In the meantime sympathy with the prisoners began to take practical form, and the unanimity of feeling on their behalf throughout South Africa, which was quite unexpected and which greatly embarrassed the Boer Government, tended to bring matters to a head. Mr. Rose Innes, who had so generously and constantly exerted himself in Pretoria in order to obtain some amelioration of the condition of the prisoners, and who had in his official capacity as watching the case for the Imperial Government made a very strong report to the Colonial Office, did not content himself with these exertions. Upon his return to Capetown he suggested and organized the getting up of a monster petition to the President and Executive, urging upon them in the interests of the peace of South Africa to release the imprisoned men. The petitions were to represent the views of every town and village in South Africa, and were to be presented by the mayors or municipal heads of the communities. In this movement Mr. Rose Innes was most ably seconded by Mr. Edmund Garrett, the editor of the _Cape Times,_ and other prominent men. A movement of this nature naturally excited considerable attention in Pretoria; but the success of it was wholly unexpected. The President and his party had played to the South African gallery, and they had not yet realized that they had in any way overdone the theatrical part. They had no suspicion of the real feeling with which the sentences were regarded, nor of the extent to which they had alienated sympathy by that and the subsequent 'magnanimous' action. 'Magnanimity by inches' had been placarded throughout South Africa, and the whole game was characterized as one of cat and mouse, in which the President was playing with his victims with indifference to the demands of justice and humanity, partly with a view to wringing concessions from the British Government, and partly from a mistaken idea that by such a course he would obtain credit at each step afresh for dealing generously with those who were at his mercy.