Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 14.pdf/282

 London Legal Letter. the conspiracy in Johannesburg to murder Lord Roberts. The American claimants generally alleged that they were arrested on the night of the 1 3th or 14th of August, 1900, and after some days' detention in the military prison were sent to Cape Town, where they were placed on transports and taken to Hol land, whence they were sent as steerage pas sengers in the regular Atlantic liners to New York. They claimed that after their arrest

247

against the military authorities. This was only a short time after the retreat of the Boers, and the occupation of the British forces, when there were about twenty thousand people in the town, most of whom were foreigners, and nine-tenths of whom were violently antiEnglish. They had come to the Transvaal during the war, and had been armed by the Boers, and had remained behind when the latter evacuated the place. With the large

UNITED STATES £428 118. 5d. GERMANY £150 15s. RUSSIA £143 17s. id. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY £133 188. 6d. BELGIUM £133 68. 8d. SWEDEN-NORWAY £125 ITALY £106 13s. lod. DENMARK £83 68. 8d. SPAIN £75 SWITZERLAND £50 HOLLAND £33 18S. <d. DIAGRAM SHOWING AVERAGE AMOUNTS, EY NATIONALITIES, PAID BY THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT IN CASES OF WRONGFUL ARREST AND DEPORTATION BY BRITISH MILITARY AUTHORITIES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

no formal charge was made against them, that they had no opportunity of making any explanation as to their character or occupa tions, or of producing any evidence of their innocence; that they were not permitted to communicate with their friends, or to arrange for the protection of their property or the care of their families, and that in the manner of their deportation they were subjected to many unnecessary hardships. The answer of the English Government was based upon the reports of the military authorities in the Transvaal, which unques tionably showed that there existed, at the time named, a plot in Johannesburg to rise

class of adventurers and the rabble insepar able from a mining community already in the town, they formed a most dangerous ele ment, ripe for any rising. Their plan was to post themselves in a wood near the race track on the 14th of August, when it was sup posed that all of the English officers con nected with the troops in the town would be present unarmed, and shoot them down, and then, in the confusion which would result, overpower the troops themselves. Fortu nately the details of the plot were communi cated to the authorities by one of the conspirators, and it was prevented by a sys tem of wholesale arrests. Nearly all of the