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THE 
 
 ENGLISH AND THE DUTCH 
 IN SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 A HISTORICAL RETROSPECT 
 
 BY 
 
 HARTLEY WITHERS 
 
 " li^e come of the same stock, one of the most honoured stocks of all 
 white men."— Sir Bartle Frere's Speech to the Boers, 
 April 12, 1879. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CLEMENT WILSON 
 
 29 Paternoster Row, E.C. 
 
 1896 
 
PREFACE 
 
 As past events throw a good deal of light on 
 the present position in the Transvaal Republic, 
 I have endeavoured to detach the thread of 
 Anglo- Dutch relations from the tangled skein 
 of South African history, and to give a plain 
 account of the policy of the English towards 
 the Dutch from the beginning. Most of the 
 facts connected with the earlier part of the 
 story are given on the authority of Mr. 
 George M'Coll Theal, whose personal know- 
 ledge of South Africa and its various peoples, 
 and careful study of the Cape archives, has 
 enabled him to compile an inexhaustible mass 
 of valuable information in the five monumental 
 volumes of his History, 
 
 H. W. 
 
 April 20y 1896. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE HISTORY OF THE SETTLEMENT BEFORE THE 
 
 FIRST ENGLISH OCCUPATION ... 9 
 
 II. FROM THE FIRST ENGLISH OCCUPATION TO THE 
 
 GREAT EMIGRATION — 1795-1836 . . .32 
 
 III. FROM THE GREAT TREK TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF 
 
 THE DUTCH REPUBLICS — 1836-1854 . . 77 
 
 IV. FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE DUTCH REPUBLICS 
 
 TO THE ANNEXATION OF THE TRANSVAAL — 
 1854-1877 ...... 126 
 
 V. FROM THE ANNEXATION OF THE TRANSVAAL TO THE 
 
 RESTORATION OF ITS INDEPENDENCE — 1877-1881 170 
 
 VI. CONCLUSION ...... 207 
 
THE ENGLISH AND THE DUTCH 
 IN SOUTH AFRICA 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The History of the Settlement before 
 THE First English Occupation 
 
 The first Englishmen who sighted the Cape 
 of Good Hope were Drake and his crew, who 
 started to sail round the world in December 
 1577, in a ship of 120 tons. The account of 
 their voyage relates that ** we ran hard aboard 
 the Cape, finding the report of the Portuguese 
 to be most false, who afifirm that it is the most 
 dangerous cape in the world, never without 
 intolerable storms and present danger to tra- 
 vellers who come near the shore. This Cape is 
 a most stately thing, and the fairest cape we 
 saw in the whole circumference of the earth." 
 
 In 1 591 three British ships put into Table Bay 
 
 9 
 
lo The English and the Dutch 
 
 and traded with the natives, exchanging two 
 knives for one ox, and one knife for one sheep ; 
 and in April of the same year the first fleet 
 fitted out by the EngHsh East India Company 
 left Torbay. The merchants made Table Bay 
 on September 9, and here they bought 42 oxen 
 and 1000 sheep for some pieces of iron hoop, 
 and refreshed their scurvy-stricken crews. Just 
 about this time the Dutch turned their atten- 
 tion to direct trade with India. Owing to the 
 conquest of Portugal by Philip 11. of Spain, 
 they had been shut out from commerce with 
 Lisbon, where they had hitherto supplied them- 
 selves with Eastern stuffs, and so were forced 
 to sail eastward themselves. The Dutch India 
 Company received its charter in 1602. The 
 idea of fixing a regular settlement on the coast 
 of South Africa seems to have first occurred to 
 the English, for it is recorded that, in 16 19, 
 the English East India Company proposed to 
 ■f its Dutch rival that the two corporations should 
 ^ form a joint post there. Those who are fond 
 of wondering how history would have run if 
 something else had happened, will find plenty 
 of material for castle-building in this proposal of 
 a joint Anglo-Dutch settlement. The Dutch- 
 men did not like the suggestion ; and in 1620, 
 
in South Africa 1 1 
 
 two English captains landed in Table Bay and 
 proclaimed the surrounding country as part of 
 the dominions of King James, hoisting the 
 British colours on the hill now called the Lion's 
 Rump. The directors of the English Com- 
 pany, however, seem to have changed their 
 minds on the point, for the proclamation never 
 was ratified, and St. Helena became the usual 
 touching-point of the English ships. 
 
 In 1648 a Dutch ship put into Table Bay, 
 and was wrecked on the Blueberg Beach. Her 
 crew made themselves huts, found a spring of 
 fresh water near the site of Cape Town, and 
 bartered with the natives for cattle. Their six 
 months' sojourn here, before they were picked 
 up by a homeward bound ship, was so plea- 
 sant that two of the officers, on their return, 
 laid a memorial before the Dutch East India 
 Company setting forth the advantages of estab- 
 lishing a permanent station at the Cape. After 
 deliberating over the matter, in their slow 
 Dutch fashion, for some twenty months, the 
 directors at last decided to follow the sugges- 
 tion, but it was not before the end of 1651 
 that an expedition started to carry it out ; the 
 settlers reached Table Bay in April 1652, after 
 a passage of 104 days from Texel. 
 
12 The English and the Dutch 
 
 -.The settlement was not a colony in the 
 modern sense of the word. It was merely a 
 post established by the Company, and under 
 the charge of its servants, to provide better 
 accommodation, in the way of supplies and 
 hospital stores, for. the crews of the ships that 
 called at the Cape.-. Jan van Riebeek, once a 
 ship's surgeon, was in command of the party, 
 and quickly set about building a fort and organ- 
 ising the affairs of the station. The first 
 experiences of the Dutch settlers were not 
 encouraging. They were washed out of their 
 huts by the rains, and were ravaged by scurvy, 
 owing to the want of fresh meat. By the 
 beginning of June, out of ii6 men only 60 
 were fit for work. The sufferings of the party 
 led their "Sick Visitor," a sort of amateur 
 chaplain, to commit a serious breach of eccles- 
 iastical discipline. He went so far as to 
 address the invalids in a discourse of his own 
 composition, instead of reading them a homily 
 from a book. Perhaps he thought that the 
 unusual circumstances were not adequately 
 covered by any of the printed discourses that 
 he had with him, but no such excuse was 
 accepted by the authorities. For when the 
 news of his audacity reached Batavia a year 
 
in South Africa 13 
 
 later, it was decided that for an unordained 
 *' visitor" to address a congregation was a 
 scandal ; the Ecclesiastical Court of Batavia 
 called the attention of the Governor-General 
 and Council of India to the matter, and a 
 despatch was forwarded to Jan van Riebeek, 
 ordering him to forbid such irregularities. 
 
 The sufferings of the settlers did not last 
 long, for the rains which had caused their sick- 
 ness soon produced an abundant growth of 
 vegetation, which quickly cured it. They set 
 to work to dig their gardens, and opened up a 
 brisk trade with the natives, who brought them 
 cattle in exchange for copper bars, wine, and 
 tobacco. They were pestered, however, by 
 the wild animals which then swarmed in these 
 regions. Lions and leopards killed and carried 
 off their cattle before their eyes, and swarms of 
 wild-cats ravaged their poultry-yards by night. 
 Moreover, the natives did not long confine 
 themselves to the humdrum details of com- 
 mercial intercourse. About a year after the 
 new-comers had arrived, they took advantage 
 of the religious habits of the Dutchmen, and 
 carried off the cattle of the settlers during 
 church-time, having murdered a boy who had 
 been left to watch over the herd. The strictest 
 
14 The English and the Dutch 
 
 orders had been given to Van Riebeek that 
 the natives were to be treated with the most 
 scrupulous gentleness, and so no measures of 
 reprisal were undertaken. 
 
 The directors, on hearing what had happened, 
 advised Van Riebeek that the actual murderer 
 of the boy might be put to death, if he could 
 be discovered, but it need not be said that this 
 was quite impossible. Trade was gradually 
 resumed with the natives, who seem to have 
 received the best of treatment in all respects 
 from the early settlers. A certain '* Sick 
 Visitor," whose term of office was renewed in 
 1 66 1, is described, in the still extant document 
 which confirmed his continuance at his post, as 
 having been *'very zealous in trying to teach 
 the slaves and Hottentots the Dutch language 
 and the principles of Christianity." 
 
 In 1657 the settlement became a colony in 
 the proper sense of the word, by the intro- 
 duction of a system by which discharged ser- 
 vants of the Company were allowed to take 
 up pieces of land for themselves. They were 
 supplied with stores and tools to help them 
 to make a good start, but they were bound to 
 sell the produce that they grew to the Company. 
 In the following year another very far-reaching 
 
in South Africa i 5 
 
 change was made by the importation of negro 
 and Asiatic slaves. The year 1659 saw the 
 colony for the first time definitely at war with 
 its savage neighbours. The Hottentots, who 
 had been wont to graze their flocks wherever 
 they pleased, resented the reservation of the 
 richest pieces of land for the use of the settlers, 
 and took their revenge by cattle-stealing and 
 plundering to an extent that went beyond the 
 patience of the Dutchmen. The war, however, 
 was a mild and desultory contest, and ended by 
 the natives asking for peace and returning to 
 commercial and friendly intercourse. 
 
 The threat of a more serious war roused the 
 burghers some ten years later. It was feared 
 that the hostilities between England and the 
 Netherlands might tempt the English to seize 
 the Cape, and about 1670 the castle of Good 
 Hope was begun, to defend the colony against 
 any external attack. The strategical advan- 
 tages of the Cape as the key to India were 
 already making European Powers look covet- 
 ously upon the settlement, which was now 
 rapidly extending its boundaries. In 1666 a 
 French fleet under Admiral Montdevergue had 
 put in at Saldanha Bay, and in spite of the 
 protests of Van Quaelberg, who now ruled in 
 
1 6 The English and the Dutch 
 
 the stead of Van Riebeek, a force had landed, 
 surveyed the surrounding country, and set up 
 posts emblazoned with the arms of France. 
 After the fleet retired, one of these posts was 
 destroyed by a patriotic rhinoceros, one was 
 used as firewood by some Hottentots, and the 
 rest were destroyed by the Dutch. A short 
 time after, another French fleet visited the 
 Bay, but no attempt was made to establish a 
 garrison or settlement. 
 
 The castle of Good Hope was finished in 
 1674. It was believed by engineers of that 
 day to be impregnable, but an amusing story 
 shows that the burghers did not all accept its 
 protection with much confidence. It is recorded 
 that not long after the castle had been finished, 
 a constable was bold enough to assert that if 
 the French landed and seized the Devil's Peak, 
 they could knock the castle down about its 
 garrison's ears. The governor, fearing the 
 eflect of such statements, locked the constable 
 up, and then carefully measured the distance, 
 and decided that no ordnance heavy enough 
 to damage the castle from this point could be 
 landed from a ship. Meanwhile the constable's 
 wife besought the governor to release her 
 spouse, on the ground that he was a notorious 
 
in South Africa i 7 
 
 chatterer, whose babbling was not believed 
 by anyone, and therefore did no harm. The 
 governor referred the matter to the Council. 
 The Council decided to deal leniently with the 
 constable, who was known to be a sober and 
 diligent citizen, but ordered that he must undo 
 the mischief by disproving his own statement. 
 He was told to choose two of the best cannon 
 at the Cape, and these were to be taken to the 
 place which, according to his assertion, com- 
 manded the castle. He was to load the pieces, 
 and if he could succeed in landing a ball in the 
 castle, he should escape punishment. The trial 
 was made, and the castle was not touched, 
 whereupon the constable was obliged to pro- 
 claim himself a fool publicly, and was fined 
 three months' wages to defray the cost of 
 moving the cannon. 
 
 About this time a member of the High Court 
 of Justice of Batavia landed at the Cape on his 
 way home, and during his stay assumed the 
 command of the station. His reverence for 
 the forms of law led him to decide that the 
 land which Van Riebeek had taken from the 
 natives must now be paid for. The chiefs 
 were delighted by the suggestion, and readily 
 affixed their marks to documents which still 
 
1 8 The English and the Dutch 
 
 exist, making over the land from Saldanha 
 Bay to False Bay in consideration of a sum 
 of £1600. The letter of the law was thus 
 religiously observed, while its spirit was set 
 at naught in true Old Bailey fashion ; for the 
 goods which were given to the natives in fulfil- 
 ment of the contract were priced in the Com- 
 pany's books at /^g, 12s. gd. 
 
 The second war with the Hottentots began 
 in 1673, and dragged on for about four years; 
 it seems to have been caused by the discontent 
 of the Hottentots on seeing their game killed 
 by Dutch hunting-parties, but its practical result 
 was important, for it decided the Cape authori- 
 ties to establish cattle-breeding stations of their 
 own, in order to avoid the inconvenience of 
 being unable to buy beef whenever their rela- 
 tions with their neighbours were strained. 
 Simon van der Stel, an enthusiastic farmer and 
 breeder, came out from Amsterdam to take 
 command in 1679, and gave all his energy to 
 the task of developing the agricultural and 
 grazing resources of the country. He formed 
 cattle-raising settlements at Stellenbosch and 
 Drakenstein, and amused his leisure by organ- 
 ising the Company's great garden at Cape Town, 
 which he stocked with a wealth of plants, 
 
in South Africa 19 
 
 Asiatic, European, and native, that won the 
 admiration of every traveller. The Company, 
 wishing to increase the population as well as 
 the territories of the Cape settlement, sent out 
 shiploads of destitute Dutch orphan girls, who 
 were well cared for until they found husbands. 
 And in 1685 the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes poured a flood of French Huguenots 
 into the Netherlands, and some two hundred 
 of them and two hundred Dutchmen were 
 induced to emigrate to the Cape. 
 
 Simon van der Stel did not confine his 
 energy to agriculture. He led an exploring 
 party across the Orange River into Namaqua- 
 land, and in his time fairs were established at 
 the up-country centres, and straight shooting 
 was encouraged by the institution of competi- 
 tions. He also kept a keen eye on the morals 
 and behaviour of the community, restraining 
 the burghers from extravagant bravery in dress, 
 and forbidding the wives of merchants to carry 
 sunshades. Under his sway the colony throve, 
 growing in numbers and prosperity. In 1672 
 the Dutch population numbered 600. In 1691 
 there were over 1000 settlers, possessed of 261 
 houses, 4198 head of horned cattle, 48,703 
 sheep, and 220 goats; they had also more 
 
20 The English and the Dutch 
 
 than half a million vine trees bearing fruit. 
 The Government worked well enough under 
 Van der Stel's energetic and benevolent despot- 
 ism, but it was crude in form and open to grave 
 abuses. It was practically a government by co- 
 optative Chambers, which in their turn were over- 
 ridden by the tyranny of the Dutch East India 
 Company's representative. The fiscal arrange- 
 ments were thoroughly bad. Monopolies in 
 various articles, such as spirituous liquors, were 
 sold to the highest bidder. A price was fixed 
 at which they were to be supplied to residents, 
 and another price — about twice as high — at 
 which they might be sold to foreigners, and the 
 monopoly was then granted to the trader who 
 was prepared to deliver them to the Company 
 at the lowest rate. The Government also 
 reserved the right of buying whatever it wanted 
 before any other customer could be served. 
 The tithe of grain and the tax on cattle, 
 which were exacted from the farmers, were 
 paid according to the returns furnished by the 
 owners of the property ; and this system, which 
 would have severely strained the honesty of a 
 more highly developed community, had a bad 
 effect on the integrity of the ignorant Dutch- 
 men. A similar cause of corruption and dis- 
 
in South Africa 21 
 
 honesty was the system by which magistrates 
 and officials of all ranks were allowed to eke 
 out their very scanty incomes by pocketing 
 various kinds of perquisites. Justice was not 
 likely to be strictly administered when a police 
 magistrate received fifty per cent, of the fines 
 that he imposed. 
 
 The evils that were Inherent in such a system 
 showed themselves very clearly under Wilhelm 
 Adrian van der Stel, who succeeded his father, 
 the above-mentioned Simon, about the end of 
 the seventeenth century. He had all his father's 
 enthusiasm for farming, but he directed it, 
 not to developing the resources of the colony, 
 but to private enterprise on his own account. 
 He managed a large farm for himself, taking 
 care to conceal the fact from the directors at 
 home. His father had retired to an estate 
 which he was developing with great success, 
 and his brother was also farming on a large 
 scale. The burghers, seeing all the best trade 
 of the settlement divided among the Van der 
 Stel family, sent a memorial in 1705 to the 
 directors, accusing the governor and most of the 
 minor officials of corruption and malpractices. 
 The governor rose to the occasion by drawing 
 up a document In which his own good qualities 
 
2 2 The English and the Dutch 
 
 and the happiness of the colony under his rule 
 were described in glowing terms, and sent an 
 armed party round the settlement to demand 
 signatures at the sword's point. One Adam Tas, 
 who was suspected of being the ringleader of 
 the malcontents, was arrested, and a search 
 among his papers led to the imprisonment of 
 seven more burghers. The governor suspended 
 the courts of law, and carried on the whole 
 administration through his own creatures. In 
 due time, however, the settlers' memorial 
 reached the Netherlands, and the directors at 
 once suspended Van der Stel and his most 
 prominent supporters, among whom was a 
 Cape Town clergyman, and ordered them home 
 for trial. 
 
 Having thus wrestled with despotism and 
 overthrown it, the settlers lived an uneventful 
 and fairly prosperous existence for the best part 
 of a century. The only noteworthy events 
 in the quaint chronicles of these times are 
 attacks of smallpox, which ravaged the natives 
 with fearful severity, and the opening of a 
 station, which was afterwards abandoned, by 
 the Dutch East India Company at Delagoa Bay 
 in 1 72 1. Occasional glimpses, however, are 
 given of the simple seriousness with which this 
 
in South Africa 23 
 
 patriarchal Government carried out its duties. 
 About the middle of the eighteenth century a 
 widow lady refused to let her children go to 
 school. The elders remonstrated, and the 
 clergyman censured in vain. The Consistory 
 laid the matter before the Council, and the lady 
 was officially reminded that her children must 
 not be allowed to grow up like pagans. This 
 admonition was also bootless, whereupon the 
 governor took up the parable, and informed the 
 widow that unless she entrusted her children 
 forthwith to the Church authorities, that they 
 might be brought up in the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity, she should be flogged. She then 
 yielded. 
 
 This severity towards any laxity on the part 
 of the settlers themselves must be borne in 
 mind when we censure the harshness of the 
 laws that were then in force concerning the treat- 
 ment of the slaves. The flogging of slaves for 
 trivial offences cannot be defended, but it makes 
 some difference when we find that the Govern- 
 ment was equally ready to flog ladies who had 
 notions of their own on the subject of the 
 education of their children. The attitude of 
 men of those days towards slavery is exemplified 
 by a statement in the Cape archives of the 
 
24 The English and the Dutch 
 
 early part of the eighteenth century. It is 
 recorded that an Engh'sh shipowner who put 
 Into Table Bay with a cargo of slaves bound 
 for the West Indies, asked to be allowed to 
 buy provisions on exceptionally favourable 
 terms, on the ground that he had had a finan- 
 cially disastrous passage. On his way from 
 Madagascar he had seen signs of Insubordina- 
 tion among his cargo, and to prevent them 
 from rising and murdering the crew, had been 
 forced to throw the sturdiest of the slaves over- 
 board. 
 
 In 1755 ^^^ growing prosperity of the settlers 
 made It necessary that they should be brought 
 under the sumptuary law which the Company 
 imposed upon its Indian traders. This instru- 
 ment enacted that large umbrellas might not be 
 used except by senior merchants, and by ladies 
 whose fathers or husbands sat on the public 
 Boards. The war between the English and 
 French In India a few years later was a 
 source of further gain to the Cape colonists, 
 who got good prices for all their products from 
 the men-of-war and transports that put into 
 the Bay. It may be noted in this connection 
 that Lord Cllve was entertained with much 
 ceremony by the Dutch governor In 1764. 
 
in South Africa 25 
 
 As the prosperity of the settlers increased, 
 however, the position of the Dutch East India 
 Company became more and more desperate. 
 It never succeeded in making the Cape station 
 pay, and in the latter half of the eighteenth 
 century its expenditure there averaged about 
 ;^2 5,000 more than its receipts. The adminis- 
 tration went from bad to w^orse, and in 1779 
 we find the burghers sending another memorial 
 to the home authorities praying for some form 
 of representative government, and freedom 
 from the vexatious restrictions by which their 
 trade was hampered. The East India Com- 
 pany, however, was now in so rickety a con- 
 dition that no measure of reform could be 
 expected from it. It took four years to discuss 
 the burghers' memorial and then put the matter 
 on the shelf. The requests of the petitioners 
 were simple, sensible, and pious. They w^anted 
 to be allowed to sell produce to strangers 
 w^ithout leave from the Company's officials ; to 
 have the laws defined and made known ; to 
 elect seven members to represent them on the 
 Council of policy ; to be allowed to trade with 
 the Netherlands on their own account to the 
 extent of two cargoes a year, and with India as 
 much as they liked ; and to have more churches 
 
26 The English and the Dutch 
 
 provided. The attitude of the authorities 
 towards trade was selfish and shortsighted. 
 Just about this time they had stopped a scheme 
 for the manufacture of blankets and cloth at the 
 Cape, which could have been started with every 
 chance of success, as there was plenty of coarse 
 wool to be had, the burghers were willing to 
 provide the capital, and an experienced weaver 
 was ready to manage the industry. 
 
