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.
The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes
which produced them both remained. It is hardly conceivable that a
statesman who loved his country would have refrained from making
some effort to remove a state of things which had already caused
such grave dangers, and which must obviously become more serious
with every year that passed.
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