TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE JAMESON TRIAL.
TrIJameson trial has ended in e conviction of the th cused. After the fairest possible investigation the jury found the prisoners guilty, and with the entire approval of public opinion they have received sentences proportionate to the offences severally committed by them. Far more important, however, than the infliction of punishment on Dr. Jameson and his associates is the statement of the law made by the Lord Chief Justice in his summing up. That statement shows that to con- stitute an offence under the Foreign Enlistment Act it is not necessary that any actual raid. should have taken place. The preparing to perpetrate a raid, and the aid- ing, abetting, and, counselling the preparation, is quite sufficient. "What must be proved to constitute an offence under the statute ? " asked the Lord Chief Justice. "It must be proved," he declared, "as the foundation of the offence that a person has without the licence of the Queen, in a place within her dominions where the Act is in operation, prepared or fitted out a military expedition to proceed—that is, with the intention that it should proceed —against the dominions of a friendly State. It is not necessary to constitute the offence that it shall proceed or shall have proceeded. The cardinal point is the intention. The offence is complete if the person aids and abets the preparation with that intention." But if this is the law, then those who took no actual part in the Raid, but who prepared it beforehand, and abetted and assisted those preparations, were as guilty of an offence against the law as the men who crossed the border. As the Lord Chief Justice said, the actual crossing of the border was only important as evidence of the intention which inspired the pre- parations. It is impossible to note this view of the law without considering the position in which Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit are placed. Mr. Rhodes's legal adviser is clearly aware of this fact, for he has at once informed the Solicitor to the Treasury that his client is willing to come home and take his trial. In plain terms, the Government have to consider whether they ought not to prosecute Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit on a charge similar to that preferred against Dr. Jameson and his associates,—a charge of having broken the Foreign Enlistment Act. In our opinion, the Solicitor to the Treasury ought to be required to institute such a prosecution. We are quite aware, however, that there are certain objections to this course, and we propose to deal with them in detail.
To begin with, it is quite possible that such a prosecu- tion might not be successful. The question is largely one of intention, and it does not follow that the intention could be proved in the case of Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit. The intention in the case of Dr. Jameson was proved by his actual participation in the Raid, but here no such evidence could be forthcoming. The question, then, is, —Is there sufficient prim-facie evidence to justify a prosecution of Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit for acting contrary to the twelfth clause of the Act, which declares that "Any person who aids, abets, counsels, or procures the commission of any offence against the Act shall be liable to be tried and punished as a principal offender " ? Now, the Lord Chief Justice has laid it down that it is an offence under the Act merely to prepare an expedition with the intention of proceeding against a foreign State. The question then resolves itself into this,—Do the telegrams in regard to the so-called flotation of the Raid and revo- lution which have been published show that Mr. Beit and Mr. Rhodes were parties to the preparations made for the Raid ? We do not ourselves propose to answer this ques- tion either in the negative or the affirmative. It is a question for a jury, not for a newspaper. What we must hold is, that there is quite enough prina-facie evidence to justify the answering of that question as to the guilt or innocence of Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit by a prosecution for a supposed infringement of the Foreign Enlistment Act. What we hold ought to be decided in a Court of Law is -whether Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit did or did not aid, abet, counsel, or procure the prepara- tions which, granted the intention, we are told by the Lord Chief Justice constitnte an infringement of the Act. It is conceivable that Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit may have a perfectly good defence. Suppose, for example, that Mr. Rhodes was able to show that he merely helped the preparations of the force on the frontier because he believed that there was going to be trouble in the Transvaal, and that under such circumstances he thought it was only prudent to have a force of observa- tion ready ? Every wise Minister of State puts a force. on his frontier when trouble is brewing in a neigh- bouring State, and Mr. Rhodes, considering his official position in South Africa, would have been quite. justified in making military preparations of a general character. To take an analogous case. If there were danger of a disputed succession in Afghanistan the chief officer in command on the frontier would imme- diately prepare for eventualities, one of them being a possible entering of the Afghan dominions. But no one would argue for a moment that these prepara- tions were . contrary to the Foreign Enlistment Act. If, then, Mr. Rhodes could show that he aided an abetted the preparations believing them to be nothing but precautionary preparations in view of the unsettle- ment in the Transvaal, he would be in no way culpable. He might further have believed that it would ultimately. become necessary for the Queen's duly authorised repre- sentative to order an advance into the Transvaal—it is needless to point out that no offence under the Act can be committed by a duly authorised servant of the Crown—yet even this would not have brought him into conflict with the law. The mere taking of precautions, as long as the intention was not to make a raid, would not have been illegal. If, however, on the other hand, it can be shown that Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit helped on the preparations with a distinct and definite intention to enter the Transvaal and upset the Government there, they were guilty of exactly the- same offence as Dr. Jameson. Whether Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit will be able to show that they were only helping on legitimate preparations, we do not desire to decider though in view of their alleged action at Johannesburg it sounds somewhat unlikely. At any rate, the matter is one for judicial inquiry. We do not wish to put it higher- than that. Certain circumstances have arisen, and cer- tain evidence has been published by the Transvaal Government—i.e., "the flotation telegrams "—which seem to point to the fact that Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Belt- assisted in the preparation of the Raid. We do not think that this can be called an exaggerated statement of the facts. It has also become clear from the Lord Chief Justice's statement that preparing a raid is an offence, even if the raid were not to take place. Lastly, the Act makes abetting and counselling as great an offence as actual preparation. Clearly, under these circumstances, there is good ground for asking that Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit should be put on their trial. We ask this in no, vindictive spirit, nor do we wish to exaggerate the moral turpitude of offences under the Foreign Enlistment Act. If the Raid had really been a raid to succour women and children, or to aid our countrymen rightly struggling to. be free, as was at first supposed, we should not have greatly desired to condemn it. Since, however, it has turned out that the pleas of women and children in distress, and of tyranny, will not hold water, and that the revolutionary movement was manufactured by a group of capitalists, and since the agents in the affair have been punished, it seems to us essential to justice that the principals, or those who appear to be the principals, should also be put on their trial. Conceivably, of course, Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit were not principals, and the whole suspicion may be founded in delusion. If that is so it will not hurt them to have their innocence made clear in Court. If, however, they were in reality the principals in the Jameson Raid, then it is only fair that they should have the same treatment meted out to them that wan meted out to the instruments they employed.
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