 The aofitation for reform went on until the 
 end of the Company's rule in South Africa, 
 but nothing was done to redress the growing 
 grievances of the burghers. The officials of 
 the Company, seeing that its bankruptcy could 
 not be long postponed, became more corrupt 
 and rapacious in their eagerness to make hay 
 before the sun set, and in the meantime Inter- 
 national complications threatened the existence 
 of the colony and unsettled trade. England 
 was at war with the Netherlands and France, 
 and early in 1781 sent a fleet under Com- 
 modore Johnstone to take the .Cape. The 
 Dutch East India Company could make no 
 effort to defend its station, but a French 
 fleet, after being defeated at Porto Praya by 
 Johnstone, succeeded in landing troops at the 
 Cape and securing it, for the time being, 
 
in South Africa 27 
 
 against attack from outside. On the eastern 
 border, the Kaffirs had been so busy in their 
 usual occupations of cattle-Hfting and murder- 
 ing, that in 1781 a burgher force under Adriaan 
 van Jaarsfeld drove them back across the 
 Fish River, which was then estabHshed as the 
 eastern boundary of the colony. Eight years 
 later, it was evident that the Kaffirs wanted 
 another sharp lesson in honesty. The burghers 
 were ready enough to provide it, but the 
 authorities preferred to buy peace, and sent a 
 commission to the chiefs, to give them presents 
 and to allow them to settle on the west of 
 the Fish River. The Kaffirs readily under- 
 stood this sign of weakness, and plundered 
 and stole more freely than ever. Meanwhile 
 the Company had raised a loan and despatched 
 Colonel van der Graaff to fortify the Cape 
 and garrison it with Swiss and German mer- 
 cenaries. He was a violent, headstrong, 
 and incapable governor. He hoodwinked the 
 directors by sending home voluminous reports 
 covering reams of paper but containing no 
 definite news ; he drew his sword on a member 
 of the Council during a debate, and quarrelled 
 with a Cape Town clergyman who had preached 
 a sermon on Jezebel, which the governor 
 
28 The English and the Dutch 
 
 assumed to be aimed at his lady. The pre- 
 sence of a French garrison was not good for 
 the morals of the colony, which in these days 
 earned the nickname of" Little Paris." Things 
 thus went from bad to worse, until in 1 790 
 the money was all spent, and the Company 
 recalled Van der Graaff, — who had given his 
 name to Graaff Reinet, a cattle-raising station 
 established in 1785, — stopped the fortifications 
 that were building, and sent the troops on to 
 India. 
 
 In 1793 war broke out again between England 
 and France, but this time the Netherlands were 
 split into two factions. The Stadtholder and 
 the supporters of his Government were allied 
 with England, while the Republican party sided 
 with the French Republic. The Cape Colony 
 was now in the hands of two commissioners 
 who had been sent out to succeed Van der 
 Graaff, and were trying to carry out some 
 reforms in the system of government. They 
 organised a force of half-breeds and Hottentots, 
 which was known as the "pandours," appointed 
 Sluysken, an ex-official from India, as commis- 
 sioner, and left hastily for Java. The people 
 of Graaff Reinet, which had been colonised as 
 a border station by vigorous and enterprising 
 
in South Africa 29 
 
 cattle farmers, now seceded from the colony 
 and set up a Republic for themselves. They 
 were sick of official corruption, fiscal oppression, 
 paper money, — there were ;^i 22,782 worth of 
 unsecured notes outstanding, — and the policy of 
 buying off the marauding Kaffirs, which had 
 again become necessary in 1793. They were 
 loyal to the Netherlands, but refused to submit 
 any longer to the rule of the Dutch East India 
 Company. Their example was shortly followed 
 by the burghers of Swellendam, and the country 
 was in a state of anarchy. 
 
 Early in 1795 the Stadtholder was forced to 
 take refuge in England. A British expedition 
 was at once sent to the Cape, under General 
 Craig and Admiral Elphinstone, bearing a man- 
 date from the Stadtholder to the authorities to 
 the effect that his allies were to be admitted 
 and allowed to take possession of the colony. 
 The officials in command are said to have been 
 inclined to take the Stadtholder's side, and the 
 burghers, though many of them held Republican 
 opinions, were so disgusted with the Company's 
 rule that they would not fight to maintain it. 
 A few of them mustered to meet the invading 
 force, but returned to their homes when they 
 found that the authorities did not mean to offer 
 
30 The English and the Dutch 
 
 any real resistance. And on the i6th of Sep- 
 tember the castle of Good Hope was occupied 
 by British troops. 
 
 The Dutch East India Company's rule had 
 made matters very easy for its successors, by 
 exasperating the colonists with its corruption 
 and incapability to such an extent that, as we 
 have seen, they would not take up arms in its 
 defence even against a foreign invader. The 
 English found at the Cape a population of 
 sturdy, steady. God-fearing farmers, who had 
 made the country blossom like the rose, and 
 had managed to live without much friction, 
 considering all the circumstances, with their 
 dark-skinned neighbours. The Dutch settlers 
 were splendid colonists in every respect. They 
 thought it no hardship to live on the frontiers 
 with a waggon for a house, hunting and farming 
 to fill their larders. Behind these pioneers, 
 who were always extending the limits of the 
 colony, came a more settled population, dwelling 
 in houses and reclaiming the ground more 
 thoroughly, but quite prepared to face all the 
 discomforts and privations that are inseparable 
 from the opening up of a new country. All 
 that they wanted was to be left In peace to 
 follow their own bent, to be allowed to sell 
 
in South Africa 3 1 
 
 their produce unhampered by the restrictions 
 imposed by their former masters, and to be 
 treated with a reasonable show of justice. 
 They had proved already that there was some 
 limit to their patience, but though they had 
 refused to submit to the despotism of Van der 
 Stel the younger, and though they had prac- 
 tically revolted against the Dutch East India 
 Company in the last days of its impotence and 
 corruption, it cannot be said that by so doing 
 they had given signs of an intractable spirit. 
 
32 The English and the Dutch 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 From the First English Occupation to 
 THE Great Emigration — 1 795-1 836 
 
 The English made a very good beginning. 
 General Craig, on taking possession of the 
 colony, issued a proclamation which promised 
 an honest and sensible policy. *' The monopoly 
 and the oppression," it said, ''hitherto practised 
 for the profit of the East India Company is at 
 an end. From this day forward there is free 
 trade and a free market. Everyone may buy 
 from whom he will, sell to whom he will, employ 
 whom he will, and come and go whenever and 
 wherever he chooses, by land or by water. No 
 new taxes will be levied ; such as are at present 
 in existence, as soon as possible, will be taken 
 under consideration, and those which are found 
 to be oppressive to the people will be done 
 away with. The paper money shall continue 
 to hold its value, but the English make their 
 payments in hard coin." Many of the former 
 
in South Africa 33 
 
 servants of the Dutch Company were retained 
 as officials of the new Government, and a 
 burgher Senate was estabHshed to represent the 
 views of the colonists to the authorities. It 
 consisted of six members, and vacant seats at 
 the Board were filled by the British represent- 
 ative from a list put before him by the senators. 
 Its duties were chiefly municipal, but it was 
 allowed to call the attention of the Government 
 to any matters affecting the interests of the 
 colonists. Such measures as these, which were 
 highly liberal for those days, allayed the doubts 
 of the burghers as to the intentions of their 
 new masters, and the stalwarts of Graafif 
 Reinet, who had at first refused to submit to 
 British rule, decided to make the best of matters 
 in a peaceable spirit. 
 
 In 1797, however, Earl Macartney, an Irish 
 nobleman who had held important positions in 
 India, was sent out to govern the Cape Colony. 
 It was unfortunate that English political feeling 
 should have been strongly biassed, just at this 
 time, by the reactionary sentiments which were 
 the natural result of the horrors perpetrated 
 in the name of liberty by the leaders of the 
 French Revolution ; and that, as a natural conse- 
 quence, the first English governors at the Cape, 
 3 
 
34 The English and the Dutch 
 
 though they doubtless desired to rule the 
 colony in the best Interests of all parties con- 
 cerned, were guided by the conviction that any 
 shadow of a tendency towards Republicanism 
 must be exterminated ruthlessly as sedition, 
 and that any attempt to consider popular 
 sentiment would necessarily open the door to 
 a repetition of the September massacres. Lord 
 Macartney at once set out upon a course of 
 discipline, by which he was determined to show 
 that government, in his hands, was not a thing 
 to be trifled with. It Is recorded that a certain 
 Hendrik Eksteen bade his friends to his 
 daughter's wedding, addressing his invitations 
 In the French style, writing "Citizen" before 
 the names of his guests. The governor heard 
 of this trivial piece of affectation, and com- 
 manded that a squadron of dragoons should 
 march to the scene of this *' festive assembly of 
 citizens," and remain there to prevent ''any 
 Irregularity that might be apprehended from 
 disaffected or suspected persons.'* Moreover, 
 Eksteen was threatened with banishment if he 
 did not forthwith apologise, and give a bond 
 for ;^iooo as security that he would not in 
 future be guilty of ''similar or any other 
 offences." Such was the measure meted out 
 
in South Africa 35 
 
 to the most venial political offenders, and in 
 other respects the Government by no means 
 fulfilled its early promise of fairness and 
 common sense. All the important offices were 
 held by Englishmen with inordinately large 
 salaries, considering the state of the colony's 
 finances. A year after the English occupation 
 the whole revenue amounted to rather less than 
 ^29,000, but we find that in Lord Macartney's 
 day the salaries of the leading officials were as 
 follows : — 
 
 Governor 
 
 ;^IO,000 
 
 Do., Table Allowance 
 
 2,000 
 
 Colonial Secretary 
 
 3,500 
 
 Deputy Do. 
 
 1,500 
 
 Collector of Customs 
 
 1,000 
 
 Controller of Do. . 
 
 1,000 
 
 Auditor-General 
 
 1,000 
 
 ;^20,000 
 
 More than two-thirds of the revenue were thus 
 swallowed up by the salaries of half a dozen 
 place-holders. At this rate the heads of the 
 departments and the chief of the executive in 
 England would nowadays divide about seventy 
 millions a year among them. Moreover, the 
 freedom of trade which had been expressly 
 promised in General Craig's proclamation soon 
 made way for a system of vexatious preferential 
 
36 The English and the Dutch 
 
 restrictions. All trade with countries east of 
 the Cape was reserved for the English East 
 India Company, and heavy duties were imposed 
 on goods brought from the westward unless 
 they were shipped in English bottoms. But 
 British goods brought from British ports in 
 British ships were admitted free. The Govern- 
 ment also took back the power, which was one 
 of the worst abuses enforced by the Dutch East 
 India Company, of fixing its price for farm 
 produce, and compelling the farmers to furnish 
 supplies at this rate for the garrison and the 
 ships of war in the Bay. Moreover, a further 
 issue of paper money had been one of the first 
 acts of the British administration. 
 
 General Craig's proclamation was thus set 
 aside in almost every detail, and the Dutchmen 
 may be excused if they believed that they had 
 been hoodwinked into quiet submission with a 
 string of false promises. In 1799 their dis- 
 satisfaction came to a head, though the out- 
 break took a very mild form. Adriaan van 
 Jaarsveld, who had led the Dutch forces 
 successfully against the Kaffirs, was arrested 
 on a charge of forgery and defying the 
 summons of the High Court, and a small 
 body of his neighbours at Graaff Reinet 
 
in South Africa 37 
 
 rescued the old commandant as he was being 
 conveyed to Cape Town. A strong force was 
 at once sent to the district, and the insurgents, 
 who were only a mere handful of unruly spirits, 
 offered to submit, and asked for pardon. The 
 officer in charge of the force replied that he 
 could not treat with them until they had laid 
 down their arms, and told them to come to a 
 certain place and do so. Rather more than a 
 hundred men came and gave up their arms, 
 and were at once seized, though they considered 
 that the officer had in effect promised that they 
 should not be molested. There seems to 
 have been no ground for this assumption, but 
 it is evident that the Government might now 
 have made a very good impression by the exer- 
 cise of a little timely clemency. The authori- 
 ties, however, did not take this view. Fines 
 were imposed upon ninety-three of the prisoners, 
 and twenty were taken to Cape Town to be 
 tried. They were kept in close confinement 
 for fifteen months before they were brought up 
 for trial, and confinement at Cape Town in 
 those days meant being locked in one room at 
 night with over eighty prisoners accused of all 
 kinds of crimes. Two of them, one of whom 
 was Van Jaarsveld himself, died in jail. Two 
 
38 The English and the Dutch 
 
 were condemned to death ; one, a schoolmaster, 
 who was perhaps expected to have known 
 better, was flogged on the public scaffold and 
 banished, and some were condemned to be 
 struck over the head with a sword and then 
 banished. This sentence was apparently not 
 carried out, and the rest of the prisoners were 
 set free in 1803, when the colony came back 
 into the hands of the Dutch for a short time. 
 
 In the year of Van Jaarsveld's contumacy, 
 cattle-lifting by the Kaffirs, who were ravaging 
 the whole frontier, once more made armed 
 reprisals necessary. Lord Macartney had by 
 this retired owing to bad health, and General 
 Dundas was governing pending the arrival of 
 his successor. A large commando of burghers 
 was mustered and took the field, but the 
 General thought that if the Kaffirs could be 
 induced to promise to behave better, war could 
 be avoided. The chiefs accepted his gifts and 
 fair words, and made promises as readily as 
 could be desired. The colonial force was then 
 disbanded, and the burghers, who had left their 
 farms and occupations to no purpose, and knew 
 that Kaffir promises were entirely worthless, 
 were thoroughly disgusted with the futile result 
 of the first attempt of the English authorities to 
 
in South Africa 39 
 
 enforce law and order on the frontier — in this 
 respect also they had shown themselves as bad 
 as the Dutch East India Company. Insubor- 
 dination again arose in Graaff Reinet, where 
 the inhabitants had been further exasperated 
 by the employment of the Dutch Church as a 
 barrack for some Hottentot soldiers. A few 
 shots were fired, and the feeling among the 
 leading farmers ran so high that the Govern- 
 ment thought it prudent to recall an obnoxious 
 commissioner who had been the cause of most 
 of the friction. 
 
 So far the rule of the English at the Cape 
 compared favourably with that of the Dutch 
 East India Company in one respect : there 
 had been no trace of personal corruption among 
 the officials. But when Sir George Yonge 
 came out as governor at the end of 1799, even 
 this advantage was lost. Not only did he 
 violate the terms of General Craig's proclama- 
 tion by imposing licences for killing game and 
 doubling the duty on brandy and other taxes, 
 but under his rule the administration was 
 grossly corrupt. He was recalled in 1801 and 
 tried by a Special Commission, by which he was 
 acquitted of actually taking bribes himself, but 
 Mr. Theal describes his government as a 
 
40 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ** general system of corruption unparalleled 
 even in the very worst days of the rule of the 
 [Dutch] East India Company. The only way 
 to get a decision from the governor, or even 
 to communicate with him, was by bribing the 
 favourites about his person. They could pro- 
 cure monoplies, licences to perform illegal acts, 
 protection from punishment for crime, almost 
 anything indeed that one in possession of 
 enormous power could bestow." 
 
 In 1803 the Cape Colony was restored to 
 the Dutch by the terms of the Treaty of 
 Amiens. The Dutch East India Company 
 was now dead, and the government was 
 entrusted to a commissioner by the States- 
 General of the Batavian Republic. He was an 
 able, active officer, made a tour of the settle- 
 ment, and did all he could to redress the 
 grievances of the farmers and to develop the 
 resources of the country. War, however, very 
 soon broke out again in Europe, and the com- 
 missioner had to give most of his energy to the 
 task of preparing the defences of the Cape for the 
 inevitable English attack. In the last week of 
 1 805 a great fleet was said to have been sighted, 
 and in January 1806 it anchored in Table Bay 
 and landed an army on the Blueberg Beach, 
 
in South Africa 41 
 
 led by General David Baird, who had served 
 at the Cape under General Dundas. This time 
 there was no division among the Dutchmen 
 and no hatred of the Government to tie their 
 hands, and they turned out readily to defend 
 the colony. Their position was hopeless from 
 the first. General Janssens, who was now 
 governor, set out to meet the English at the 
 head of a mob of burghers, Dutch regular 
 soldiers, and German mercenaries, the crews of 
 two French ships that had been wrecked on 
 the coast, and some Malays, Hottentots, and 
 slaves to complete the confusion — about 2000 
 men altogether. General Baird advanced with 
 4000 well-disciplined British infantry, besides 
 artillery and several hundred sailors. The 
 German mercenaries hardly waited to come 
 within range before they ran away, and the 
 Dutchmen, after making a gallant stand, gave 
 way before a charge by three Highland regi- 
 ments. Janssens sent his foreign troops to Cape 
 Town, and retired himself with his Dutchmen to 
 a strong position at Hottentots' Holland, rather 
 with a view to securing better terms than because 
 he saw any possibility of continuing the fight. 
 On the loth of January, Cape Town capitulated. 
 The terms of the cession provided, among other 
 
42 The English and the Dutch 
 
 things, that ''private property of all kinds was 
 to be respected, but that all property of the 
 Batavian Government should be given up ; 
 and that the burghers and other inhabitants 
 were to keep all their rights and privileges." 
 Thus the Dutch at the Cape once more came 
 under the rule of the English. General 
 Janssens, the Dutch governor, said in the last 
 letter that he wrote to Baird before he left for 
 Holland : " Allow me to commend to your pro- 
 tection the inhabitants of this colony. . . . 
 They have their faults, but these are more 
 than compensated by good qualities. Through 
 lenity, through marks of affection and benevo- 
 lence, they may be conducted to any good." 
 General Baird appears to have done his best to 
 be conciliatory, but in those days such things 
 as benevolence and marks of affection seemed 
 quite out of place in a code of political discipline. 
 One of his first acts was to order one Maas, 
 who had put a false story about that a French 
 fleet was in Saldanha Bay, to be flogged round 
 the town at the cart's tail by the public hang- 
 man, and then banished. His administration, 
 however, did not last long, as the Earl of 
 Caledon, an Irishman, aged twenty-nine, was 
 sent out as governor of the colony. In 
 
in South Africa 43 
 
 ** matters of importance," he was to act "under 
 the instructions of the Secretary of State in 
 London," but his powers were practically- 
 unlimited. He could fix the prices of all 
 produce that was wanted for the army, and 
 compel farmers to sell as much as was required 
 at his price. His proclamations and notices 
 had the force of law. The independence of 
 the High Court of Justice was now abolished, 
 and the governor formed, with the lieutenant- 
 governor, a court of appeal which could miti- 
 gate or suspend the sentences of the inferior 
 courts. The judges were appointed by him, 
 and could be removed by him. All of them, 
 except the Chief Justice, at this time held other 
 places In the official service, and took up their 
 judicial duties as an easily-earned addition to 
 their salaries. Lord Caledons government 
 was childishly paternal, and many of his orders 
 and regulations look very absurd in the light of 
 modern ideas, but his strictness was out- 
 weighed by his integrity and kindliness, and he 
 left a practical mark of his good intentions in 
 an Improved water supply for Cape Town. The 
 colony, however, was foolishly administered in 
 many respects. The extravagant salaries of 
 Lord Macartney's days were restored, and the 
 
44 The English and the Dutch 
 
 treasury was only kept solvent by issues of 
 paper money. This device for raising the 
 wind was then considered perfectly sound, but 
 it seems to have been carried out in a highly 
 unbusinesslike manner. It is recorded that a 
 sum of 3197 rix-dollars that had been stamped 
 by mistake was put into circulation, and the 
 blunder was only discovered a year later when 
 the public accounts were audited, and the 
 treasury was found to be less empty, by that 
 amount, than it should have been. 
 
 In 181 1- 1 2 the fourth Kaffir war took place. 
 This time the chiefs refused to parley, and were 
 driven back across the Fish River. The Dutch 
 burghers supported the Government loyally, 
 turning out in large numbers and doing yeo- 
 man's service in the field. 
 
 It was about this time that the English mis- 
 sionaries, who have done, perhaps, even more 
 mischief in South Africa than the bungling of 
 the home authorities, began their work of 
 meddling and misrepresentation. Their motives, 
 of course, were the highest and most estimable. 
 Their methods were the most tactless and 
 shortsighted. They desired to elevate the 
 natives, and conceived that this could best be 
 done by treating them as if they had been 
 
in South Africa 45 
 
 already elevated. The Dutchmen, who had 
 lived among the natives for a century and a half, 
 and knew that their elevation was a slow busi- 
 ness and could not be compassed merely by 
 assuming it, did not encourage this system. 
 The Dutch Moravian missionaries had a settle- 
 ment at Glenaelendal, where they worked steadily 
 to make the natives good Christians, did not 
 meddle with politics, and won the approval of 
 the Government, the farmers, and the travellers 
 who visited the scene of their labours. Lord 
 Caledon was so well pleased with their work 
 among the Hottentots that he urged them to 
 found more stations. But their system was 
 condemned by the English missionaries, who 
 thought that they kept their converts in leading- 
 strings too long, and so prevented them from 
 exercising the '' social and political rights of 
 men." 
 
 The London Missionary Society began to 
 work in South Africa in 1799. Mr. Vander- 
 kemp, one of their first emissaries, reported 
 that they were received with great enthusiasm 
 by the farmers. ** The bounty of the Dutch 
 farmers," he wrote, " to the missionaries deserves 
 honourable mention .... Everywhere the 
 missionaries received the welcome of angels, 
 
46 The English and the Dutch 
 
 and were crowded round and heard with rever- 
 ence as apostles, everywhere provided with 
 teams of oxen and loaded with presents." If 
 the missionaries had only minded their own 
 business, they might have been regarded as 
 angels and apostles to the end of the chapter. 
 During the short period of Dutch rule from 
 1803 t^ 1806, the Batavian Commissioners 
 gave them every encouragement, and helped 
 them to establish settlements for wandering 
 Hottentots, and it was not till the English 
 were again ruling that their methods were 
 called in question. Major Collins of the 83rd 
 Regiment inspected and reported on their sta- 
 tion at Bethelsdorp, and was so ill-impressed by 
 their system that he recommended that they 
 should not be allowed to teach Hottentots, but 
 should confine their labours to the Bushmen on 
 the northern frontier, working under the super- 
 intendence of respectable farmers. Such was 
 an English officer's opinion of the practical 
 results of trying to lift the natives, at one head- 
 long bound, to the enjoyment of the *' social and 
 political rights of men." 
 
