e to obtain from the
State Attorney details of the evidence which it was proposed to
bring, but with only partial success. From the facts already known to
them it was clear that the Government were determined to stretch
every point in law to their own advantage and to indulge in few
scruples as to the means to be employed to secure a conviction. The
Judge, it was known, had been specially imported for this trial,
and provisionally appointed to a seat on the Bench. As the
confirmation of his appointment was to take place when the Volksraad
should meet, or at any rate at some period subsequent to the trial,
it was not unnatural to regard his as a case in which a judge was
appointed on approval, the appointment to be either confirmed or
cancelled according to the satisfaction which he should give.

Appeal to the full bench of the High Court had already been proved to
be entirely useless; since the only judges to whom appeal could be
made were those who had in the earlier stages associated themselves
with the Government against the Reform Committee, and later on in
their judicial capacities confirmed the attitude taken up by them as
patriots.

The options before the prisoners were therefore three in number. One
course would be to enter upon a protracted trial before a Boer jury
and a specially-appointed judge, with the certainty for the majority
of an adverse verdict in any case. In such a trial numberless
occasions would arise for the exercise of discretion in the admission
or rejection of evidence, and any defence of the prisoners must
necessarily partake of the character of an indictment against the
Government and the faction which both judge and jury avowedly
represented, and tend only to aggravate the penalty. They would
moreover have to face that trial as a body of over sixty men, many of
whom could have reasonably set up special defences, many of whom were
not even mentioned in any evidence which the Government had yet
secured (with the exception of course of Judge Ameshof's _privileged_
list), and could therefore reasonably expect to be discharged on
making individual defences. The second alternative was to decline to
plead at all, on the ground that they had negotiated with the
Government in good faith, and that a treacherous arrest and breach of
understandings arrived at would not be recognised in any way by
them--in fact, to refuse to condone treachery or take a hand in a
farce. The third course was to plead g