can be desired. The correspondence of the emigrants with the Cape Government was the work of many individuals, and extended over many years. The letters are usually of great length, badly constructed, and badly spelt—the productions, in short, of uneducated men; but so uniform is the vein of thought running through them all, that there is not the slightest difficulty in condensing them into a dozen pages. When analyzed, the statements contained in them are found to consist of two charges, one against the Imperial Government, the other against the agents in South Africa of the London Missionary Society.
The Imperial Government was charged with exposing the white inhabitants of the colony, without protection, to robbery and murder by the blacks; with giving credence in every dispute to statements made by interested persons in favour of savages, while refusing to credit the testimony, no matter how reliable, of colonists of European extraction; with liberating the slaves in an unjust manner; and generally with such undue partiality for persons with black skins and savage habits, as to make it preferable to seek a new home in the wilderness than remain under the English flag.
The missionaries of the London Society were charged with usurping authority that should properly belong to the civil magistrate; with misrepresenting facts; and with advocating schemes directly hostile to the progress of civilization, and to the observance of order. And it was asserted that the influence of these missionaries was all powerful at the Colonial Office in London, by which the colony, without a voice in the management of its affairs, was then ruled absolutely.
In support of the charges against the Imperial Government, the emigrants dwelt largely upon the devastation of the eastern districts by the Kaffirs' inroad of December, 1834, which was certainly unprovoked by the colonists. Yet Lord Glenelg, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, justified the Kaffirs, and not only refused to punish them, but actually gave them a large slip of land, including the dense jungles along the Fish River, that had long been part of the colony; and made no other provision against the recurrence of a destructive invasion than a series of treaties with a number of barbarous chiefs, who had no regard for their engagements. This event is the most prominent feature in the correspondence of the emigrants; it is fairly recorded, and the language used is in general much more moderate than that employed by the English frontier colonists when relating the same circumstance.
Next stands the removal of all restraint from the coloured population of the colony, without the protection to the whites of even a Vagrant Act. Several of the colonial divisions had been for ten or twelve years overrun by fugitives from the Basuto and Betshuana countries, who had been driven from their own homes by the troubles already recorded. These people were usually termed Mantatees or Makatees, from the supposition that they were all subjects of Ma Ntatisi. Towards the eastern frontiers Kaffirs, and after the war Fingos, wandered about practically wherever they chose. In the remainder of the colony Hottentots, free blacks, and mixed breeds came and went as they pleased. How is it possible, said the farmers, for us to cultivate the ground, or breed cattle, with all these savages and semi-savages constantly watching for opportunities to plunder us—with no police, and no law under which suspicious characters can be arrested and made to account for their manner of living?
Much is said of the reproofs of Sir Benjamin D'Urban by the Secretary of State, and, after 1838, of the dismissal of that Governor, (1) The emigrants asserted that he was the best Governor the colony had had since it became subject to England; they dwelt upon his benevolence, his ability, his strict justice, his impartiality to white and black, his efforts to promote civilization; and then they complained, in words more bitter than are to be found when they referred to any other subject, that the good Governor had been reproved, and finally deprived of his office, because he had told the plain truth, regardless of the London Missionary Society; and had endeavoured to mete out to black criminals the same justice that he would have meted out had they been white. There is now no one in South Africa who does not agree with the emigrants in this matter. Nearly half a century has passed away since Sir Benjamin D'Urban was forced into retirement by Lord Glenelg; and during that period the principal measures which he proposed have been approved of and adopted, while the successors of those missionaries who were his bitter opponents are at present among the strongest advocates of his system of dealing with the natives.
Sir Benjamin D'Urban remained in South Africa, after being deprived of office, until the reversal of his policy towards the natives was admitted by most people even in England to have been a mistake. He did not leave the Cape until April, 1846, just after the commencement of the War of the Axe.
Concerning the liberation of the slaves, there is less in this correspondence than one might reasonably expect to find. Many scores of pages can be examined without any allusion whatever to it. Nowhere is there a single word to be found in favour of slavery as an institution; the view of the emigrants, with hardly an exception, being fairly represented in the following sentence, taken from a letter of the Volksraad at Natal to Sir George Napier: 'A long and sad experience has sufficiently convinced us of the injury, loss, and dearness of slave labour, so that neither slavery nor the slave trade will ever be permitted among us.'
[The allusions to the emancipation of slaves, and to slavery as an institution, will be considered by many to need some modification or explanation. The Dutch even to-day speak of the emancipation as the real cause of the great exodus; and the system of indenture, and the treatment of natives generally by the Boers, cannot fairly be regarded as warranting the view expressed by Mr. Theal in connection with this letter to Sir George Napier.]
It is alleged, however, that the emancipation, as it was carried out, was an act of confiscation. It is stated that most of the slaves were brought to the colony in English ships, and sold by English subjects; that when, in 1795, the colony was invited by English officers of high rank to place itself under the protection of England, one of the inducements held out was security in slave property; at the same time those officers warning the colonists that if France obtained possession she would liberate the slaves, as she had done in Martinique, thereby ruining this colony as she had ruined that island; that the English Government had recently and suddenly changed its policy, and required them to conform to the change with equal alacrity, whereas they were convinced that gradual emancipation, with securities against vagrancy, was the only safe course. The emancipation had been sudden, and the slaves had been placed upon a perfect political equality with their former proprietors. The missionaries applauded this as a noble and generous act of the Imperial Government, and they were told that by everyone in England it was so regarded. But at whose expense was this noble and generous act carried out? Agents of the Imperial Government had appraised the slaves, generally at less than their market value. Two-fifths of this appraisement, being the share apportioned to the Cape out of the twenty million pounds sterling voted by the Imperial Parliament, had then been offered to the proprietors as compensation, if they chose to go to London for it, otherwise they could only dispose of their claims at a heavy discount. Thus, in point of fact, only about one-third of the appraised amount had been received. To all slave-holders this had meant a great reduction of wealth, while to many of those who were in debt it was equivalent to the utter deprivation of all property.
As regards the missionaries, a crusade was organized by some of these worthies, who had themselves married Kaffir women, and who spared no effort and showed no scruple in blackening the name of colonist.
The views and interests of the colonists and of these men were so different that concord was hardly possible. The missionaries desired that the blacks should be collected together in villages: the colonists were unwilling that they should be thus withdrawn from service. 'Teach them the first step in civilization, to labour honestly for their maintenance, and add to that oral instruction in the doctrines of Christianity,' said the colonists. 'Why should they be debarred from learning to read and write? And as there can only be schools if they are brought together in villages, why should they not be collected together?' replied the missionaries.
Then came another and a larger question. By whom should the waste places of the land, the vast areas which were without other occupants than a few roving Bushmen, be peopled? 'By the white man,' said the colonists; 'it is to the advantage of the world in all time to come that the higher race should expand and be dominant here; it would be treason to humanity to prevent its growth where it can grow without wrong to others, or to plant an inferior stock where the superior can take