 Finding themselves at variance with the 
 Dutch on the subject of native treatment, the 
 London missionaries carried the war into the 
 
in South Africa 47 
 
 enemies' country by accusing the Dutch farmers 
 of barbarous cruelty towards their savage neigh- 
 bours. Mr. Read of Bethelsdorp sent a letter 
 to the directors of the Society in London 
 asserting that the Hottentots were subject to 
 inhuman treatment at the hands of the whites, 
 and the Secretary of State ordered that the 
 governor should have the charges sifted. A 
 Circuit Court had been established in 181 1, and 
 in 1 8 1 2 the missionaries' charges were investi- 
 gated by the "black circuit," as the Dutchmen 
 ever afterwards called it. Nearly all the charges 
 made were proved to be purely imaginary, but 
 the efforts made by the Englishmen to make 
 good their assertions by hook or by crook 
 seemed to the farmers to proceed from pure 
 vindictiveness, and henceforward the agents of 
 the London Missionary Society were looked 
 upon by the Dutch as malicious slanderers, 
 and the Christianity which stooped to such 
 measures was regarded as unworthy of its 
 name. It had also been asserted in England 
 that the frontier farmers treated the Kaffirs 
 with extreme harshness and cruelty. Sir John 
 Cradock, who was then governor, made a tour 
 of the frontier in 1813 to see for himself. On 
 his return to Cape Town he stated in the Gazette 
 
48 The English and the Dutch 
 
 that ''His Excellency has had the further satis- 
 faction to approve the good and unoffending 
 conduct of the inhabitants towards the Kaffir 
 tribes, the faithless and unrelenting disturbers 
 of the peace and prosperity of this colony." 
 The irritation caused by the repetition of these 
 baseless charges was increased by a change 
 which was now carried out in the law of land 
 tenure. It was remodelled on the English 
 system, but no attempt seems to have been 
 made to sound Dutch opinion on this reform. 
 The burghers, preferring their old law, which 
 they understood, thought that the change 
 had been devised for the purpose of robbing 
 them. 
 
 In 1 81 3 the Dutch Stadtholder returned to 
 the Netherlands, and the English, who had so 
 far held the Cape nominally as his representa- 
 tives, bought the colony from him. Having 
 thus acquired it de jure as well as defactOy they 
 might well have given a little attention to 
 overhauling their possession, and putting it on 
 a sounder footing, politically and financially. 
 If they had thought it worth while to win the 
 affection, as well as the obedience of the Dutch, 
 they would have saved themselves a good deal 
 of trouble and expense. 
 
in South Africa 49 
 
 As it was, they appointed Lord Charles 
 Somerset, a very well-connected gentleman, 
 with very expensive tastes and some knowledge 
 of horsetiesh, as governor, with practically un- 
 limited powers. He had ;^io,ooo a year, and 
 four residences kept up out of the revenues of 
 the colony. The Government House at Cape 
 Town served him for the intervals of official 
 duty, and the rest of his time was spent in a 
 villa at Newlands, a seaside house in Camp's 
 Bay, and a shooting-box at Groote Post, with 
 twelve thousand morgen of land, strictly pre- 
 served. A story is still told in Cape Town that 
 when, on his first arrival, he was driven to his 
 official residence, he asked what that building 
 was, and when he heard that it was Govern- 
 ment House, exclaimed, " Government House ! 
 Damn it, I took it for a dog-kennel ! " The 
 revenue of the colony had grown considerably 
 under the English administration, but the 
 governor and the heads of the departments still 
 absorbed a quarter of it in their salaries, and 
 more issues of paper money were made to 
 provide for the building of public offices in 
 Cape Town and the country. 
 
 In 181 5 the English made another example 
 of a few misguided Dutchmen who had defied 
 4 
 
50 The English and the Dutch 
 
 the law. One Frederik Bezuidenhout had been 
 summoned to appear on a charge of ill-treating 
 a servant, and when a company of Hottentot 
 pandours was sent to arrest him, fired upon 
 them and was shot dead. The employment of 
 these Hottentots as military police was a source 
 of great irritation to the Dutch, and a few 
 relatives and friends of Bezuidenhout's — not 
 more than fifty all told — rose in arms. Public 
 opinion was against them, and a force of Dutch 
 burghers turned out to support the authorities. 
 Most of the rebels surrendered at once, but 
 Jan Bezuidenhout, brother of Frederik, pre- 
 ferred to be shot rather than yield to the 
 Hottentots who were sent to take him. Five 
 of the rebels were hanged, though they had 
 shed no blood, and this act of ill-timed severity 
 was naturally resented by the burghers, who 
 had taken up arms to quell the revolt, but not 
 to bring their kinsmen to the halter. A little 
 mercy on this occasion would have gone a long 
 way. 
 
 In 1818 military operations against the 
 ''unrelenting and faithless disturbers of the 
 peace and prosperity of the colony" began 
 again. After a three years' struggle the Kaffirs 
 were forced to submit, and the rivers Keiskama 
 
in South Africa 5 i 
 
 and Tyumie were made the border of Kaffir- 
 land, Fort Willshire being built to protect the 
 new frontier. About this time British settlers 
 began to arrive in the colony, and the Govern- 
 ment, which had blundered on every possible 
 opportunity in the comparatively simple task of 
 ruling the Dutch farmers, had now to face the 
 more complicated question of handling a popula- 
 tion composed of different white races. In 1820 
 and 182 1 about 5000 British settlers came into 
 the colony. Instead of giving the two races 
 time to mingle, and allowing the English 
 language to spread gradually, Lord Charles 
 Somerset, instructed by the Imperial Govern- 
 ment, almost immediately proclaimed that after 
 January i, 1825, all official documents would 
 be published in English, and that after January 
 I, 1827, the proceedings in the law courts 
 would be carried on in English. A few years 
 later, notice was given that all memorials ad- 
 dressed to the Government must be written in 
 English, or must have a translation attached, 
 as otherwise they would be returned to the 
 senders. Criminal cases were also transferred 
 from the Circuit Court at Worcester to Cape 
 Town, on the ground that there were not 
 enough men at Worcester who could speak 
 
52 The English and the Dutch 
 
 English, to form juries. The prisoners and 
 witnesses, of course, only spoke Dutch, and 
 every sentence had to be interpreted to the 
 Court, so that to insist on an English-speaking 
 jury under these circumstances was ridiculous 
 as well as unjust. These regulations contrast 
 sharply with the attitude of the English Govern- 
 ment towards most of our possessions and 
 dependencies. For example, French is still 
 the official language in Quebec, and it may 
 also be noted that the Queen has no more 
 loyal subjects than the French Canadians. If 
 English had been officially introduced in these 
 parts of the colony where British settlers were 
 in the majority, no one could have complained, 
 but to make a hard-and-fast rule for the whole 
 country at once was grossly unjust, and this 
 enactment must have caused as much incon- 
 venience to the Government as irritation to 
 its subjects. The Dutchmen made no appeal 
 to the authorities, for they could not write 
 petitions in English, but they began to think, 
 in their silent, stolid way, that existence under 
 British rule was becoming intolerable, and that 
 there was plenty of room beyond the borders of 
 the colony. 
 
 Meanwhile the new British settlers also had 
 
in South Africa 53 
 
 grievances against the governor, and proposed 
 to hold meetings and air them. Whereupon 
 Lord Charles Somerset issued a proclamation 
 declaring such meetings to be illegal, and stat- 
 ing that anyone who attended them would be 
 severely punished. Clamour was at once 
 raised in England, and a Commission was 
 appointed by Parliament to investigate the 
 affairs of the colony. The commissioners 
 arrived at the Cape in 1823, and their pro- 
 ceedings were as futile as those of most 
 Parliamentary commissions. While at Cape 
 Town they were the guests of the governor, 
 whose acts were the subject of their inquiry, 
 and they made their investigations through 
 him. They did not know Dutch or attempt to 
 learn it, and were easily hoodwinked at every 
 turn. The result of their labours was a 
 recommendation that a Council should be 
 established to advise the governor on points 
 which he should be pleased to refer to it. He 
 was left free to reject its advice, and could 
 dismiss any of its members. 
 
 The only other noteworthy event during 
 Lord Charles Somerset's administration was 
 the reorganisation of the paper currency. The 
 British Government was now bringing British 
 
54 The English and the Dutch 
 
 coinage into circulation in all the colonies, and 
 dealt with the Cape currency by reducing the 
 notes to three-eighths of their face value, and 
 making English silver money legal tender at 
 that rate of exchange. About ;^7oo,ooo worth 
 of notes were now in circulation, of which one- 
 third had been created by the British authorities. 
 This operation caused a good deal of complaint 
 and irritation. It was much too hurriedly 
 carried through, and the sudden application of 
 the commercial rate of exchange at Cape 
 Town to the notes which were circulating at 
 their full face value in the country districts, was 
 a blunder which might well be regarded as 
 downright robbery by the simple farmers, who 
 did not understand currency problems. In 
 1826 Lord Charles Somerset was ordered to 
 come home and reply to the attacks that were 
 being made in Parliament against his adminis- 
 tration. On reaching home, he resigned his 
 office, and thus escaped further censure. He 
 had improved the breed of horses in the 
 colony by importing thoroughbred stock, but 
 his rule was that of a shortsighted despot, 
 ignorant of the people whom he tried to 
 coerce. 
 
 In 1828 the old burgher Senate was done 
 
in South Africa 55 
 
 away with, and Its powers, which were chiefly 
 municipal, were taken over by the Govern- 
 ment. As a compensation two of the official 
 members of the Council were dispensed with, 
 and two members were chosen by the governor 
 from the colonists to take their places. In the 
 same year, the courts of law in the colony 
 were reconstructed on the English system. 
 The judges were henceforward to be appointed 
 by the Crown, and not by the governor, and 
 were not to hold any other office. The lower 
 courts, and with them such popular representa- 
 tion as had existed in the old system of land- 
 drosts and heemraden, were abolished. Their 
 judicial duties were taken over by resident 
 magistrates, and all their other duties by civil 
 commissioners. An important change was 
 also Introduced at this time with regard to 
 the Hottentots in the colony. Under Dutch rule 
 the authorities did not Interfere with them, except 
 In the case of children born of Hottentot mothers 
 by slave fathers, who were apprenticed at the 
 age of eighteen years, and a small community 
 of outcast Hottentots who lived by prostitu- 
 tion and robbery on the Cape flats. These 
 latter were under strict supervision, and one 
 of the earliest maligners of the Dutch repre- 
 
56 The English and the Dutch 
 
 sented that the regulations which the Govern- 
 ment applied to these unfortunates were 
 enforced also against the Hottentots all over 
 the colony. As a matter of fact, the Dutchmen 
 left the Hottentots under the rule of their 
 chiefs, and only made them liable to the 
 colonial courts with regard to matters in which 
 white men were concerned. They paid no 
 taxes, and were not subject to the commando 
 law. This happy-go-lucky system did not 
 suit Lord Caledon. He enacted that every 
 Hottentot must have a definite place of resi- 
 dence, and must not change It without a 
 certificate which was to be duly registered in 
 his new district. .Hottentots moving about the 
 country must be furnished with a pass, and 
 show it on demand, or else be dealt with as 
 vagabonds. In 181 2 Sir John Cradock enacted 
 that the children of Hottentots born while 
 their parents were in service, and housed and 
 fed for eight years by their parents' employers, 
 should be bound as apprentices for ten years 
 to these employers or to other fit persons. 
 Sir John, an enlightened philanthropist, pre- 
 ferred that these children should thus learn to 
 be useful, rather than grow up to abuse liberty 
 for which they were not fitted. In 1828, how- 
 
in South Africa 57 
 
 ever, an ordinance of the acting governor set 
 free Hottentots, Bushmen, and other free 
 coloured people, from the law which required 
 them to show passes, and the regulation with 
 regard to the apprenticeship of children. The 
 immediate result of this well - meant step 
 backwards was that thousands of Hottentots 
 began to wander about the country stealing. 
 The evil was increased by an ordinance 
 published in the same year, by w^hich Kaffirs 
 were allowed to enter the colony in search of 
 employment. Many came in and found employ- 
 ment for themselves in robbing the up-country 
 farmers. After two months the ordinance was 
 suspended, and it was found on investigation 
 that 5000 head of cattle had been stolen from 
 the frontier settlers, that only 1500 had been 
 recovered, and that many of the farmers had 
 been brought to the verge of ruin. 
 
 In 1834 Sir Benjamin D'Urban was sent 
 out to govern the colony, charged with the 
 task of reducing the expenses of govern- 
 ment, and creating a Legislative Council, — to be 
 composed of the governor, five officials, and 
 five colonists to be named by the governor, — 
 of making treaties with the neighbouring 
 native chiefs, and of carrying out the emanci- 
 
58 The English and the Dutch 
 
 pation of the slaves in the colony. The 
 position of the slave-owners had long been a 
 burning question at the Cape. Various enact- 
 ments — some of them designed for the colonies 
 generally and quite inapplicable to the circum- 
 stances in South Africa — had been passed, 
 limiting the authority of the masters and 
 interfering with the management of the slaves 
 to such an extent that the latter became unruly, 
 and a o^eneral risinof was more than once 
 feared. Among the innumerable slanders 
 uttered against Cape Dutchmen, it has been 
 asserted that they treated their slaves with in- 
 human severity, and that they were so devoted 
 to slavery as an institution, that the emancipa- 
 tion was the real cause of their trekking 
 beyond the borders of the colony. In answer 
 to the first calumny. Lord Caledon and other 
 officials can be quoted. In 1807 the Cape 
 Government decided to employ slaves no 
 longer, and Lord Caledon, then governor, 
 preferred to sell them rather than set them 
 free. ''The law," he wrote to the Secretary 
 of State, ''affords the slaves ample redress 
 against the ill-usage of their masters, nor does 
 bad treatment of them often require its in- 
 tervention." And Colonel Wade wrote in a 
 
in South Africa 
 
 59 
 
 despatch dated December 6, 1833: "Slavery 
 exists here, it is true, but, as I believe has been 
 universally admitted, in an exceedingly miti- 
 gated form. There is, 1 believe, no colony in 
 which instances of manumission have been 
 more frequent than at the Cape. The in- 
 habitants in general cannot with justice be 
 accused of brutal or inhuman treatment of 
 their slaves." Calumny No. 2 is disproved 
 by the fact that in 1826 a meeting of slave- 
 holders in Graaff Reinet proposed, of their 
 own motion, that if the Government would 
 cease from impracticable legislation, they 
 would willingly consent to the gradual extinc- 
 tion of slavery by the emancipation at birth of 
 all female slave children. This very sensible 
 and practical suggestion was not accepted, 
 and the Government continued passing regula- 
 tions which raised such a storm that public 
 meetings had to be forbidden. When the 
 excitement had grown less angry, this pro- 
 hibition was withdrawn, and forthwith 2000 
 slave-holders met in Cape Town, marched in 
 orderly procession to Government House, and 
 sent in two deputies to tell the governor that 
 they were prepared to accept the penalties of 
 the law, but could not obey its provisions. 
 
6o The English and the Dutch 
 
 Under these circumstances, both the Govern- 
 ment and the burghers welcomed the news that 
 the Emancipation Act had been passed by 
 ParHament, and that slavery was to cease in 
 Cape Colony on December ist, 1834. The 
 owners were reassured by a proclamation issued 
 in January 1834 by Colonel Wade, who was 
 acting as governor pending Sir Benjamin 
 D'Urban's arrival. " The Parliament," it stated, 
 "having solemnly pledged itself to combine a 
 due regard for the interests of the proprietors 
 with the emancipation of the slaves, the former 
 may rest assured that the good faith of the 
 British nation will not be violated." In March 
 1834 the governor appointed six ''assistant 
 commissioners of compensation," who were to 
 appraise the value of the slaves in the colony 
 on the basis of the average prices which had 
 ruled during the eight years before 1831. After 
 many months of patient investigation the com- 
 missioners decided that the aggregate value of 
 the Cape slaves was ;^3,o4i,29o, 6s. In 1835 
 a despatch from England stated that the amount 
 allotted to the Cape slave-owners by the home 
 authorities was rather less than one million and 
 a quarter. This intelligence spelt sheer ruin to 
 most of the slave-holders, who had mortgaged 
 
in South Africa 6i 
 
 their slaves to the banks and money-lenders, 
 giving bonds which covered all their other 
 property as collateral security. Holders of these 
 bonds at once demanded their redemption, and 
 the mortgagors had to sell any goods that they 
 had at a ruinous sacrifice. Many slaves were 
 the only property of poor families, and these 
 were at once ruined outright. Later mails 
 brought more disastrous news. The British 
 Government did not propose to send the com- 
 pensation money out to the Cape. Each claim 
 would have to be proved in London before the 
 commissioners there, and then the amount due 
 would be paid in 3^ per cent, stock. Moreover, 
 all expenses connected with the emancipation in 
 each colony were to be paid out of the amount 
 apportioned to the colony, so that no claims 
 could be settled until the whole operation was 
 completed and the amount of the expenses could 
 be ascertained. In the meantime the unfortun- 
 ate owners had to pay wages to their now 
 emancipated ex-slaves, and also interest to the 
 mortgagees pending the settlement, unless, in- 
 deed, the latter had already sold them up. The 
 farmers could not leave their lands to go to 
 waste and spend all their savings, if they had 
 any, in a journey to England to claim their 
 
62 The English and the Dutch 
 
 money, so the consequence of the regulation 
 which required claims to be proved in London 
 was the invasion of the country by a horde of 
 petty agents, who bought claims from the ruined 
 colonists — who were forced to make any sacri- 
 fice to get a little ready money — at about half 
 their real value. The Imperial Government 
 thus carried out the promise to respect the 
 rights of private property, given when it ac- 
 quired the colony, by granting the slave- 
 owners about one-third of the price which the 
 local appraisers, appointed by the English 
 governor, had decided to be the just value 
 of the slaves, and it carried out the payment 
 in such a manner that only about one-sixth of 
 this assessment reached the owners themselves. 
 In 1850 there was still nearly ;^6ooo of com- 
 pensation money left unclaimed by owners who 
 refused to apply for it, on the ground that by so 
 doing they would seem to admit that they had 
 been treated fairly. This fact demonstrates the 
 gross injustice of the whole proceeding more 
 clearly than it could be shown in many pages 
 of argument from the pen of the readiest 
 writer. 
 
 During the period covered by these trans- 
 actions the sixth Kaffir war had occurred. 
 
in South Africa 63 
 
 Lord Charles Somerset's frontier settlement 
 had not longr been effective, and the introduc- 
 tion of friendly clans between the settlers and 
 the marauders had only turned the friendlies into 
 robbers. The theft of some officers' horses at 
 Port Beaufort brought the matter to a head, and 
 a large Kaffir army poured into the colony, 
 plundering and massacring. Subsequent in- 
 quiries proved that they burned 450 houses and 
 stole 5715 horses, 114,930 cattle, and 161,930 
 sheep and goats, and the damage done was 
 officially assessed at ^300,401, los. The 
 burghers were all called out, and a strong force 
 took the field and quelled the rising after some 
 sharp engagements. Sir Benjamin D' Urban 
 then set to work to settle the frontier tribes in 
 a statesmanlike manner. He brought in some 
 friendly Fingos to act as a buffer State between 
 the Keiskama and Fish Rivers. Between the 
 Keiskama and the Kei he established a terri- 
 tory, to be called the Province of Queen 
 Adelaide, under British sovereignty; the native 
 chiefs, advised by British residents, were to 
 administer the country subject to the control of 
 Colonel Harry Smith, who was to be stationed 
 at King William's Town to command the garri- 
 son and act as supreme chief This plan of 
 
64 The English and the Dutch 
 
 settlement commended itself to everybody ex- 
 cept to the missionaries of the London Society, 
 who opposed it tooth and nail, led by a certain 
 Dr. Philip. This gentleman was the son of a 
 weaver at Kirkcaldy, and was sent to South 
 Africa in 18 19 by the London Missionary 
 Society. He soon became the chief exponent 
 of the Society's policy of exaggerating or 
 imagining the virtues of the natives, and the 
 brutality of the Dutchmen. Lord Charles 
 Somerset in his despatches spoke of him as 
 *'this dangerous man," and described his reply 
 to certain charges as **full of disgusting evasion 
 and perversion of facts," while Sir Lowry Cole, 
 Lord Charles Somerset's successor, put him 
 into a nutshell by writing that he was "more 
 of a politician than missionary." In 1828 he 
 published a work called Researches iii South 
 Africa, designed to prove that the Hottentots 
 and other natives were ill-treated. Mr. Theal 
 reviews this work as follows : — *' The book puts 
 forth as facts mere theories concerning the 
 Bushman race which are now known to be 
 incorrect ; the account given in it of a great 
 commando against the Bushmen in 1774 was 
 proved to be imaginative by Lieutenant Moodie's 
 publication of the original documents from 
 
in South Africa 65 
 
 which it was professedly drawn, a strict investi- 
 gation made by order of the Imperial Govern- 
 ment into some of its charges showed them to 
 be baseless, and the judges of the Supreme Court 
 pronounced others libellous ; yet so entirely did 
 the work accord with the prejudices of a large 
 class of people in England that it was received 
 with great favour, and for many years was 
 regarded as authoritative." The appearance 
 of the book caused a great sensation at the 
 Cape, and a certain Mr. Mackay, who was 
 accused In its pages of brutal treatment of 
 Hottentots, determined to clear himself by an 
 action for libel before the Supreme Court. Dr. 
 Philip attempted to shuffle out of the case by 
 pleading that the matter did not come within 
 the jurisdiction of the Court, on the ground that 
 the book was not intended for circulation In the 
 colony, and was not sold there at his instance. 
 This pettifogging objection was overruled by 
 the Court, and in July 1830 judgment was given 
 for the plaintiff, and Dr. Philip was condemned 
 to pay ^200 damages and ^900 costs, to cover 
 the expense of bringing a host of witnesses from 
 the frontier. In giving judgment, Sir John 
 Wylde, the Chief Justice, described Dr. Philip's 
 statement concerning Mr. Mackay as ** a false 
 5 
 
66 The English and the Dutch 
 
 and malicious libel," Mr. Justice Burton called 
 it a ''slander and a falsehood," and Mr. Justice 
 Menzies pronounced it to be ** utterly without 
 foundation." The supporters of the London 
 Missionary Society in England held meetings, 
 at which Dr. Philip was described as a martyr 
 who was being persecuted on account of his 
 noble efforts on behalf of the downtrodden 
 native, raised subscriptions to pay his costs, and 
 sent memorials to the Secretary of State assert- 
 ing that their representative's life was in danger, 
 and that he must be specially protected. Re- 
 ports of these meetings and speeches were 
 circulated at the Cape by Dr. Philip's friends, 
 and did not increase the confidence of the 
 colonists in English public opinion. 
 
