made the arrangements with Jameson—were sentenced to death, the sentence being after some months’ imprisonment commuted to a fine of £25,000 each. The rest of the committee were each sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, £2000 fine or another year’s imprisonment, and three years’ banishment. This sentence, after a month's incarceration, was also commuted. The fine was exacted, and the prisoners, with the exception of Woolls Sampson and W. D. (Karri) Davies, were liberated on undertaking to abstain from politics for three years in lieu of banishment. Messrs Sampson and Davies, refusing to appeal to the executive for a reconsideration of their sentence, were retained for over a year.

Sir Hercules Robinson was unfortunately in feeble health at the time, and having reached Pretoria on the 4th of January, he had to conduct negotiations under great physical disadvantage. He had no sooner learnt of the raid in Cape Town than he issued a proclamation through Sir Jacobus de Wet, the British resident at Pretoria, warning all British subjects in Johannesburg or elsewhere from aiding and abetting Jameson. This was freely distributed among the public of Johannesburg. While in Pretoria the high commissioner in the first instance addressed himself to inducing Johannesburg to lay down its arms. He telegraphed to the reform committee that Kruger had insisted “that Johannesburg must lay down arms unconditionally as a precedent to any discussions and consideration of grievances.” On the following day, the 7th of January, Sir Hercules telegraphed again through the British agent, who was then at Johannesburg, saying: “That if the Uitlanders do not comply with my request they will forfeit all claims to sympathy from Her Majesty’s government and from British subjects throughout the world, as the lives of Jameson and the prisoners are now practically in their hands.” The two thousand odd rifles which had been distributed among the Uitlanders were then given up. With regard to the inducements to this step urged upon the reform committee by the high commissioner, it is only necessary to say with reference to the first that the grievances never were considered, and with reference to the second it subsequently appeared that one of the conditions of the surrender of Jameson’s force at Doornkop was that the lives of the men should be spared. It was after the Johannesburg disarmament that Kruger had sixty-four members of the reform committee arrested, announcing at the same time that his motto would be “Forget and forgive.” Sir Hercules Robinson, in response to a message from Mr Chamberlain, who had been secretary of state for the colonies since July 1895, urging him to use firm language in reference to reasonable concessions, replied that he considered the moment inopportune, and on the 15th of January he left for Cape Town. In 1897 he was succeeded in the high commissioner ship by Sir Alfred Milner.

In the period which intervened between the Jameson raid and the outbreak of the war in October 1899 President Kruger’s administration continued to be what it had been; that is to say, it was not merely bad, but it got progressively worse. His conduct immediately after Johannesburg had given up its arms, and while the reform committee were in prison, was distinctly disingenuous. Instead of discussing grievances, as before the Johannesburg disarmament he had led the high commissioner to believe was his intention, he proceeded to request the withdrawal of the London Convention, because, among other things, “it is injurious to dignity of independent republic.” When Kruger found that no concession was to be wrung from the British government, he proceeded, instead of considering grievances, to add considerably to their number. The Aliens Expulsion