 This man, then, who had been described by 
 the highest judicial authorities in the colony as 
 a malicious liar, was now permitted to override 
 the governor's authority, and to direct England's 
 policy at a critical moment in the history of 
 South Africa. He had already opposed Sir 
 Lowry Cole so successfully as to leave the 
 northern frontier entirely without means of 
 defence. There was no military or police force 
 In this part of the colony, and the Government, 
 which could only keep an appearance of solvency 
 
in South Africa (^"^ 
 
 by issues of paper, was quite unable to provide 
 for its protection, and so had to use the old 
 commando system, and call out the burghers 
 whenever an armed force was required. In 
 1833, the year before Sir Benjamin D'Urban's 
 arrival, his predecessor. Sir Lowry Cole, issued 
 an order to amend the commando law, which 
 had been officially adopted in a proclamation by 
 Lord Macartney. Sir Lowry Cole's ordinance, 
 which fixed penalties to be paid by burghers 
 who did not come out when called upon, was 
 opposed by Dr. Philip and his English sup- 
 porters on the ground that the commando law 
 was perverted by the magistrates and farmers 
 on the frontier into an instrument which gave 
 them a free hand to harry the natives as often 
 as they liked. Pressure was brought to bear in 
 the usual way on the Minister at home, who 
 asked Sir Lowry Cole to explain the position. 
 Sir Lowry replied that ''the commando system 
 was the only possible means to prevent or 
 punish incursions into the colonial territory." 
 He went on to say that *' it might suit the views 
 of some writers to hold up the local Government 
 and the colonists to the detestation of mankind, 
 as the authors and abettors of the most diaboli- 
 cal atrocities, and to represent the native tribes 
 
68 The English and the Dutch 
 
 as the most injured and innocent of human 
 beings, but those who had the opportunity of 
 taking a dispassionate view would judge differ- 
 ently." This plain speaking from the governor 
 could not prevail against the influence of the 
 London Missionary Society at home, and Sir 
 Lowry's ordinance, and also Lord Macartney's 
 proclamation were annulled, leaving the northern 
 frontier at the mercy of any sudden attack, as 
 henceforward no local authority had the power 
 to call out the burgher force. Having thus 
 procured unlimited license for the natives to 
 plunder and steal without fear of punishment 
 on the north, Dr. Philip next proceeded to 
 upset Sir Benjamin D'Urban's scheme for keep- 
 ing them under proper control on the east. He 
 went to England with a Kaffir and a half-bred 
 Hottentot as show specimens of native Chris- 
 tianity, and he and they were the heroes of the 
 Missionary Society's tea-fights, and made a 
 triumphal progress through the country. His 
 two natives took titled ladies into dinner with 
 irreproachable propriety, and thus conclusively 
 proved that the Kaffirs on the frontier could not 
 have done anything wrong, while Dr. Philip 
 treated a Parliamentary Committee on the 
 Aborigines in the British Colonies to evidence 
 
in South Africa 69 
 
 which was afterwards — when the mischief had 
 been done — shown to be about as trustworthy 
 as the statements in his book. He was sup- 
 ported by Captain Stockenstrom, an ambitious 
 Cape official, who seems to have spoken with 
 an eye to the post, which he afterwards received, 
 of Heutentant-governor of the eastern district, 
 and later on made a practical recantation of the 
 mistakes that he made on this occasion by 
 taking an active part in the seventh war against 
 these very Kaffirs whom he now glorified. 
 
 Sir Benjamin D' Urban, one of the most 
 humane and kindly of men, had come out to the 
 colony deeply impressed with the desire to treat 
 whites and natives as far as possible on equal 
 terms, and was for some time strongly influenced 
 by Dr. Philip, Being, however, a practical ad- 
 ministrator, and not a wrong-headed enthusiast, 
 he had been forced, by what he saw on the 
 frontier, to the conclusion that it was no kind- 
 ness to the natives to leave them free to steal 
 and murder, and that they could only be elevated 
 in the true sense of the word by being subjected 
 to firm control. 
 
 In a despatch, dated 19th June 1835, he 
 wrote that the missionaries, who had lived and 
 worked among the Kaffirs on the border, *'all 
 
70 The English and the Dutch 
 
 acknowledged to me, with the reluctance natural 
 to such an admission, but with the expression 
 of their sincere conviction, that in the course of 
 their long and diligent labours . . . they could 
 not flatter themselves that they had ever made 
 a lasting salutary impression upon one of the 
 race of Caffres ; and they not at all inaptly com- 
 pare the latter to wolves (which in truth they 
 resemble very much) which, if they be caught 
 young, may be brought (for their own interests 
 and gratification in the matter) to an appearance 
 of tameness, but which invariably throw it off, 
 and appear in all their native fierceness of the 
 woods as soon as the temptation of blood and 
 ravage, which never fail to elicit their natural 
 ferocity, presents itself to their instinctive thirst 
 for it." 
 
 The accuracy of this description was strikingly 
 proved by the fact that Dr. Philip's show 
 Kafiir, who had behaved so nicely in English 
 drawing-rooms, afterwards backslid, after the 
 manner of the Rev. John Creedy in Mr. Allen's 
 weird story, and fought against the English on 
 the side of naked savagedom in the seventh 
 Kafiir war. Sir Benjamin's despatch goes on 
 to say that " this extension of the colonial border 
 has now become not only expedient but absol- 
 
in South Africa 71 
 
 utely and Indispensably necessary and unavoid- 
 able. As, however, I have reason to believe 
 that the important measure of extension will be 
 opposed by Dr. Philip, and, of course, by the 
 London Mission, on the ground of injustice in 
 itself, and very probably (since it is a party 
 peculiarly liable to exaggeration in statement 
 where an object or theory Is to be supported) 
 of severity in its execution, I think it may be 
 right to enclose an address which I have re- 
 ceived from the whole body of the Wesleyan 
 Mission here, seven in number, all well versed 
 in the subject by long residence in Caffreland, 
 and all intimately acquainted with the passing 
 events of the period, since they were residing 
 in various parts of it, or on the immediate 
 frontier, when the Caffre coalition attacked the 
 colony, and have continued so ever since ; and 
 I consider the unqualified opinion which this 
 address gives on the subject of no little value, 
 since, collectively and individually, the characters, 
 doctrine, and proceedings of this missionary 
 body will bear the strictest scrutiny, and since 
 their information is derived from close and 
 personal observation." 
 
 This address from the Wesleyan missionaries 
 is worth quoting, because it not only throws 
 
72 The English and the Dutch 
 
 light on the behaviour of the Kaffirs, but also 
 presents one of the best examples of clerical 
 ingenuity in hauling in a sermon by the heels. 
 It is dated Grahamstown, June 2nd, 1835, and 
 says : '' We know, in common with our country- 
 men, that the Caffres themselves were the 
 aggressors ; and that they most wantonly, 
 cruelly, and ungratefully commenced this war 
 with a people who sought and desired their 
 welfare and prosperity ; yet to deny the right- 
 eousness of God in our public calamities would 
 be equivalent to a renunciation of the Chris- 
 tianity we profess ; while to trace the corre- 
 spondence between those calamities and our sins 
 is unquestionably a sound application of its holy 
 principles to their legitimate purpose. When 
 a considerable portion of the public revenue is 
 drawn from licensed houses, where intemperance 
 is encouraged, and where multitudes amongst 
 the people greedily avail themselves of that 
 encouragement to indulge without restraint a 
 thirst for ardent spirits, in places where poison 
 is legally sold, it cannot be considered unjust 
 in the Almighty to waste such a revenue in an 
 expensive war, or to cause such a people, in 
 various ways, to feel the miseries resulting from 
 the irruption of hostile tribes on their border." 
 
in South Africa 73 
 
 This address is one out of the flood of simi- 
 lar, though not so characteristically doctrinal, 
 memorials which poured in upon the governor 
 from all parts of the colony, were duly for- 
 warded home by him, and still swamp the blue- 
 books of the period. Sir Benjamin's policy was 
 heartily endorsed by the Scottish and Moravian 
 missionaries, and even by two London Society 
 missionaries, who had themselves lived among 
 the Kaffirs and were guided by experience as 
 well as abstract principles. The Legislative 
 Council, as constituted in 1836, may, as Mr. 
 Theal drily points out, be trusted when its 
 opinion is in opposition to that of the Secretary 
 of State ; it unanimously passed resolutions 
 recording its unqualified approval of all the 
 measures which were adopted and carried into 
 effect in repelling the Kaffir invasion, and re- 
 corded its conviction that the arrangements 
 afterwards made by the governor were best 
 calculated to ensure tranquillity on the eastern 
 frontier, to raise the Kaffirs in the scale of 
 civilisation and fit them for the blessino^s of 
 Christianity. 
 
 In the eyes of Lord Glenelg, however, who 
 was now in charge of British colonial policy, 
 the reputation of the governor as a wise 
 
74 The English and the Dutch 
 
 and humane administrator, the testimony of the 
 missionaries who had worked among the Kaffirs 
 across the border, and the unanimous verdict 
 of public opinion in the colony, were as feathers 
 in the balance when weighed against the 
 assertions of Dr. Philip and Captain Stocken- 
 strom and the influence of the London 
 Missionary Society. He wrote on December 
 26th, 1835, th^^ certain evidence, the nature 
 and sources of which he declined to disclose, 
 had compelled him to the conclusion that 
 ** the Caffres had an ample justification of 
 the war into which they rushed with such 
 fatal imprudence at the close of last year." 
 And he went on to say that ''the claim of 
 sovereignty over the new province bounded 
 by the Keiskama and the Kei must be 
 renounced. It rests upon a conquest result- 
 ing from a war, in which, as far as I am at 
 present enabled to judge, the original justice 
 is on the side of the conquered, not of the 
 victorious party." 
 
 To those who knew more about the Kaffirs 
 than Lord Glenelg this despatch spelt anarchy, 
 murder, and robbery all along the eastern 
 frontier. Moreover, it evidently implied that 
 no compensation would be forthcoming for those 
 
in South Africa 75 
 
 who had been ruined by the invasion. And it 
 may here be noted that Sir George Napier, 
 who was sent out in 1838 to succeed Sir Ben- 
 jamin D' Urban and govern the colony on 
 Lord Glenelg's Hnes, was moved by the 
 evidences of misery and ruin that he saw in 
 the eastern parts of the colony to write to his 
 Lordship and ask him to apply to Parliament 
 for compensation for the farmers for their 
 losses ; pointing out that, if a faulty system had 
 caused the war, the Imperial Government alone 
 was responsible for the system, as the colonists 
 had no voice in the matter. But Lord Glenelg 
 was deaf even to his own nominee's appeal for 
 bare justice. 
 
 This fatuous conclusion of the sixth Kaffir 
 war was the last straw which broke the patience 
 of the Dutchmen. Sick of a system which put 
 the reins of government into the hands of a 
 convicted libeller, the more enterprising of 
 them decided that life under the British flag 
 could no longer be endured, and that it would 
 be better to leave their kinsmen and their 
 homes and go out into the wilderness, than stay 
 in the colony where they had suffered so much 
 injustice. Forty years of misrepresentation 
 and meddling by missionaries, unsympathetic 
 
'](^ The English and the Dutch 
 
 government by well-meaning but ignorant 
 British noblemen, and foolish interference by 
 the home authorities — who at the bidding of 
 a misinformed Society overrode the actions of 
 the first really great man that they sent to the 
 Cape — were practically summed up by this 
 remarkable exodus of the Dutchmen, who 
 preferred all the hazards and hardships of life 
 in the interior to the protection of such an 
 administration. 
 
in South Africa 77 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 From the Great Trek to the Independence 
 OF THE Dutch Republics — 1 836-1 854 
 
 The extraordinary fact that in 1836 and the 
 following years hundreds of Dutch families sold 
 all that they could not carry In waggons, and 
 made their way, driving their flocks and herds 
 before them, out of the British colony Into the 
 wilderness, where they knew that pestilence, 
 wild beasts, and savage foes had to be faced, 
 has been accounted for by their enemies by 
 various slanderous assumptions, as, for Instance, 
 that they could not live without slavery, which 
 has already been dealt with in the last chapter, 
 or that they were the riff-raff of the colony, and 
 preferred to retire beyond the pale of civilisa- 
 tion and follow their evil courses undisturbed 
 by British authority. Such suggestions can be 
 refuted on the authority of Sir Benjamin 
 D' Urban himself, who, in a despatch dealing 
 with the subject, recorded his opinion that the 
 emigration was caused by ** the insecurity of 
 
78 The English and the Dutch 
 
 life and property occasioned by recent measures, 
 inadequate compensation for the loss of the 
 slaves, and the despair of obtaining recompense 
 for the ruinous losses by the Kaffir invasion.'* 
 He also described the Dutchmen who were 
 trekking as ''a brave, patient, industrious, 
 orderly, and religious people, the cultivators, 
 the defenders, and the tax contributors of the 
 country." These words may well be remem- 
 bered by those who talk loudly about the 
 grievances of the Outlanders in the Transvaal 
 to-day. The Outlanders of their own will go 
 to the Transvaal and settle under an alien 
 Government. The Cape Dutchmen were the 
 first-comers, and had an alien Government 
 imposed upon them by force. The Outlander 
 refused to be commandeered and fight on 
 behalf of the country where he is settled, and 
 now complains because he is taxed, but has no 
 political rights. The Cape Dutchmen fought 
 loyally for the alien Government against savage 
 foes, and were, as Sir Benjamin says, **the 
 defenders and the tax contributors of the 
 country " ; but they not only went without 
 political rights, but had to submit to an admin- 
 istration which was influenced by their bitter 
 and unscrupulous opponents. 
 
in South Africa 
 
 79 
 
 As to the reasons which led the Dutch to 
 sell their farms — some of them the richest and 
 best cultivated in South Africa — at ruinous 
 losses, and flee to the interior, they will be 
 fairly evident to anyone who has read the 
 preceding chapter. Moreover, at the time of 
 the emigration a manifesto was published by 
 one of the leaders of the trek, in which some 
 of the most prominent and immediate of its 
 causes were set forth. The following clauses 
 are extracted from it : — 
 
 *' We despair of saving the colony from those 
 evils which threaten it by the turbulent and 
 dishonest conduct of vagrants, who are allowed 
 to infest the country in every part. 
 
 ''We complain of the severe losses which we 
 have been forced to sustain by the emancipation 
 of our slaves. 
 
 '* We complain of the continual system of 
 plunder which we have for years endured from 
 the Kaffirs and other coloured classes, and 
 particularly by the last invasion of the colony, 
 which has desolated the frontier district and 
 ruined most of its inhabitants. 
 
 *'We complain of the unjustifiable odium 
 which has been cast upon us by interested and 
 dishonest persons, under the name of religion. 
 
8o The English and the Dutch 
 
 whose testimony is believed In England to 
 the exclusion of all evidence In our favour. 
 
 "We are resolved that wherever we go we 
 will uphold the just principles of liberty; but 
 whilst we will take care that no one Is brought 
 by us into a condition of slavery, we will 
 establish such regulations as may suppress 
 crime and preserve proper relations between 
 master and servant. 
 
 *' We will not molest any people, nor deprive 
 them of the smallest property ; but, if attacked, 
 we shall consider ourselves fully justified in 
 defending our persons and effects to the utmost 
 of our ability against every enemy." 
 
 The country across the Orange River, into 
 which the emigrants trekked, had been laid 
 waste and literally cleared of inhabitants, 
 except a few survivors concealed in caves and 
 mountain fastnesses, by the Zulus, who had 
 been drilled into a state of high military 
 efficiency by their chief, Tshaka, and had been 
 led by him in a war of extermination against 
 the Bantu tribes. Tshaka was now dead, and 
 his son Dingan, his equal in cruelty, if not in 
 ability, reigned In his stead. The chief seat of 
 the Zulu power was situated In the northern 
 part of Natal, while a large swarm of Tshaka's 
 
in South Africa 8i 
 
 warriors, led by one Moselekatse, had separated 
 from their kinsmen, and taken the name of 
 Matabele, and were ravaging the territories 
 between the Vaal and Limpopo Rivers. 
 
 The first party of emigrants was divided 
 into two sections, both numbering about fifty. 
 Of these divisions, one was cut off by savages, 
 who left only two children alive, while the 
 other struck out northwards towards Delagoa 
 Bay. Their cattle were all killed by the tsetse, 
 a poisonous insect, so that they could not move 
 their waggons, and they themselves were 
 attacked by fever, which killed all the men 
 except three youths, and half the women and 
 children. The survivors managed to struggle 
 on to Lourenzo Marquez, where they were 
 kindly treated by the Portuguese, until a ship 
 came and took them back to their friends. 
 
 The second party was led by Potgieter, and 
 made its way to a place between the Vet and 
 Vaal Rivers, where a tract of land was bought 
 from a broken-down chief who had been 
 harried by the Zulus. Having settled his 
 party there, Potgieter set off with an exploring 
 party and got as far as Zoutpansberg, in the 
 far north of the country that is now called the 
 Transvaal. The explorers were well pleased 
 
82 The English and the Dutch 
 
 with the fertile lands that they passed through, 
 and came back encouraged by their journey, 
 only to find that most of their party had been 
 massacred by the Matabele, and that another 
 attack was expected. Potgieter formed a 
 laager of waggons on the system that the 
 Dutchmen perfected, and has been adopted by 
 British troops and the Chartered Company's 
 forces in their South African wars. With forty 
 men under him, who poured in a steady fire, 
 while their wives and daughters loaded the 
 guns, he beat off an attack by 5000 Matabele. 
 Over 1 100 spears were picked up inside the 
 laager after the fight was over, but the Dutch- 
 men, or Boers (farmers) as we call them now, 
 suffered hardly any loss. Their cattle were 
 gone, however, driven off by the savages, so 
 that they were helpless, and could not move. 
 But luckily, the third party of emigrants had 
 just arrived at Thaba Ntshu, and sent oxen to 
 bring them away. Then 107 Boers, with 
 about 40 Griquas and about 60 Barolong on 
 foot, mustered to take the offensive against 
 Moselekatse. This is one of the most daring 
 feats in the history of military enterprise, and it 
 should be remembered nowadays by those who 
 try to belittle Boer courage, and represent that 
 
in South Africa 83 
 
 they can shoot straight from behind cover, but 
 cannot face a foe in the open. The Boers 
 attacked the southernmost Matabele camp, 
 consisting of fifteen kraals, at daybreak one 
 morning in January 1837, routed the savages, 
 killing 400 of them, and returned with the 
 waggons of their slaughtered kinsmen and 
 7000 head of cattle. Potgieter then encamped on 
 the Vet at Winburg, — as the place was named, 
 in commemoration of the victory, — and the party 
 was strengthened by the arrival of many more 
 families, among whom came Pieter Retief, a 
 man of Huguenot descent, well known and 
 respected in the colony in former days. One 
 band of more than a hundred souls consisted 
 entirely of the sons and descendants of Jacobus 
 Uys, who led them himself, though nearly 
 seventy years old. 
 
 In June 1837 a general assembly was held 
 at Winburg, and a rough sort of constitution 
 was framed. A single elective Chamber called 
 the Volksraad was to hold the legislative power, 
 and the old Dutch law was to be used. Retief 
 was appointed chief of the executive, with 
 the title of commandant-general. It was also 
 resolved that every member of the community, 
 and everyone who should afterwards join them. 
 
84 The English and the Dutch 
 
 must take an oath to have nothing to do with 
 the agents of the London Missionary Society. 
 Such was the effect of forty years of hostihty 
 and misrepresentation on the people who had 
 welcomed the first emissaries of the London 
 Society as angels and apostles, and had loaded 
 them with gifts and provisions. 
 
 The emigrants were not altogether satisfied 
 with their present settlement, and thought that 
 they might find a better spot further afield. 
 Pieter Uys, who had been to Natal and had 
 observed the fertility of the country, suggested 
 that the party should move eastward across the 
 Drakensberg Mountains. Retief accordingly 
 set out to inspect the place and try to come 
 to terms with Dingan, the Zulu chief, for the 
 purchase of a tract of land. In the meantime, 
 in November 1837, Potgieter and Uys led a 
 second expedition against the Matabele ; at the 
 head of a handful of 135 Boers they attacked 
 12,000 of the savages, and after a nine days' 
 engagement drove them headlong across the 
 Limpopo. Potgieter then proclaimed the whole 
 territory which Moselekatse had ravaged to 
 be the property of the Boers. This pro- 
 clamation covered most of the ground now 
 occupied by the Transvaal Republic, half the 
 
in South Africa 85 
 
 Orange River Free State, and Southern 
 Bechuanaland. 
 
 Relief found a few Englishmen in Natal, 
 living there on good terms with the Zulus, 
 and in some cases holding a position like that 
 of a native chief. They had already urged the 
 British Government to annex Natal, and their 
 appeal had been supported by Sir Benjamin 
 D' Urban. But the Imperial Government at 
 that time was in one of its " no-extension " 
 moods, and had refused to add to its responsi- 
 bilities in South Africa. The Englishmen, 
 whose position was necessarily rather insecure 
 in the territory of a capricious chief who valued 
 human life no more highly than they valued 
 tobacco ashes, were very glad to hear of the 
 Boers' intention to settle in Natal. They 
 made Retief welcome, and went with him and 
 his escort to Dingan's kraal, to act as their 
 guides and interpreters. 
 
 Dingan received Retief graciously, and told 
 him that he should have a piece of land if he 
 would first compel a chief named Sikonyela 
 to give back some cattle that he had stolen 
 from the Zulus. Sikonyela, who had heard 
 how the Matabele had fared at the hands of 
 the Boers, gave up the cattle at once to Retief, 
 
86 The English and the Dutch 
 
 and nearly looo waggons trekked down the side 
 of the Drakensberg into Natal. Retlef went 
 off with the cattle to Dingan's kraal to ask 
 the chief to fulfil his side of the bargain. He 
 was again well received, but it was only to put 
 him off his guard, and he and his escort of 65 
 whites and 30 Hottentot servants were treacher- 
 ously seized and butchered on February 6, 1838. 
 A force of 10,000 Zulu warriors was at once 
 sent off to take the rest of the Boers unawares 
 and slaughter them ; after eleven days' rapid 
 marching they fell upon the foremost Dutch 
 encampment, and killed every man, woman, 
 and child except a couple of youths who man- 
 aged to mount and ride to warn the farmers in 
 the other camps. Undismayed by this fresh 
 disaster, the Boers quickly formed laagers, and 
 drove the Zulus back after a long day's fight. 
 Next morning the various camps joined their 
 forces, and the band was soon joined by parties 
 under Uys from the Drakensberg and Potgieter 
 from Winburg. The Englishmen from Port 
 Natal also brought up a large army chiefly 
 consisting of Zulu deserters. The coalition at 
 once decided on offensive tactics, and arranged 
 that the English should attack Dingan's capital 
 on one side and the Boers on the other. The 
 
in South Africa 87 
 
 movement, however, was not well carried out. 
 In the first place, the Englishmen came upon 
 a kraal in the course of their march, and their 
 Zulu followers forthwith began to quarrel over 
 some cattle and women that were found there ; 
 the English leaders, seeing that fighting against 
 Dingan was out of the question until they had 
 restored discipline among their unruly soldiers, 
 delayed operations for a time. Meanwhile 347 
 Boers marched on to attack the king, who could 
 put at least one hundred times as many men 
 into the field. Perhaps they were so eager to 
 wipe out the memory of Dingan's treachery 
 that they neglected their usual precautions. 
 At anyrate they walked into an ambush, and 
 had to retreat as best they could after a gallant 
 fight, in which they lost Uys and his son, a 
 boy of sixteen, who stood by his father when 
 he might have saved himself, and eight others. 
 Moreover, their led horses and baggage were 
 taken by the enemy. Not long after, the 
 English allies and their Zulu forces were also 
 lured into a trap, and almost the whole force 
 was wiped out after making a magnificent stand 
 and killing an enormous number of Dingan's 
 finest soldiers. The Boers were now forced 
 to confine themselves to defensive measures. 
 
88 The English and the Dutch 
 
 Not only had they lost their English allies, 
 but their own little band was divided by the 
 jealousy of its leaders, and Potgieter had gone 
 off with his followers to Potchefstroom, north 
 of the Vaal. 
 
 In November, Andries Pretorius joined the 
 force, and was elected commandant-general. 
 He mustered a band of 464 men, and marched 
 against the Zulu capital. The Boers were now 
 sternly set upon avenging their slaughtered 
 comrades. They vowed that they would build 
 a church, and set apart a special day of thanks- 
 giving if the enemy were delivered into their 
 hands. Nevertheless a few Zulu stragglers 
 whom they captured were set free and sent 
 to tell Dingan that if he would restore all 
 the cattle and property that he had stolen, he 
 should have peace. Dingan replied by throw- 
 ing a force of ten to twelve thousand warriors 
 upon the little Boer company. This time, how- 
 ever, the Dutchmen had brought waggons with 
 them to form a laager, and they received the 
 shock of the Zulu attack without wavering. 
 Some 3000 of the savages were killed, and the 
 Blood River earned its name on that day, which 
 has ever since been celebrated every year as 
 '* Dingan's day." This victory was gained on 
 
in South Africa 89 
 
 December 16, 1838, but the power of Dingan 
 was not yet broken, and the Boers did not dare 
 to scatter into farms over the country, but kept 
 together and built the town of Pietermaritzburg, 
 where they set up a church in fulfilment of 
 their vow. In September 1839 they were 
 joined by Panda, Dingan's half-brother, who 
 offered to become their vassal, and brought 
 5000 warriors with him, and in the following 
 January 400 Boers and Panda's Zulus marched 
 against Dingan. The king, who had already 
 made some insincere advances, now tried to 
 treat in earnest, and sent Tambusa, one of his 
 chiefs, to discuss terms. Tambusa was believed 
 by the Boers to have advised the treacherous 
 murder of Retief and the subsequent massacre. 
 The fact that he was an envoy was disregarded, 
 and he and his servant were tried by court- 
 martial and shot. The magnificent fortitude 
 with which the Zulu met his death made the 
 treachery which had ordered it seem even more 
 disgraceful. The general opinion of the Boers 
 denounced the action, but for their leaders it 
 can only be said that the English Puritans, to 
 whom the Boers are so often compared, have 
 committed similar crimes under the influence 
 of the same sort of semi-religious ferocity. 
 
go The English and the Dutch 
 
 Just after this outrage had been committed, 
 the Boers learnt that on the preceding day- 
 Panda and his force had won a decisive victory 
 over Dingan's army. The king fled to Swazi- 
 land, where he was soon afterwards murdered, 
 and the Zulu power, which had laid Africa 
 waste from the Zambesi to the Orange, was 
 broken for the time being. In February 1840 
 the Republic of Natal was formed. Its terri- 
 tory was not as large as that of the present 
 colony, as Panda and his Zulus were settled, 
 under Boer suzerainty, north of the Tugela. 
 The constitution of the Republic was simple 
 and very democratic. The total sum applied 
 to the expenses of government was less than 
 ^500 yearly. The Volksraad was supreme, 
 making all appointments and confirming or 
 annulling sentences of death, but there was 
 also a sort of irregular referendtim or appeal 
 to the ''people," — in other words, any large 
 crowd that might assem^ble. 
 
 Meanwhile the colonial authorities were at 
 their wits' end. The Imperial Government 
 had stated repeatedly that the boundaries 
 of the colony were not to be extended, but the 
 governor did not approve of the creation of 
 independent Dutch States outside the borders, 
 
in South Africa 91 
 
 the merchants of Cape Town were alarmed by 
 the possiblHty of the diversion of trade to Port 
 Natal, and the missionaries were representing 
 that the Boers were slaughtering peaceful and 
 Inoffensive natives. The Boers had done even 
 more to prevent bloodshed by breaking the 
 power of the murdering Zulus, who had swept 
 down from the north, killing every member of 
 the tribes that they met, than the missionaries 
 have done to promote it by their policy of 
 leaving the natives free to develop their military 
 resources, and then to attack either one another 
 or the colony ; but it is only charitable to 
 suppose that the missionaries did not know 
 much about the Zulus In those days. 
 
 Sir George Napier, who had succeeded Sir 
 Benjamin D' Urban as governor, comforted 
 himself with the thought that, according to 
 International law, the Boers could not shake off 
 their allegiance to the Queen by leaving the 
 colony. In July 1838 he issued a proclamation 
 inviting the emigrants to return, adding that 
 Her Majesty's Government was determined not 
 to permit '' the creation of any pretended 
 independent States by any of Her Majesty's 
 subjects, which the emigrant farmers continued 
 to be." The emigrant farmers, who had sacrl- 
 
92 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ficed their property and braved fearful hard- 
 ships in order to avoid being governed by Dr. 
 Philip and Lord Glenelg, were not likely to 
 return to please Sir George Napier. So the 
 governor tried to starve them into a better 
 frame of mind. The following extract from the 
 Times of January 12, 1839, was quoted some 
 forty years later by the Boers when they were 
 reproached for not joining the English in the 
 war against Cetewayo : " Papers from the Cape 
 of Good Hope have been received to the i8th 
 November. As on former occasions, they are 
 mainly occupied with accounts of Kaffir depreda- 
 tions and the situation of the emigrant Boers at 
 Port Natal. The conduct of the local Govern- 
 ment with regard to these unfortunate parties 
 appears to be unnecessarily harsh, for although 
 it was known that they had suffered the 
 greatest disasters from the sanguinary attacks 
 of the Zulus, and that besides they had lost a 
 great part of their stores, while most of their 
 cattle which had escaped capture had perished 
 from disease, yet notwithstanding a proclama- 
 tion was issued by which the shipment of any 
 goods or articles, of whatever nature, to Port 
 Natal has been prohibited until further notice. 
 This would, of course, put a stop to the con- 
 
in South Africa 93 
 
 tinuance of those succours which were before 
 afforded through the means of charitable 
 subscriptions among the inhabitants." The 
 *' inhabitants " were friends and kinsmen of the 
 Boers in the colony, who had helped them in 
 their need by forwarding supplies to Natal. 
 This proclamation was issued just before the 
 first victory over Dingan. 
 
 After the establishment of the Boer Republic 
 at Natal, it was evident that friction between it 
 and the colony could not long be avoided. The 
 Republic arranged for the satisfactory settle- 
 ment of the Bantu who were already in Natal, 
 but declined to have the country overrun by 
 swarms of refugees from outside. This policy 
 was, of course, directly opposed to English 
 notions, which have since turned Natal, the 
 most beautiful and fertile district of South 
 Africa, into a comfortable preserve for lazy 
 natives. The Boer leaders, however, were 
 anxious to live at peace with the colony, and 
 in September 1840, the President of the Natal 
 Republic wrote to Sir George Napier praying 
 that the Queen might be graciously pleased to 
 acknowledge the new State to be free and inde- 
 pendent. Sir George replied, asking for the 
 exact terms on which negotiations might be 
 
94 The English and the Dutch 
 
 based, and these terms were duly despatched 
 to him in January 1841. They included the 
 acknowledgment by the British Government 
 of the independence of the Republic ; a close 
 alliance between the new State and the colony 
 with reciprocal customs duties ; an engagement 
 that the Republic would not make war on the 
 tribes between it and the colony without giving 
 due notice to the colony and stating the causes 
 of the war. It was also provided that British 
 subjects residing in Natal should be specially 
 protected, that the new Government would 
 exert itself to further the spread of the gospel, 
 and that all traffic in slaves should be forbidden. 
 These terms were singularly sensible and 
 statesmanlike considering the circumstances 
 under which they were drawn up, and with a 
 little modification they might have made a 
 good working basis for a peaceful settlement. 
 But Sir George Napier only harped on the old 
 discordant string, replying that he could not 
 negotiate until the Boers had distinctly acknow- 
 ledged their full and entire allegiance to the 
 Queen. This obstinacy was all the more deplor- 
 able as it was based upon absolute impotence, 
 and British prestige was only impaired by the 
 feeble assertion that the Boers were the Queen's 
 
in South Africa 95 
 
 subjects, while they were allowed to snap their 
 fingers at her authority. It was about this 
 time that Captain Jervis, who held a commis- 
 sion under the '' Cape Punishment Act," — by 
 which he was empowered to arrest and bring to 
 trial any British subject charged with a crime 
 committed south of the 25th parallel of latitude, 
 — summoned a Natal Boer, who had been 
 charged with assault, to appear before him. 
 The Boer refused to obey, saying that he was 
 a member of an independent Republic and re- 
 sponsible only to his landdrost. Captain Jervis 
 asked Sir George Napier what he was to do, 
 and was advised not to press the matter. The 
 Governor, in his turn, could get no reply to his 
 repeated requests to the home authorities that 
 they should tell him how to act towards the 
 Boers. British policy thus fell between two 
 stools. Either it should have conceded their 
 independence — with certain obvious restrictions 
 — to the Boers, or it should have taken vigorous 
 and irresistible measures to assert its supremacy 
 over them. What it did was to repeat on 
 every possible occasion that they were still 
 British subjects, and allow this assertion to 
 remain a laughing-stock. 
 
 It was clear, however, that even the *'no- 
 
96 The English and the Dutch 
 
 extension " mood of the Imperial Government 
 was not going to allow the Dutch to plant a 
 Republic in Natal, with a seaboard and a 
 good port. Already an enterprising American 
 skipper had put into the port and discharged a 
 cargo, and some Hollanders, half enthusiasts 
 and half impostors, had tried in vain to float a 
 company in the Netherlands to establish direct 
 trade with Natal, but had come to the Republic 
 and were talking big to the Boers about the 
 possibilities of their State. At last, early in 
 1842, a dispute anent territory between the 
 Boers and a Pondo chief much petted by 
 missionaries gave Sir George Napier his 
 chance, and he ordered the invasion of Natal. 
 The Volksraad protested, remarking bitterly 
 that they could not live under the British 
 Government, which gave protection only to 
 uncivilised people, and Pretorius gathered 
 his forces and gave the British troops one 
 or two lessons in sharpshooting ; but in 
 June two ships came in with reinforcements, 
 and Natal was a British possession, though 
 more than three years passed before a regular 
 government was established there. The first 
 terms of the conditions of peace enacted that 
 " there should not be, in the eye of the law, 
 
in South Africa 
 
 97 
 
 any distinction or disqualification whatever 
 founded on mere difference of colour, origin, 
 language, or creed." A truly unexceptionable 
 stipulation in its right place and at the right 
 time, but quite impracticable in the circum- 
 stances of the moment. Natal was full of a 
 swarm of Zulus fleeing from Panda, who had 
 taken advantage of the difficulties of his 
 suzerains, the Boers, to indulge in a little 
 indiscriminate slaughter of his subjects, and 
 these refugees were plundering the upland 
 farms right and left. The British would not 
 allow the Boers to resist these robberies by 
 force. Only the due processes of law were to 
 be employed. All the Boers who had any 
 energy and resources left put their oxen into 
 the waggons and toiled wearily back over the 
 Drakensberg Mountains. The rest of them 
 were found by Sir Harry Smith, some half- 
 dozen years later, '* in a state of misery," as he 
 wrote in his despatches, '* which he had never 
 before seen equalled, except in Massena's 
 invasion of Portugal. The scene was truly 
 heartrending." Pretorlus, whom he met there, 
 had had all his milch cows stolen by the blacks. 
 Such was the security of property under British 
 rule — old style — in Natal. It would almost 
 
 7 
 
98 The English and the Dutch 
 
 seem that the authorities had done their best to 
 drive the Boers once more beyond their juris- 
 diction. When the colonial Government was 
 established in Natal, the farmers who remained 
 were called upon to prove that they had actually 
 occupied the land that they claimed during the 
 previous twelve months. This was often im- 
 possible, as owing to the flood of Zulu refugees, 
 which they had not been allowed to stop, they 
 had been obliged to gather together and defend 
 their lives and property in laagers. In these 
 cases the farmers' claims were made void, and 
 some deputies who went to lay a protest before 
 the Governor of the Cape in 1847 were refused 
 an interview by Sir Henry Pottinger, on the 
 ground that he was very busy and was just 
 about to resign his post and go home. Before 
 we leave Natal and follow the trekkers back 
 across the Drakensberg, it must be mentioned 
 that Panda was made an independent sovereign 
 by the British, and given a free hand to recon- 
 struct the Zulu power, and forge the weapon 
 that was used by Cetewayo to inflict disaster 
 on South Africa and the Imperial forces. 
 
 After the British seizure of Natal, the Boers, 
 as has been said, recrossed the Drakensberg in 
 large numbers, and many of them trekked to 
 
in South Africa 99 
 
 the country round Philippolis, a town lying 
 near the Orange River, but on its northern 
 side. This territory had already been colonised 
 by farmers from the Colesberg district of the 
 British colony. They had crossed the river in 
 search of grazing lands, and had bought or 
 leased ground from the Griquas, under Adam 
 Kok, who claimed proprietary rights there. 
 These farmers were as a rule loyal to the 
 British flag. As they had lived far from the 
 eastern frontier they had not suffered from the 
 Kaffir invasion, or understood the folly of Lord 
 Glenelg's subsequent decision. They had 
 owned no slaves, and so were not disgusted 
 by the injustice with which the compensation 
 money had been awarded and doled out, and 
 finally, owing to their remote position in the 
 northern uplands, they had heard little of the 
 misrepresentations and libels which had been 
 circulated and believed in England about the 
 Dutch treatment of the natives. Between 
 them and the Boers, who had left Natal more 
 deeply embittered than ever against British 
 rule, there was little sympathy at first, so that 
 the Dutch population around Philippolis was 
 split into two parties, one loyal, and one hostile 
 to the British flag. Mr. Justice Menzies, on 
 
lOO The English and the Dutch 
 
 arriving at Colesberg on circuit, soon after the 
 arrival of the Natal Boers, heard that the 
 extreme party of the Philippolis farmers were 
 determined to set up a free Republic north 
 of the Orange River. The learned judge 
 decided that no time was to be lost. He 
 crossed the Orange, and with a fine combina- 
 tion of legal precision and large-minded com- 
 prehensiveness, declared the whole country 
 from the 22nd degree of longitude eastward 
 to the Indian Ocean, and from the Orange 
 River northward to the 25th parallel of latitude, 
 — except the lands of the Portuguese and the 
 native tribes, — to be subject to Her Britannic 
 Majesty. Sir George Napier, however, primly 
 pointed out that sovereignty carried responsi- 
 bility with it, and the judge's proclamation 
 was repudiated, so that this incident is only 
 instructive as the beginning of British vacilla- 
 tion north of the Orange. A little later some 
 loyal farmers on the Riet River, farther north, 
 sent a deputation to the British Commissioners 
 in Natal, and definitely asked to be allowed to 
 submit to the Queen's authority. But the 
 ** no-extension " mood still dominated English 
 policy, and no action was taken. 
 
 The Imperial Government, however, though 
 
in South Africa loi 
 
 It refused to extend its responsibilities and 
 expenses, now carried out a plan which had 
 been suggested by Dr. Philip, and begun by- 
 Sir Benjamin D'Urban, but had remained in 
 abeyance owing to the Kaffir war and other 
 interruptions. This was the establishment of 
 a ring of native States bound by treaty with 
 the colony. A treaty had already been made 
 between Sir Benjamin D'Urban and Andries 
 Waterboer, a Griqua captain on the Orange 
 River, and according to its terms Waterboer 
 received ;^ioo a year for himself, /^^o for a 
 mission school, and 200 muskets and an annual 
 supply of ammunition. The completion of the 
 plan was now thought to be very necessary 
 owing to the spreading of the emigrant Boers. 
 It was believed that by the formation of a chain 
 of native treaty States all round the borders of 
 the colony further emigration would be checked. 
 It need hardly be said that this expectation was 
 not fulfilled, while in other respects the native 
 treaty States proved not only a failure, but a 
 cause of much bloodshed and disaster. Look- 
 ing back on our native policy In later years, Sir 
 Bartle Frere summed it up with his usual terse 
 lucidity. A few weeks before the beginning of 
 the Zulu war he wrote as follows to Sir Michael 
 
I02 The English and the Dutch 
 
 Hicks Beach, then Colonial Secretary: — ** We 
 have repeatedly attempted to make a sort of 
 Black Alsatia outside our own border, where 
 the Kaffir chiefs might harbour any amount 
 of barbarism, from which those natives who 
 preferred civilisation might escape into our 
 colony. We can reckon in the frontier history 
 of the Cape Colony at least four or five such 
 
 attempts The result has always been 
 
 exactly the same. The natives do not became 
 less barbarous, but they become much more 
 dangerous." The native chiefs were given 
 money, arms, and ammunition, and made good 
 use of the shadow of power w^hich was shed 
 over them by their ** alliance " with Great 
 Britain to consolidate and add to their re- 
 sources. On the other hand, they were not 
 sufficiently advanced to understand the nature 
 of a contract, and readily agreed to terms which 
 did not bind them for a moment longer than 
 was convenient. No authorised British Re- 
 sidents were sent to live with and control them, 
 but missionaries gladly went to their kraals, 
 and made, as usual in those days, the un- 
 fortunate mistake of devoting at least as much 
 energy to politics as to the spread of the 
 gospel. Sir George Clerk, who was sent in 
 
in South Africa 103 
 
 1853 to examine the condition of affairs in the 
 country beyond the Orange River, sent an 
 interesting report to the Minister at home, in 
 the course of which he remarked that, ** in- 
 stead of the humble missionary going forth, 
 trusting to his pious life, and to the example 
 of his simple, disinterested avocations, entirely 
 divested of secular views, it has too often 
 happened not only that a trafficking mercantile 
 undertaking has, as a means of support, been 
 projected by him, or enjoined by his Society, 
 but that he has assumed such a position at the 
 head of a tribe, or a clan, seeking only to use 
 him to assist their aims of territorial aggrandise- 
 ment, as to place in his hands considerable 
 influence over the politics and position of the 
 chief. Unfortunately, in such cases, the mis- 
 sionary's view of policy, generally speaking, 
 has been directed to obtaining, in the name of 
 his sect, large grants of land, which gave to the 
 Society the appearance of being held in high 
 consideration for its own sake. It is not long 
 ago that on the British authorities discovering 
 that the political intrigues of a Wesleyan mis- 
 sionary, settled among a Kaffir tribe in this 
 territory, were incompatible with the peace of 
 the country, and advising him to desist from 
 
I04 The English and the Dutch 
 
 employing himself in so objectionable a manner, 
 they were informed by him that, as a British 
 subject, he 'knew his constitutional rights, and 
 would continue to exercise them.' Such con- 
 duct and assertions are no doubt preposterous." 
 
 Such was the system, a Black Alsatia tem- 
 pered by '* preposterous " missionaries, that 
 was now established as a master-stroke of 
 colonial policy, to ensure peace on the border 
 without violating the '' no-extension " dogma. 
 The treaty with Andries Waterboer, who held 
 the ground on the west of the junction of the 
 Modder with the Orange, and a small triangle 
 to the east of this point, has already been 
 mentioned. Eastward of Waterboer, another 
 Griqua captain, Adam Kok, was established to 
 rule over the country round Philippolis already 
 colonised by emigrant farmers ; farther east, 
 Moshesh, a Basuto chief sufficiently enlightened 
 to show great diplomatic astuteness, was 
 honoured with an '' alliance " with Great 
 Britain, and the chain was carried on to the 
 Indian Ocean by Faku, a Pondo chief. 
 
 The immediate result of this arrangement, 
 which was made in 1843, ^^^ to exasperate 
 the Boers across the Orange, who were natur- 
 ally enraged by the mere notion that they 
 
in South Africa 105 
 
 should be made the subjects of the Griquas 
 and Basutos. It very soon became evident 
 that the new scheme was not at all likely to 
 further the interests of peace, and when Sir 
 Peregrine Maitland, who was now governor 
 at the Cape, assured Adam Kok that he would 
 be supported by British arms if attacked, his 
 conduct became intolerably overbearing. It 
 was not likely that the Boers, who had sacri- 
 ficed and suffered so much in order to escape 
 British government, would submit to the 
 domination of a petty Griqua chieftain without 
 a struggle. Matters came to a head when 
 Kok sent an armed force to arrest a farmer 
 who had ignored his sovereignty, and the 
 Griquas, finding that the farmer was absent, 
 abused his wife roundly and stole his ammuni- 
 tion. The Boers turned out and formed a 
 laager, but were enticed out into the open by 
 a stratagem, and were forced to surrender to 
 the British troops who had been sent to the 
 support of our "ally." It has been said that 
 many of the Boers of this district were loyal to 
 Great Britain, and had indeed invited the 
 extension of British sovereignty to their dis- 
 trict. Some of these now took an oath of 
 allegiance, while those who had suffered from 
 
io6 The English and the Dutch 
 
 the emancipation and the sixth Kaffir war, and 
 had been driven out of Natal, still stuck to 
 their determination to avoid the British flag, 
 and trekked northward to the Winburg district. 
 It was evident to Sir Peregrine Maitland 
 that the original plan of the treaty States was 
 impracticable, and that an attempt to impose 
 Griqua and Basuto rulers on men of European 
 extraction could only end in disaster. He held 
 a great palaver at Touwfontein, where he met 
 Boer representatives, neighbouring chiefs, and 
 their missionary advisers. After much dis- 
 cussion it was arranged that the Griqua terri- 
 tory was to be divided into two districts. In 
 one of them the land was to be inalienable from 
 the Griquas, and Adam Kok was to play at 
 sovereignty. In the other, the government 
 was to be practically in the hands of the 
 British Resident, and land might be held by 
 Europeans, who, however, had to pay a 
 quit-rent, which was to be divided between 
 the Resident and the titular sovereign. The 
 Boers submitted to this arrangement, though 
 the land that they held had either been vacant 
 when they occupied it, or had been bought 
 from the Griquas. The same sort of diffi- 
 culty had arisen in the territory of Moshesh, 
 
in South Africa 107 
 
 where the Dutch farmers who had settled 
 along the Caledon strongly objected to ac- 
 knowledging the sway of a heathen Basuto. 
 But Sir Peregrine Maitland's efforts to make 
 a similar arrangement with Moshesh were 
 baffled by the astute savage, who already 
 began to show himself a master of the diplo- 
 matic art of carrying on negotiations with 
 every profession of goodwill and desire to meet 
 everybody's wishes, while steadily ignoring the 
 real point at issue. 
 
 Meanwhile the Boer emigrants were gradually 
 moving northwards. Potgieter, who had re- 
 tired to Potchefstroom during the war in Natal, 
 trekked farther up to Zoutpansberg in 1845, 
 and with his followers colonised the district 
 south of the Limpopo. He was a far-seeing 
 leader, and always had a keen eye to the possi- 
 bility of opening up a trade with the Portuguese 
 at Delagoa Bay, and forming a State in every 
 way independent of the English at the Cape. 
 The farms that his party left at Potchefstroom 
 were gradually occupied by the irreconcileables 
 who came up from the Philippolis district to 
 Natal. 
 
 A year later the Cape Colony began to reap 
 the harvest that Dr. Philip and Lord Glenelg 
 
io8 The English and the Dutch 
 
 had sown. The eastern frontier, where Sir 
 Benjamin D'Urban's policy had been reversed 
 and his settlement upset, had been for some 
 time practically in a state of war. The Kaffirs, 
 encouraged by a system which had apparently 
 been specially designed to provide them with 
 fat farms to ravage and helpless colonists to 
 murder, made the most of their opportunities, 
 plundering and slaying right and left. The 
 rescue of a Kaffir who had been arrested for 
 theft, and the refusal of Sandile, one of the 
 leading chiefs, to give up the offenders, led to 
 the seventh Kaffir war, which, — after various 
 disasters had occurred, necessitating the calling 
 out of the whole burgher force, and the eastern 
 settlers had been obliged to forsake all their 
 property and crowd into the towns for protec- 
 tion, — was ended by a mock submission, with 
 a view to gaining time and recruiting their 
 resources, on the part of the Kaffir chiefs. 
 Sir Peregrine Maitland, though the war was 
 a necessary consequence of Lord Glenelg's 
 pseudo-philanthropic bungling, was recalled, and 
 was succeeded in 1847 by Sir Harry Smith, an 
 able officer who had served at the Cape under 
 Sir Benjamin D' Urban. 
 
 Sir Harry Smith's appointment was the 
 
in South Africa 109 
 
 signal for one of those somersaults in our 
 Imperial policy which are so puzzling to steady- 
 going folk like the Dutch Boers. Our Ministers 
 had asserted over and over again that the 
 colony was not to be extended beyond the 
 Orange River. Natal had only been made 
 British when our hand had been forced by the 
 evident intention of the Boers to establish an 
 independent trade by sea, and the petition of 
 the loyal farmers on the Riet River to be taken 
 under the aegis of British sovereignty had been 
 disregarded. Now the *' no-extension" mood 
 made way for the ** forward" policy, which had 
 been so often disclaimed. Sir Harry Smith 
 began by extending the border of the colony 
 on the east to the Keiskama, and establishing 
 the dependent State of British Kaffraria be- 
 tween the Keiskama and the Kei under a 
 British commissioner. The treaty States on 
 the north of the Orange were at once recognised 
 by Sir Harry to be an impracticable absurdity, 
 and he hastened to overturn the whole arrange- 
 ment with his usual impetuous energy. He 
 met Adam Kok at Bloemfontein, and gave him 
 to understand that the whites in the country 
 must be directly under the Queen's sovereignty. 
 Kok, who did not understand that an Imperial 
 
1 1 o The English and the Dutch 
 
 somersault had been turned, and that all arrange- 
 ments made by the former management were 
 cancelled, naturally talked big about his rights 
 as an independent sovereign in alliance with 
 Her Britannic Majesty, whereupon Sir Harry 
 threatened to have him tied up to a beam in the 
 room in which they were sitting, and the unfor- 
 tunate captain could only consent to having 
 his ** sovereignty " restricted to the Griqua 
 preserve. Moshesh, the Basuto, seeing that he 
 had now to deal with a man prepared to brush 
 treaties and diplomatic artifices aside like cob- 
 webs, and also perhaps seeing that another 
 change of policy might shortly restore his 
 position, also consented to accepting the Queen 
 as his sovereign instead of his ally, though he 
 carefully avoided any definite arrangement as 
 to the boundaries of his territory. 
 
 Sir Harry now proceeded to the question of 
 the Boers, but here he had a different stamp of 
 man to deal with. Whatever acrobatic feats 
 British policy might perform, the Boers held 
 steadily to the independence that they had come 
 out into the wilderness for to seek. Many of 
 them had fought under Sir Harry in the sixth 
 Kaffir war, and they respected him as a brave 
 and skilful officer and loved him as an honest 
 
in South Africa 1 1 1 
 
 man who had never slandered or slighted them. 
 But they did not mean to return to the British 
 fold at the mere whistle of this shepherd, who 
 might at any moment be dismissed to make 
 room for a bungler of the Glenelg school. Sir 
 Harry did not perceive these things. He 
 thought that by the mere influence of his per- 
 sonal popularity and genial bonhomie he could 
 make the Boers forget all that had gone before, 
 and he overrated the power of the small minority 
 of farmers who were on his side. He met 
 Pretorius in Natal, and showed him a copy of a 
 document proclaiming the Queen's sovereignty 
 over the whole country occupied by the 
 emigrants, and Pretorius assured him that if 
 it were published the Boers would either resist 
 it in arms or trek farther north. But he 
 thought he knew more about the Boers than 
 Pretorius, and was as usual in too much of a 
 hurry to look before he leapt. He narrowed 
 the sweep of his net a little, however, and in 
 February 1848 proclaimed the land between 
 the Vaal, the Orange, and the Kathlamba 
 Mountains a British territory under the title 
 of the Orange River Sovereignty. 
 
 The Boers did not move hastily. It was not 
 until the following May that the farmers of the 
 
112 The English and the Dutch 
 
 Winburg district decided that they would not 
 submit without a struggle, and sent to their 
 kinsmen across the Vaal for help. The Trans- 
 vaal district had not been Included In the 
 proclamation, but the farmers were very ready 
 to come to the rescue of those who, after all 
 these years of wandering, strife, and hardship, 
 found themselves once more subject to British 
 rule. Andrles Pretorius, who had led the Boers 
 against Dingan, was elected commandant- 
 general, and advanced against Bloemfontein, 
 the seat of British government. Mean- 
 
 while the English authorities seem to have 
 forgotten that a forward policy requires a 
 certain amount of support. The governor, 
 having issued a proclamation which, as he 
 had been expressly told by the Boer general, 
 was certain to cause trouble, had hurried off to 
 Cape Town, leaving Major Warden, the new 
 British Resident, supported only by a handful 
 of about 50 Hottentot soldiers, with the result 
 that as soon as the Boer forces appeared British 
 authority could only beat an undignified retreat 
 across the Orange. Sir Harry Smith at once 
 collected a large force and marched back to the 
 new Sovereignty. He still trusted so fully to 
 his personal influence with the Boers that he 
 
in South Africa 113 
 
 did not believe that they would fight against 
 him. When his army came near to the position 
 held by the Boers at Boomplatz, he rode on 
 ahead with only a small escort, apparently 
 believing that at the mere sight of him the 
 farmers would lay down their arms. He was 
 undeceived by a well-aimed volley which sent 
 him and his escort hurriedly back, with a few 
 empty saddles, to the main column, and having 
 expressed his surprise in a few vigorous oaths, 
 he led his force to the attack with his usual 
 dash and ability, and after a series of very sharp 
 skirmishes defeated the Boers at every point. 
 This battle of Boomplatz was fought on August 
 29th, 1848, and broke the Boer resistance for 
 the time being. On the next day two stragglers 
 were caught by the English, and were court- 
 martialled and shot. One was a British deserter 
 who had deceived both sides and deserved his 
 sentence. But the execution of the other, a 
 young Boer, was quite unjustified, and is said 
 to have been regretted afterwards by Sir Harry 
 Smith, though he maintained that it prevented 
 further resistance. The Orange River Sove- 
 reignty was now established and Bloemfontein 
 was more strongly garrisoned. Many of the 
 Orange River Boers trekked away to the north 
 
1 1 4 The English and the Dutch 
 
 of the Vaal, and the farms that they left were 
 taken by immigrants from the Colony, many of 
 them Englishmen, so that the loyal minority 
 among the farmers was materially strengthened. 
 The British power in the Orange River 
 Sovereignty, however, was only an ineffective 
 shadow. Hastily set up by Sir Harry Smith's 
 impetuosity, it never was properly supported, 
 and Major Warden, the British Resident, was 
 expected to preserve order among recalcitrant 
 Boers and encroaching Basutos with a hope- 
 lessly inadequate force, while the emigrants 
 across the Vaal were only waiting their oppor- 
 tunity to secure acknowledged independence 
 for themselves and if possible for their kinsmen 
 in the Sovereignty. Fighting among the vari- 
 ous Basuto clans began in 1849. ^^ was caused 
 chiefly by an attempt to settle conflicting claims, 
 dating from the days of the '' treaty " States, to 
 pieces of land, and the natives, none of whom 
 were pleased with the settlement, proceeded to 
 fight the matter out among themselves, defying 
 the Imperial authority. In 185 1 Major Warden, 
 acting on the instructions of the governor, — who 
 now had his hands full owing to the outbreak 
 of the eighth Kaflir war at the end of 1850, — 
 decided to interfere and impose peace upon the 
 
in South Africa 1 1 5 
 
 clansmen. In doing so he went against the 
 general opinion of the settlers, who knew that 
 they would have to bear the brunt of the con- 
 flict and its consequences. A memorial that 
 was addressed to the authorities a year later 
 summed up the position as follows : — ** In our 
 opinion the troubles and misfortunes which have 
 befallen the Sovereignty are clearly attributable 
 to our uncalled-for interference in the quarrels 
 of the numerous and powerful native tribes who 
 surround us. . . . To make such an attempt 
 when we have scarcely a sufficiency of troops 
 to protect the town and fort of Bloemfontein 
 we deem peculiarly impolitic and unfortunate." 
 As to the burghers, '' everyone who complies 
 with the call on his services in the field not only 
 subjects himself to innumerable hardships, 
 besides personal risk, but, moreover, exposes 
 himself to be plundered and ruined by the 
 tribe against whom he has acted. ... He can- 
 not comprehend or appreciate the motives which 
 could induce the Government of so powerful a 
 nation as Great Britain is represented to be, to 
 call out farmers from their homes and lawful 
 employments at such a sacrifice on the occur- 
 rence of every petty squabble among native 
 tribes." 
 
1 1 6 The English and the Dutch 
 
 The trouble had been caused by the slipshod 
 manner in which the land question had been 
 dealt with at the time of the establishment of 
 the treaty States, and again later when they 
 were reduced to the position of dependencies, 
 and the Boer farmers were irritated by being 
 called out to clean up the British Government's 
 messes. The call to arms was not heartily 
 answered, and Major Warden's little force was 
 defeated by one of the Basuto chiefs at 
 Viervoet. After this, the country was in a 
 state of anarchy and war. The Basutos 
 ravaged the farms of those Boers who had 
 turned out to support the Government. Major 
 Warden had no force, and remained helpless at 
 Bloemfontein, and Sir Harry Smith had the 
 eighth Kaffir war on his hands and could not 
 reinforce the Sovereignty. Under these circum- 
 stances, the Boers having once more received 
 satisfactory proofs, in their opinion, of the 
 futility of British government, decided to appeal 
 to Pretorius, who had been in the Transvaal, 
 with a reward of ^2000 on his head, since the 
 battle of Boomplatz. On August 25th, 1851, a 
 memorial was signed at Winburg by the anti- 
 British Boers of the Sovereignty asking Pre- 
 torius to cross the Vaal and take over the 
 
in South Africa 1 1 7 
 
 government of the country. Moshesh the 
 Basuto, who knew that his old allies, the 
 English, had quite enough to do in Kaffraria, 
 joined in the invitation, and Pretorius wrote to 
 Major Warden to the effect that *'at the 
 request of Moshesh and other chiefs, as well as 
 of many white inhabitants, he had been in- 
 structed by the Council of War and a large 
 public meeting to proceed to the Sovereignty, 
 and there devise measures for the restoration 
 of peace and the prevention of such ruin as the 
 Cape Colony then exhibited." The Cape 
 Colony was now reaping the aftermath of Lord 
 Glenelg's harvest ; the eighth Kaffir war lasted 
 more than two years, from the end of 1850 well 
 into 1853, and was a very bloody and expensive 
 struggle. Sir Harry Smith, however, managed 
 to compromise matters with Pretorius by grant- 
 ing a definite acknowledgment of the indepen- 
 dence of the Transvaal Boers, who had hitherto 
 been, nominally and in the eye of the law, 
 British subjects. The *' no-extension " mood 
 was beginning to get the upper hand again, and 
 the Imperial Government had already declared 
 that it would not add a square inch to its 
 territory in South Africa. All hope of estab- 
 lishing a sovereignty over the Transvaal was 
 
1 1 8 The English and the Dutch 
 
 therefore out of the question until the next 
 somersault In Imperial policy, and the authori- 
 ties were glad to purchase peace in the Orange 
 River territory by formally granting inde- 
 pendence to the Transvaal. An English com- 
 missioner met Pretorius at a farm near the Sand 
 River, and in January 1852 the Sand River 
 Convention was signed, which "guaranteed in 
 the fullest manner, on the part of the British 
 Government, to the emigrant farmers beyond 
 the Vaal River the right to manage their own 
 affairs and to govern themselves according to 
 their own laws, without any interference on the 
 part of the British Government ; and that no 
 encroachment should be made by the said 
 Government on the territory north of the Vaal 
 River." Other clauses provided for the pro- 
 hibition of slavery In the new State, and for its 
 right to buy arms and ammunition without 
 restriction in the Cape Colony ; and in the 
 second article the British disclaimed **all 
 alliances with whomsoever of the coloured 
 nations north of the Vaal River." The con- 
 vention was signed by the Governor of the 
 Cape, confirmed by the Minister at home, and 
 ratified by the Boer Volksraad, and the 
 Transvaal territory thus had Its independence 
 
in South Africa 119 
 
 acknowledged at last, and became the South 
 African Republic. It had all through been 
 beyond the reach of the Imperial arm, and so 
 had been colonised by all the most irrecon- 
 cileable of the emigrants, who had trekked into 
 it from the Orange River district and Natal to 
 avoid British authority. Now that its inde- 
 pendence was acknowledged, many of the anti- 
 English Boers of the Orange River Sovereignty 
 crossed the Vaal, so that the loyal party in 
 the Sovereignty thus again became relatively 
 stronger, though the tedious war in which they 
 had been involved with the Basuto chiefs did 
 not increase their enthusiasm for British 
 methods of government. 
 
 Sir George Cathcart had become governor 
 in March 1852. As soon as affairs on the 
 Kaffir frontier allowed him to move, he marched 
 against the Basutos, and met with a reverse 
 which the politic submission of Moshesh enabled 
 him to describe as a victory. It was evident, 
 however, that Sir Harry Smith's impetuousity 
 had forced the Imperial authorities to bite off a 
 larger mouthful than they could chew without a 
 good deal of trouble and expense, such as they 
 were not prepared to face. The " no-exten- 
 sion " mood was therefore emphasised into a 
 
I20 The English and the Dutch 
 
 policy of ** scuttle." Sir George Cathcart con- 
 sidered that by the establishment of two strong 
 Dutch States, which were to unite if they 
 pleased, on the frontier, the peace and comfort 
 of the colony would be easily and cheaply 
 secured, and that the Basuto and Zulu powers 
 would act as a check to prevent the Boer com- 
 munities from growing too fast. He wrote, in 
 October 1852, to the Secretary of State 
 suggesting that the territory of the colony 
 should be limited by the Orange River, arguing 
 as follows in favour of this new somersault : — 
 ** If the British Government were prepared to 
 do this, not by any half measure but by an 
 unreserved grant and declaration of independ- 
 ence, I think it would not be difficult to bring 
 about an amalgamation of the Boer population 
 on both sides of the Vaal. Thus a sufficientlv 
 organised and respectable, though Republican, 
 government might be formed. An acknowledged 
 foreign State . . . would be far more easily, 
 effectually, and economically controlled by 
 respect for the powers of Her Majesty's armed 
 force within the colony, and form a more secure 
 barrier against barbarians from without than 
 can ever be accomplished by British political 
 interference and attempted government without 
 
in South Africa 121 
 
 an expensive military government for its 
 support." With regard to the Zulus and 
 Basutos, Sir George Cathcart wrote In the 
 following year that '' Panda and Moshesh 
 [chiefs of these savage nations] are great friends 
 and allies, and when the present Sovereignty 
 united with the independent emigrant Boers 
 form one powerful State, the attention of the 
 great chiefs will be turned outwards." 
 
 It seemed a capital plan to the then dominant 
 mood of Imperial policy. A balance of power 
 was to be established between the Boers on the 
 one hand and the Zulus and Basutos on the 
 other, everybody's attention was to be ''turned 
 outwards," and the colony Inside was to dwell 
 happily, peacefully, and cheaply. There were 
 one or two drawbacks, such as the loyalty of 
 many of the Orange River inhabitants, and the 
 fact that the British authorities, having raised 
 Moshesh into a formidable power, were not 
 likely to find that his neighbours were anxious 
 to be left at his mercy until the same power 
 which raised him up with the prestige of its 
 ** alliance" had at least blunted his claws. Sir 
 George Clerk, an able and experienced official, 
 was sent as commissioner to arrange the 
 cession with the nearest possible approach to a 
 
122 The English and the Dutch 
 
 show of decency. He found a strong party 
 averse to the withdrawal of British authority ; 
 many of them were Englishmen, and had come 
 across the Orange from the colony since the 
 establishment of the Sovereignty ; but the loyal 
 Dutchmen had an even stronger case, since 
 they had been faithful to the British Govern- 
 ment through weal and through woe, and had 
 thus earned the wrath of their irreconcileably 
 Republican kinsmen, and were now to be handed 
 over to the rule of those whose friendship they 
 had forfeited through their loyalty. Sir George 
 Clerk, however, decided that nothing could be 
 weaker than British authority, under its present 
 circumstances, in the Sovereignty. His report 
 to the Duke of Newcastle shows up the futility 
 of British policy and administration in South 
 Africa with merciless frankness. " One of the 
 reasons," he writes, *' generally assigned for 
 extending British dominion in South Africa 
 has been to prevent the extinction of the rights 
 of the natives. The knowledge that British 
 dominion has thus been enlarged proves accept- 
 able to England. The extension makes mani- 
 fest our power — the motive, our benevolence. 
 After a while the measure becomes costly, 
 inquiry follows, and it then is evident that the 
 
in South Africa 123 
 
 conquest has been the mere occupation of wastes 
 almost uninhabitable, attended with constant 
 inconvenience and expense to the State, arising 
 from nothing else than the extinction of the 
 rights of those natives, to protect whom was 
 the motive or the pretext of the extension of 
 authority." So much for our policy in general. 
 With regard to the Orange River Sovereignty, 
 he remarks that " the assertion of British 
 authority would be ludicrous were it not 
 attended with considerable risk of entangle- 
 ment in strife, reprisals, and warfare. It con- 
 sists, in fact, in a dozen of Englishmen stuck 
 down in this remote territory calling themselves 
 a government, with 90,000 Kaffirs immediately 
 around ; a police force such as I have described ; 
 an insufficient revenue ; no credit ; a land- 
 jobbing character ; with a detachment of troops 
 consisting of 150 British infantry and 50 
 Hottentot cavalry in a starved country whose 
 nearest support is 400 miles off." 
 
 While he was thus outspoken on the subject 
 of the British government of the Sovereignty, 
 Sir George Clerk, like Sir Benjamin D'Urban 
 and Sir Bartle Frere, and other able men who 
 have taken the trouble to study them, had a 
 high opinion of the Boers. In his reply to a 
 
124 "^^^ English and the Dutch 
 
 Pecksniffian memorial from the English Inhabi- 
 tants of the Sovereignty, representing, among 
 other things, that the withdrawal of British 
 power would cause the demoralisation of the 
 community, he wrote : '' I am satisfied, judging 
 from all experience of Dutch communities, that 
 there Is no ground for the apprehension that 
 religion and morality will suffer by the adminis- 
 tration falling Into such hands. . . . Most of 
 you, I have no doubt, will agree with me that 
 among their good qualities are such as these, 
 namely, a fostering regard for all domestic ties, 
 kind treatment of servants and dependants, and 
 a sincere respect for religious teachers." 
 
 Sir George Clerk performed his very un- 
 pleasant task as best he could. He dissolved 
 meetings of the loyal party, encouraged the 
 antl-Engllsh agitators, and finally succeeded 
 in brlno^Ino; about the withdrawal of British 
 authority ; and a convention similar to the 
 Sand River Convention was signed in February 
 1854, guaranteeing the Independence of the 
 new Orange River Free State. Sir George 
 Clerk's high opinion of the Boers was more 
 than justified by the history of this community. 
 Sir George Grey, during his governorship, 
 wrote to Lord John Russell that the ''inhabi- 
 
in South Africa 125 
 
 tants of the Free State have formed a Govern- 
 ment which would do credit to any country. 
 The condition of that State is one which is not 
 only very satisfactory, but which reflects the 
 greatest credit on the energy, prudence, and 
 steadfastness of the people." 
 
126 The English and the Dutch 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 From the Establishment of the Dutch 
 Republics to the Annexation of the 
 Transvaal — 1854 to 1877 
 
 The emigrant farmers had thus after nearly 
 twenty years of wandering and hardship gained 
 the formal acknowledgment of their independ- 
 ence, but it cannot be said that the two free 
 States, which had been set up by the Sand 
 River Convention of 1852 and the Convention 
 by which British authority was withdrav/n from 
 the Orange River Sovereignty in 1854, started 
 with favourable prospects. The Orange River 
 Free State had been left by the Imperial 
 ''scuttle" face to face with Moshesh, a savage 
 chief who had inflicted a severe check on British 
 troops, and could put so strong a force of well- 
 armed warriors into the field, that the farmers 
 might well despair of maintaining their position 
 against him. They had a long-standing quarrel 
 with him on the subject of land ; this quarrel 
 
in South Africa 127 
 
 was a direct legacy from British '* treaty State" 
 policy and the Sovereignty administration, 
 which, with its "insufficient revenue, no credit, 
 and land-jobbing character," had been unable to 
 force Moshesh to restrict his clansmen to the 
 Basuto preserve and to keep them from plunder- 
 ing the loyal farmers. The land in question hacT 
 been assigned to Moshesh at the time of his ele- 
 vation to the position of a sovereign ''allied" with 
 Great Britain, and had been taken away again 
 and incorporated with the Orange River Sove- 
 reignty, of which the Free State was the suc- 
 cessor, when Sir Harry Smith overturned the 
 whole *' treaty State" arrangement. Moshesh, 
 however, had avoided definite ap^reements on the 
 subject as far as possible, and the Imperial 
 Government now left the farmers to fight the^ 
 matter out with him. 
 
 North of the Vaal, the Boers of the South ^ 
 African Republic had the Zulu power — which 
 was slowly recovering from the effect of the 
 crushing defeats in Dingan's days — on its flank, 
 and it was also, from the nature of the circum- 
 stances, peopled by a less solid and steady- 
 going class of settlers than the sister Republic. 
 Its population had been continually recruited 
 by irreconcileables who came up from Natal and 
 
128 The English and the Dutch 
 
 the Sovereignty to avoid British rule, and thus 
 the population had long been in a shifting and 
 restless state. There had also been a good 
 deal of jealousy between the leaders of the 
 various parties that had colonised the State, 
 and it was evident that some time must elapse 
 before the territory could settle down to a 
 condition of harmony and good order. In the 
 early days of the Transvaal settlement, before 
 its independence was formally acknowledged, 
 its inhabitants had the misfortune to earn the 
 bad opinion of Dr. Livingstone, the famous 
 missionary and explorer ; his emphatic views 
 on their behaviour were readily accepted in 
 England, and there can be no doubt that much 
 of the modern prejudice against the Boers is 
 due to the bias caused by Livingstone's writings. 
 It appears, however, that there was something 
 to be said on both sides. Good and great as 
 Dr. Livingstone was, he fell into the mistake 
 which has marred missionary enterprise in 
 South Africa from the first, that of political 
 meddling, and the Boers are supported by his 
 own confession in their assertion that he sup- 
 plied the natives with guns and ammunition. 
 
 Early in 1849 some deputies were sent by the 
 Dutch Reformed Church in Cape Colony to 
 
in South Africa 129 
 
 organise religious work among the Boers. Dr. 
 Livingstone met the deputies at Magalisberg 
 and asked them to get leave from the Boers 
 to station native teachers among the Bechuana 
 clans. The deputies record that they ''pro- 
 mised to speak with the commandants on the 
 subject, and accordingly did so, when they 
 declared themselves not opposed to the spread 
 of the gospel, but on the contrary willing to 
 
 assist in promoting it They stated, 
 
 however, that they could not comply with Dr. 
 Livingstone's request, because he provided the 
 natives with firearms and ammunition, adding 
 that, shortly before, the inhabitants of one kraal 
 had destroyed those of another by means of 
 firearms obtained from him. They declared 
 themselves ready to maintain this statement in 
 the presence of Dr. Livingstone. This we 
 communicated to him, on which he mentioned 
 that he had given some guns and ammunition 
 to a certain party who pretended that they were 
 going out on an elephant hunt, but who, instead 
 of doing so, had gone to attack a neighbouring 
 kraal. We therefore proposed to Dr. Living- 
 stone to meet the commandants, when the 
 question between him and them might be ex- 
 plained, and the matter respecting the station- 
 9 
 
130 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ing of native teachers be satisfactorily settled. 
 To this proposal he gave his consent. When 
 the commandants, however, came to our apart- 
 ment for the purpose of meeting Dr. Living- 
 stone, he was not to be found, having left the 
 place during the time of divine service. We 
 were afterwards informed that he had been 
 warmly disputing with some of the farmers, 
 telling them among other things that they were 
 British subjects." It is not to be wondered at 
 that the Boers were not eager to encourage a 
 missionary who supplied natives with firearms, 
 and, when they had agreed to a friendly con- 
 ference on the subject of missionary work, 
 broke out into irrelevant and tactless dis- 
 quisitions on their political status. As to 
 the wronofs which Dr. Livino^stone afterwards 
 thought that he suffered at the hands of the 
 Boer soldiers, who were engaged against a 
 native tribe under his patronage, the following 
 extract from a despatch from Sir George Cath- 
 cart shows that the matter did not seem serious 
 to the Governor of the Cape. Writing in Novem- 
 ber 1852, Sir George says : '* I have received a 
 long communication on this subject of the col- 
 lision between the Transvaal emigrants and 
 natives from a Dr, Livingstone, in which he com- 
 
in South Africa 131 
 
 plains of certain losses and Inconveniences he 
 has sustained, which do not amount to more 
 than the ordinary occurrences Incidental to a 
 state of war, or to which those who live In 
 remote regions of South Africa beyond Her 
 Majesty's dominions must be frequently liable." 
 With regard to their general treatment of the 
 natives In their territories, — who, by the way, 
 would have been slaughtered by the Zulus 
 and Matabele, if the Dutchmen had not Inter- 
 vened, — the rule of the Boers was firm, but 
 cannot be shown to have been generally harsh 
 or unjust. By refusing to treat them as if they 
 were already civilised, they earned the abuse of 
 Idealistic missionaries; but it Is no kindness to 
 a savage to allow him to steal ad libitum and to 
 give him guns with which to shoot his neigh- 
 bours. Their system is now accepted by modern 
 pioneers In South Africa. Mr. Shaw, in an 
 article in the National Review of last February, 
 devoted to an eulogy of the Chartered Com- 
 pany and Its work In Matabeleland, writes that 
 "a certain amount of enforced labour should be 
 required from the now useless and Idle black 
 races — paid for, of course, and regulated. The 
 Boers may be behind us In civilisation, but two 
 hundred years of experience has taught them, 
 
132 The English and the Dutch 
 
 as it has taught most African residents, the 
 way to treat the natives ; and although we have 
 sometimes to condemn the savage cruelty of the 
 Boer, yet the Kaffir servant of the Boer farmer 
 seems to be the most contented, cheerful, and 
 happy mortal one could wish to meet." The 
 Boers exacted a labour tax from the natives 
 whom they had rescued from extermination, 
 and this system was often misrepresented by 
 missionaries as a form of slavery. The Boers 
 contended that it was a fairer impost than the 
 hut tax levied by the Imperial Government, as 
 the labour was provided by the men, while the 
 hut tax only resulted in harder drudgery on the 
 part of the native women. 
 
 It has already been noted that Sir George 
 Cathcart thought that when the two Dutch 
 States had their freedom acknowledged, they 
 would unite their forces. He had no objection 
 to such a union, but on the contrary wrote in 
 November 1852 that, "with regard to the 
 emigrants on both sides of the Vaal, it is most 
 likely that, in the event of the abandonment of 
 the Sovereignty by her Majesty's Government, 
 they would coalesce and form one great Republic. 
 But I do not apprehend that any inconvenience 
 would result, but on the contrary that it would 
 
in South Africa 133 
 
 be a desirable consummation, because It Is easier 
 to deal with one head than two," etc. Such a 
 union would have been most desirable from 
 every point of view. It would not only have 
 consolidated the strength of the Dutchmen, but 
 also the wild and unsettled Boers of the Trans- 
 vaal would have benefited by the counsels of 
 the more steady farmers of the Orange River 
 State. Unfortunately, however. Internal dlssen-^ 
 slons In the Transvaal and jealousy between 
 the two Republics, which nearly led to civil 
 war, prevented union for some years ; and when 
 the question was at last approached In 1858, It 
 was found that the Imperial view of the matter 
 had turned one of the usual somersaults. Sir 
 George Cathcart, who advocated union, had 
 been succeeded by Sir George Grey, who 
 would not have It, and went so far as to state 
 that. If It were carried out, the conventions by 
 which the freedom of the two States had been 
 acknowledged and guaranteed would be ipso 
 facto annulled ; so that the Boers on both sides 
 of the Vaal were forced to drop the matter. 
 
 The Orange River Free State was not allowed 
 many years to gather its forces for the war with 
 the Basutos, which had been left to It as a 
 daninosa kerediias by the British Admlnlstra- 
 
134 ^^^ English and the Dutch 
 
 tlon. Moshesh, who had reluctantly consented 
 to the curtailment of his powers and territory by 
 Sir Harry Smith, could hardly be expected to 
 see that an arrangement made with one British 
 governor was more binding than one made with 
 his predecessor; and he clung to the pretensions 
 in which Sir George Napier's settlement seemed 
 to justify him. The Free State Boers who had 
 succeeded to the Sovereignty as it had been 
 established by Sir Harry Smith, could not 
 concede claims which included large tracts 
 covered by their farms, and still less could 
 they allow the Basutos to assert these claims 
 by pillaging the farms in question. Only war 
 could solve the dispute, and in 1858 the Boers 
 marched against the chief Basuto stronghold at 
 Thaba Bosigo. They defeated several Basuto 
 bands on their way, but were obliged to turn 
 back by the news that the savages had invaded 
 the State behind them, and were laying waste 
 the country which they had been forced to leave 
 unprotected. Unable to continue offensive 
 operations, the burghers of the Free State re- 
 quested the Cape Governor to act as mediator, 
 and Sir George Grey patched up a peace under 
 which a strip of the land that he coveted was con- 
 ceded to Moshesh. Moshesh, however, did not 
 
in South Africa i 3 5 
 
 appear at the conference which was assembled 
 to discuss terms, and evidently did not mean to 
 accept Sir George's award as final. 
 
 Not long after, Martimus Pretorius, who was 
 then President of the South African Republic, 
 was chosen as President of the Orange River 
 State. He o^ot six months' leave of absence 
 from the Transvaal Volksraad, and came across 
 the Vaal to help the burghers of the Free State. 
 He had a friendly meeting with Moshesh, who 
 was perhaps frightened by this evidence of the 
 close connection between the two States, and 
 the country grew and prospered under his 
 government. Adam Kok made over his rights 
 to the Free State and his followers sold their 
 farms to emigrants from the Cape Colony, and 
 moved off to settle in the territory now known 
 as Griqualand East ; but Moshesh would not 
 restrain the encroachments and thefts of his 
 followers, and received the messengers of the 
 Free State with insolent contempt ; he also 
 allowed his chiefs to visit with great severity 
 the sin of Jan Letele, a Basuto leader who had 
 supported the State in the former war. Mean- 
 while matters were further complicated by the 
 fact that another Imperial somersault had been 
 turned. Sir George Grey had not approved of 
 
136 The English and the Dutch 
 
 the conventions which acknowledged the Inde- 
 pendence of the Dutch States, and had, as we 
 have seen, prevented the union which was their 
 logical corollary. But Sir Philip Wodehouse, 
 who succeeded him, came out apparently deter- 
 mined to break them on the earliest opportunity. 
 Twelve days after his arrival at the Cape he 
 wrote to Pretorlus, who was still President of 
 the Free State, that if the depredations of Jan 
 Letele — so he described Letele's effort to de- 
 fend himself from the attacks of the followers 
 of Moshesh — were not suppressed, the British 
 authorities would be compelled to set aside 
 the existing treaties and make new arrange- 
 ments for the preservation of the peace of the 
 country. 
 
 In 1864, Jan Hendrik Brand became Presi- 
 dent of the Free State, and began his dis- 
 tinguished career, under which his country 
 prospered so well, by asking Sir Philip Wode- 
 house to mark off the boundary between the 
 State and the Basutos. In spite of his aggressive 
 attitude towards the Republic, Sir Philip decided 
 in its favour, confirming Sir Harry Smith s line 
 with very slight modifications, and addressed 
 a sharp reproof to Moshesh. ** I have," he 
 wrote, ''satisfied myself that the line known 
 
in South Africa 137 
 
 as the Warden line was so drawn as to do no 
 more, except in one portion, than preserve the 
 farms for which British certificates have been 
 given ; and, Hkewise, that up to the time of 
 the signing of the Aluval Treaty [Sir George 
 Grey's award in 1858] the rights of the owners 
 of the farms had not been questioned, nor their 
 possession disturbed. What is the present 
 state of affairs ? From one end of the line to 
 the other, and in most cases to a considerable 
 distance within the line, parties of your tribe, 
 without a pretence of right, and without any 
 formal declaration on your part, have squatted 
 on the various farms, .... and have by 
 intimidation driven off the lawful owners. 
 Everywhere are to be seen deserted and roof- 
 less farm-houses, with valuable orchards fast 
 going to destruction." 
 
 Moshesh now made a fine show of complying 
 with the governor's award, and did just enough 
 in that direction to make Sir Philip believe that 
 he had intervened with success. The burghers 
 of the Free State, however, were by this time 
 weary of Moshesh and his diplomatic double- 
 dealing, and though President Brand made 
 every effort to keep the peace, the Basuto's 
 contemptuous neglect of his representations 
 
138 The English and the Dutch 
 
 compelled him to declare war once more in 
 1865. By this time the population of the Free 
 State numbered some 35,000 of all ages and 
 sexes, while the Basutos were about five times 
 as many. The burghers were determined that 
 Moshesh must now be dealt with sharply and 
 once for all, and they turned out to do so in 
 full force. The Basutos made war on their old 
 system of avoiding the Boers and ravaging 
 the State behind them, but several of their 
 strongholds fell, and after a ten months' cam- 
 paign, Moshesh asked for peace, promising to 
 cede part of his territory. Having thus gained 
 breathing time and got in his harvest, he refused 
 to comply with the terms of peace, and in 1867 
 the war began again. The burghers attacked 
 the mountain fastnesses of the Basutos with 
 great bravery and vigour, and had succeeded in 
 reducing them all except Thaba Bosigo, the 
 chief stronghold, when Sir Philip Wodehouse 
 interfered and proclaimed the Basutos British 
 subjects. 
 
 This was a direct violation of the Conven- 
 tion of 1854, which stated that Her Majesty's 
 Government had no wish or intention to enter 
 thereafter into any treaties to the north of the 
 Orange River which might be prejudicial to the 
 
in South Africa 139 
 
 interests of the Free State. Sir Philip broke 
 the convention again by stopping the supply of 
 ammunition to the State from the colony ; but 
 In his eyes conventions and treaties were ap- 
 parently mere waste-paper. He had already in 
 1867, after the first peace between Moshesh and 
 the Free State had been concluded, written that 
 ''these large acquisitions of territory and popu- 
 lation tended to produce such Important 
 changes In the political positions of the several 
 Powers in this part of Africa as would fully 
 warrant a claim on the part of the British 
 Government, should necessity arise, of a right 
 to reconsider the bearings of the convention 
 entered Into with the Orange Free State on 
 the 23rd February 1854." He seems to have 
 thought that treaties were only valid as long as 
 the world stood still. He states his views with 
 startling frankness, appending an Instructive 
 list of precedents, in a despatch dated June ist, 
 1868 : " I cannot think that we Intended to 
 give up our right of self-defence, or to absolve 
 the Free State from the obligation to consult In 
 a general sense our wishes. If It expected a con- 
 tinuance of such benefits [stc] from us." (But 
 we had promised not to form treaties to the 
 north of the Orange, and the ''benefits" con- 
 
140 The English and the Dutch 
 
 sisted in leaving the Free State, against the 
 wish of many of its inhabitants, at the mercy of 
 Moshesh, who had just defeated a British force.) 
 ** The course of events," Sir Philip continues, 
 '' has given me reason to think that this view is 
 in accordance with the opinions of Her Majesty's 
 Government ; for it will be remembered that in 
 1858, when the two Boer Republics were con- 
 templating union. Sir George Grey, considering 
 that such an arrangement would be prejudicial, 
 effectually put a stop to it by declaring that he 
 would hold it equivalent to a nullification of the 
 conventions. Again in 1862, immediately after 
 my arrival in the colony, when there was reason 
 to apprehend that the Free State would make 
 war on Moshesh, I warned the President that 
 such a disturbance of the country would be con- 
 sidered by us as an unfriendly act, and that we 
 might be driven to set aside the existing treaties 
 and to take our own course in the protection of 
 our own interests. I reported this to Her 
 Majesty's Government on the ist February 
 1862, and received their approval on the 5th 
 April of that year. Again, in the early part of 
 the recent war," and so on. 
 
 It seems incredible to those who would fain 
 believe that England's Empire has been built 
 
in South Africa 141 
 
 up on good faith and honour, that a colonial 
 governor should be able to state gravely In 
 despatches that conventions solemnly entered 
 Into were binding only as long as It suited our 
 Imperial policy to maintain them, but It appears 
 that not only did Sir Philip Wodehouse hold 
 and act upon this view, but that the authorities 
 at home supported and encouraged it. He had 
 broken the convention with the Free State, and 
 the Colonial Office not only supported him in 
 this breach of good faith, but had consulted him 
 as to the expediency of overriding the Sand 
 River Convention with the Transvaal also. In 
 1868, the year In which he interfered, in the face 
 of solemn pledges, between the Free State and 
 the Basutos, Sir Philip wrote as follows in a 
 despatch to the Minister at home : — " Your 
 Grace will find that not very long ago I had 
 a correspondence with your predecessors on the 
 subject, which was closed by Lord Carnarvon's 
 confidential despatch of the 9th February 
 1867. His Lordship then requested me to 
 state whether I thought a suitable opportunity 
 had occurred of giving notice to the President 
 that Her Majesty's Government could not re- 
 gard the Convention of 1852 as any longer 
 binding on them .... I did not reply to that 
 
142 The English and the Dutch 
 
 communication, mainly because I did not know 
 what would be regarded as a suitable oppor- 
 tunity. One time is about as suitable as 
 another, and it is for Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment to decide," etc. etc. Sir Philip had 
 reason to be puzzled, and to wonder why the 
 Government should fash itself about a suitable 
 opportunity, for when nations and rulers are of 
 opinion that treaties are no more inviolable than 
 pie-crust, it is obvious that, as he says, **one 
 time is about as suitable as another." 
 
 Such, however, being the views of Her 
 Majesty's Government and her representative 
 at the Cape on the subject of the sanctity of 
 treaty obligations, the protest of the Orange 
 River Free State was naturally unheeded. Sir 
 Philip Wodehouse imposed terms of peace, 
 which robbed the burghers of most of the fruits 
 of their victory, and the Basutos were duly 
 accepted as British subjects. Apart from the 
 question of treaty obligations, the conduct of 
 the British authorities in thus interfering be- 
 tween the Free State and the savage power 
 which they had themselves built up and then 
 left to be dealt with by the Boers when they 
 found the task of breaking it too expensive, can 
 hardly be justified ; and the contention that 
 
in South Africa 143 
 
 their action was necessary in order to save the 
 Basuto from ''annihilation" is refuted by the 
 whole history of the Free State's patient and 
 moderate policy. 
 
 During these years in which the Free State 
 was struggling with Moshesh, the Boers on the 
 north of the Vaal were in a state of anarchy 
 and civil strife. The unsettled condition of the 
 inhabitants of the South African Republic after 
 their many years of wandering and strife could 
 hardly be expected to wear off in a few days, 
 and then, as now, they were unfortunate in the 
 matter of the new-comers who settled among 
 them. Then, being the frontier State, the 
 Transvaal was the happy hunting-ground of 
 wastrels and rascals of all races who were 
 fleeing from justice at the hands of the colonial 
 authorities, and lived in a semi-savage state on 
 its borders, their misdeeds and brutality being 
 of course taken by prejudiced witnesses as 
 specimens of Boer behaviour in general. Now, 
 the Transvaal has a mining community in its 
 midst. 
 
 The boundaries of the Republic had not 
 been defined by the Sand River Convention 
 of 1852. The British commissioners, who 
 arranged its details, filed without comment a 
 
144 The English and the Dutch 
 
 proclamation by Potgieter which claimed, as 
 the land won back from the Matabele, the 
 country as far west as the falls of the Orange 
 River, or, in other words, the greater part of 
 what is now British Bechuanaland, as well as 
 the present South African Republic. But just 
 after the signing of the convention, Andries 
 Pretorius met Owen, the surviving British 
 commissioner, at a dinner at Bloemfontein. 
 Toasts were duly honoured, and in the course 
 of the after-dinner conversation, the subject of 
 the convention was broached, and Pretorius 
 asked Owen, " How about our lower line, after 
 the Vaal river ends?" ''Oh," said Owen, 
 **you can have the Orange River down to the 
 sea, if you like," and two days after a sort of 
 codicil to the convention, containing this pro- 
 vision, was drawn up. It was not submitted to 
 the Cape Governor, and so never was ratified, 
 but this story gives not only an amusing picture 
 of the British commissioner giving away half 
 a continent in an outburst of after-dinner 
 generosity, but also a good illustration of the 
 hold which the '' no-extension " mood then had 
 on the minds of the British authorities. 
 
 The Republic being thus without definite 
 boundaries except on the south, was involved 
 
in South Africa 145 
 
 in continual disputes with the Zulus and its 
 other savaore nelorhbours. The Zulus were now 
 under the rule of Cetewayo, who had defeated 
 a rival brother, and established himself practi- 
 cally as king long before the death of Panda. 
 The memories of battfes with the Boers in the 
 early days in Natal were still fresh enough to 
 prevent the Zulus from attacking the Trans- 
 vaal, but the internal divisions among the 
 inhabitants of the Republic tied their hands, 
 and they lost both ground and prestige in a 
 war in the Zoutpansberg district, though it 
 was at last brought to an end by a defeat of 
 the encroaching natives. 
 
 In 1867 a very bright pebble with which a 
 child was found playing turned the whole 
 course of South African history and led to 
 another somersault in Imperial policy. It was 
 proved to be a diamond, and caused a vigorous 
 search, which resulted in the discovery of 
 diamond fields on both sides of the Vaal River. 
 On the northern bank the land that was found 
 to contain diamonds was claimed by the South 
 African Republic, the Barolong and other native 
 tribes, and Nicholas Waterboer, a Griqua, son 
 of Andries Waterboer, with whom a treaty 
 had been made by Sir Benjamin D' Urban. 
 
 10 
 
146 The English and the Dutch 
 
 Nicholas Waterboer also laid claim to some 
 ground on the south of the Vaal which had 
 been held by the Free State ever since it took 
 over the property and responsibilities of the 
 Orange River Sovereignty. When this ground 
 was found to be more rich in diamonds than 
 the field north of the Vaal, Waterboer was 
 advised by his agent, a clever Briton called 
 David Arnot, to sell his claim to the Imperial 
 Government. Any such arrangement was, of 
 course, contrary to the provisions of the Con- 
 vention of 1854, but it has already been seen 
 that the Imperial authorities did not allow this 
 document to stand in the way of any somer- 
 saults in which they desired to indulge. 
 Waterboer's offer was accepted, and in 1870 a 
 British officer was sent to act with a magis- 
 trate's authority at the diamond fields. 
 
 The British authorities now proposed that 
 arbitration should decide the question of Water- 
 boer's claim. President Brand of the Free 
 State, however, pointed out that there was 
 nothing to arbitrate about as far as the land 
 which Waterboer claimed on the south of the 
 Vaal was concerned, as it had been in the 
 possession of the State ever since it existed, 
 and many of the farms upon it were held under 
 
in South Africa 147 
 
 British titles dating from the days of the 
 Sovereignty. While negotiations were at this 
 stage, the fact that a British officer had been"^' 
 sent to exercise authority on the diamond field 
 encouraofed a few of the miners to refuse to 
 acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Free State. 
 The President called out a commando of 
 burghers, but Sir Henry Barkly, who was now 
 governor, wrote on March 20th, 1871, that it 
 was his '' fixed determination to repel force by 
 force, and to protect Her Majesty's subjects by 
 every means in his power from all interference 
 by the Free State authorities, whilst pursuing 
 their lawful calling in the territory claimed by 
 the chief Waterboer, as long as the question of 
 title to the territory was not disposed of by 
 competent authority." Having bought a claim 
 to their neighbour's territory, the British 
 authorities thus intimated that the said neigfh- 
 bour must expect war if he attempted to assert 
 his authority on the territory in question. The 
 Free State, however, maintained its attitude of 
 prudence and moderation, and withdrew the 
 commando. The Volksraad would not submit 
 the question of Waterboer's claim to any 
 umpires named, directly or indirectly, by Sir 
 Henry Barkly, but suggested that it might be 
 
148 The English and the Dutch 
 
 settled by the decision of the head of an inde- 
 pendent foreign Power. The authorities in 
 England, however, would not consent to such 
 an arrangement. 
 
 A few months later Sir Henry Barkly 
 received instructions to annex the land claimed 
 by Waterboer, ''provided that you issue no 
 such proclamation unless you have first ascer- 
 tained that the native chiefs and tribes claiming 
 the district so to be annexed are really entitled 
 thereto." Another condition was the consent of 
 the Cape Parliament to the incorporation of 
 the new territory with the Cape Colony ; in the 
 Parliament, however, a strong minority took 
 the view that the land should not be annexed 
 until the question of its ownership had been 
 definitely settled. An emissary from the Free 
 State who had meanwhile been sent to put the 
 rights and wrongs of the matter before the 
 authorities in London was referred back to the 
 Governor of the Cape. 
 
 In the meantime the South African Republic 
 had decided that the claim to the diamond- 
 iferous ground north of the Vaal should be 
 referred to arbitration. The position of the 
 Republic with regard to the dispute was, of 
 course, very different from that of the Free 
 
in South Africa 149 
 
 State, since, as has been already said, its 
 boundaries were never defined. The Barolong 
 and other native tribes that claimed the terri- 
 tory were supported by the Rev. Mr. Ludorf 
 and other missionaries. As to the methods of 
 these advocates, Mr. Theal writes as follows : — 
 ''It was natural that they [the Barolong] should 
 wish to get all the ground that they possibly 
 could, to be free of control and taxes. But it 
 would be difficult to write too harshly of some 
 of their European advisers : men who perverted 
 truth, and taught the chiefs and people to base 
 their pretensions on what was false ; whose 
 letters are loathsome compounds of deceit and 
 villainy, abuse of people more honest than 
 themselves, quotations from Holy Scripture, and 
 professions of devotion to the cause of philan- 
 thropy and justice to the poor, oppressed natives 
 of South Africa." 
 
 Such were the methods employed by the 
 opponents of the Transvaal before the commis- 
 sioners, while, on the other hand, the repre- 
 sentatives of the Republic made no attempt to 
 present their case properly, and the question, 
 which was ultimately referred to Mr. Keate, 
 Lieut. -Governor of Natal, was decided against 
 not only the South African Republic, but also 
 
150 The English and the Dutch 
 
 against the Orange River Free State, which 
 had not been represented before the commis- 
 
 ■^ioners. The Keate award cut off from the 
 South African Republic the territory occupied 
 by the Barolong and Battapin, and also whole 
 districts which contained farms on which the 
 earliest emigrants had settled, and, moreover, 
 lopped off a large slice from the Orange River 
 State, which had refused to admit that the 
 
 . Waterboer claim even admitted of argument. 
 
 Mr. Keate, of course, could only decide on 
 the evidence that was before him, and Water- 
 boer's case had been very skilfully put by 
 Arnot, who argued on the assumption that the 
 arranorements made at the time of the establish- 
 ment of the *' treaty" States were still valid, 
 and utterly ignored the fact that all these ar- 
 rangements had been abolished by Sir Harry 
 Smith after the subsequent somersault in 
 Imperial policy. But it is hard to see how 
 the British authorities could bring themselves 
 to take advantage of an award based on such 
 pleadings, since they knew that Nicholas 
 Waterboer's claim to succeed to his father's 
 position and territories was definitely set aside 
 at the outset by Sir George Cathcart, who 
 wrote, in a despatch dated March 1853, that 
 
in South Africa 151 
 
 *'a small neighbouring chief, resident beyond 
 the Vaal, with whom there subsisted a treaty 
 entered Into by Sir Benjamin D' Urban in the 
 year 1834, of the name of Andrles Waterboer, 
 recently died, and has been succeeded, by elec- 
 tion, by his son, Nicholas Waterboer. As, 
 however, the treaty in the first instance was 
 made with the individual chief or captain, as 
 the succession was not hereditary but elective, 
 and as there were certain stipulations in the 
 treaty which would be incompatible with the 
 convention entered Into with the Transvaal 
 emigrants, I have declined to renew it in 
 favour of the existing interest." Sir George 
 also wrote to the Griqua authorities and told 
 them plainly that ''the treaty entered into by 
 Sir Benjamin D'Urban in the year 1834, on 
 behalf of the colony of the Cape of Good 
 Hope, with the late worthy and faithful ally, 
 Andrles Waterboer, was personal, and does 
 not extend to aborigines consequent to his 
 decease ; it has therefore ceased to be in force." 
 The terms of the award were not carried out 
 fully in the case of the South African Re- 
 public, as no attempt was made to restrict its 
 boundaries within the districts already occupied 
 by the Boers. Nevertheless the disgust of the 
 
152 The English and the Dutch 
 
 burghers with the futile manner in which the 
 RepubHc's case had been conducted was so 
 great that the principal officers of the executive 
 all resigned their positions, and the people 
 began to look about for a President who 
 should be able to manage their affairs more 
 effectively. They had, if they had only known 
 it, a *'born diplomatist" among them in Mr. 
 Paul Kruger, who had already distinguished 
 himself in the various petty wars in which the 
 Republic had been engaged with its neigh- 
 bours, but the Transvaalers decided that none 
 of their own leaders were qualified to handle 
 international politics. A strong party among 
 them wished to invite President Brand of the 
 Free State to become their ruler, and to effect 
 the union of the two Dutch States. They 
 argued that this union had only been frustrated 
 by the declaration of the British authorities, 
 that it would lead to the cancellation of the con- 
 ventions which acknowledged the freedom of 
 the two States, that England had already 
 broken the conventions whenever it suited 
 her policy to do so, and that it was therefore 
 absurd to allow the conventions, which were 
 mere waste-paper, to stand in the way of 
 union any longer. These counsels, however. 
 
in South Africa 153 
 
 did not suit President Brand, who refused to 
 do anything that was likely to cause strife 
 between the white races of South Africa ; and 
 the Transvaalers, after a long interregnum, 
 elected Mr. Burgers, a clergyman who had 
 forsaken the paths of orthodoxy, and had also 
 shown that he was gifted with a good deal of 
 forensic ability. 
 
 To return to the Orange Free State. The 
 burghers naturally refused to recognise the 
 validity of the Keate award as far as it ap- 
 plied to their State, since its case had not 
 been argued or represented. The English 
 authorities, however, were not to be deterred 
 by pettifogging legal technicalities of that sort, 
 and forthwith occupied Waterboer's supposed 
 territory with an armed force, and proclaimed 
 it a British settlement, under the name of 
 Griqualand West, in November 1871. The 
 Volksraad met just a month later, and Presi- 
 dent Brand opened the session in a remarkable 
 speech, in which he counselled a peaceful pro- 
 test, saying that he believed that England 
 would not act unjustly, and that the present 
 difficulties and vexatious proceedings were 
 solely due to the erroneous impressions which 
 prevailed among the English at home on the 
 
154 ^^^ English and the Dutch 
 
 subject of the Boer States. As an instance 
 of English ignorance, he quoted a despatch 
 from the Colonial Secretary to Sir H. Barkly, 
 referring to Dutch infringements of territory 
 for the purpose of getting wider scope for slave- 
 dealing, and to the want of a strong govern- 
 ment at the mines, as reasons for accepting 
 Waterboer as a British subject. *' Whereas," 
 said Brand, '' everyone who knows anything 
 about the Orange Free State is fully aware 
 that nothing even remotely resembling slave- 
 dealing exists there. . . . When these 
 erroneous impressions are corrected, the sense 
 of justice and equity entertained by the people 
 and Government of Great Britain will lead 
 to the restitution of our rights." 
 
 President Brand's advice was taken, and a 
 long protest was issued, setting forth the 
 grounds on which the Free State considered 
 itself to have been unfairly dealt with. It 
 mentioned, among other things, a striking 
 refutation of the statement that the govern- 
 ment established by the State at the diamond 
 fields was so inefficient that the British had 
 been forced, in the interests of order, to take 
 command there — namely, the fact that, after 
 the seizure of the fields, addresses, signed by 
 
in South Africa 155 
 
 many Englishmen, were laid before the Gover- 
 nor of the Cape, praying that the British 
 Government would give a magistracy to the 
 officer who had represented the Free State, 
 and saying that "your memorialists, in accept- 
 ing the administration of the British Govern- 
 ment now in force in the diamond fields, desire 
 respectfully to draw your Excellency's attention 
 to the satisfactory and efficient manner in which 
 the Free State Government has maintained 
 law and order among the large number of 
 people now present at the diamond fields." 
 
 The protest, however, was of no avail, and 
 President Brand's hope that a statement of 
 the facts would appeal to the ''sense of 
 justice and equity of the people and Govern- 
 ment of Great Britain " was disappointed, 
 although the strength of the Free State's case 
 was shown to be impregnable by the decision 
 of a special court, which held, in reference to 
 a dispute about land in Griqualand West, that 
 all claims based upon grants from Waterboer 
 were invalid, because he never had had any 
 rights in the district. Negotiations by letter 
 having failed, President Brand went to Eng- 
 land himself to discuss the matter with the 
 Colonial Secretary, and Lord Carnarvon's des- 
 
156 The English and the Dutch 
 
 patch of August 5th, 1876, to Sir H. Barkly, 
 thus describes the result of their interviews : — 
 '' I clearly explained to President Brand that 
 I could not admit the invalidity of the British 
 title, or the validity of the Free State's title, 
 to the whole or any parts of the territory in 
 question. But I intimated my willingness to 
 undertake that a reasonable ,sum should be 
 paid to the State, not as recompense for any 
 admitted wrong, but in consideration of the 
 injury which the President and the people of 
 the State represented that they had sustained, 
 and in order to remove for ever any impres- 
 sion that the British occupation of the territory 
 (which, under the pressure of circumstances, 
 had necessarily been carried out suddenly, and 
 without the possibility of lengthened explana- 
 tions) was in any sense an unfriendly act, or 
 one which could be hereafter complained of." 
 
 Thus did *' equity and justice" at last come 
 to the rescue. England did not admit that 
 she was wrong, though a British court de- 
 cided that Waterboer's claim, on the strength 
 of which she had seized Griqualand West, 
 would not hold water, but she paid a ''reason- 
 able" sum — to wit, ^90,000 — by way of 
 conscience money. 
 
in South Africa 157 
 
 Mr. Froude was sent out by Lord Carnar- 
 von in 1875 to represent the Imperial Govern- 
 ment at a Conference which was to have 
 discussed the question of a South African 
 Confederation. He wrote a report to Lord 
 Carnarvon, in the course of which he gives 
 some glimpses of his own views, and those 
 which he found current at the Cape, on the 
 subject of the annexation of Griqualand West. 
 The colony refused to take part in the Con- 
 ference, and in stating reasons for its attitude, 
 Mr. Froude says that ''the Conference was 
 represented to the world as an insidious at- 
 tempt to throw on the colony the responsi- 
 bilities of Natal ; or again, so reckless were 
 the imputations on your Lordship's motives, 
 as an attempt to force the colony to assist 
 the Imperial Government in coercing or op- 
 pressing the two [Dutch] Republics. ' You 
 have trampled on these poor States, sir,' said 
 an indignant member of the Cape Parliament 
 to me, ' till the country cries shame on you, 
 and you come now to ask us to assist you 
 in your tyranny ; we will not do it, sir ; we 
 are astonished that you should dare to ask 
 us.' " In another passage of the same report, 
 Mr. Froude writes: ''In the Eastern Province 
 
1 5 8 The English and the Dutch 
 
 of the colony, which had at first advocated the 
 annexation of Griqualand, I did not find a 
 single person, not personally interested in the 
 maintenance of the British government at the 
 diamond fields, who did not recognise that a 
 mistake had been made, and did not deprecate 
 the policy pursued. In the Western Province 
 the annexation was not only regretted as a 
 blunder, but resented as a crime." 
 
 With reference to the efficiency of the Free 
 State's management, Mr. Froude points out 
 that ''the mines were opened under Free State 
 magistrates. It is not disputed that law and 
 order were as well maintained then as at any 
 subsequent time, and at a tenth of the cost." 
 Nevertheless Mr. Froude believed that '' if 
 the pretext of necessity had been boldly avowed, 
 it would have been to some extent recognised 
 In the Free State, and would, at all events, 
 have created far less irritation than the pleas 
 of justification which were put forward. The 
 Free State was charged with having itself 
 broken the convention by slave-dealing. The 
 Free State demanded proof, and the accusation 
 was withdrawn." Finally, Mr. Froude summed 
 the matter up by describing the annexation of 
 the diamond fields as, ''perhaps the most dis- 
 
in South Africa 159 
 
 creditable incident in British colonial history." 
 It is to be regretted that his knowledge of our 
 colonial history forced him to say ''perhaps." 
 
 The confederation which Mr. Froude was 
 sent out to further was a revival of a scheme 
 planned by Sir George Grey, who strongly 
 disapproved of the '' policy of dismemberment " 
 under which the Dutch Republics had been 
 given their independence. It was earnestly 
 supported by Lord Carnarvon, who had suc- 
 ceeded Lord Kimberley at the Colonial Office 
 in the formation of the Conservative Ministry 
 in 1874. Unfortunately, the moment was not 
 a happy one for the reception of the scheme. 
 The Free State was still smarting under the 
 injustice which it had suffered in the matter of 
 the annexation of the diamond fields, and the 
 Cape Colony, which had just received full 
 powers of self-government, considered that 
 such a movement should have been Initiated 
 at Cape Town rather than In Whitehall. It was 
 evident that if this great scheme was to be carried 
 through In a manner which would wipe out the 
 memories of past Imperial bungling and Injustice, 
 and give new life to the harmonious development 
 of South Africa, It must be handled with con- 
 summate tact and discretion. Lord Carnarvon 
 
 X 
 
i6o The English and the Dutch 
 
 began well by laying stress on the condition 
 that the confederation was to be purely volun- 
 tary on the part of all the States concerned. 
 " I also desire," he wrote to Sir Henry Barkly 
 on May 4th, 1875, "to add — and there must be 
 no misapprehension on this point — that the 
 action of all parties, whether the British 
 colonies or the Dutch States, must be spon- 
 taneous and uncontrolled. It is a question 
 for them to decide, whether it is for their 
 interest to enter into such an union, and I 
 desire to place no pressure on that decision." 
 
 The position in the Transvaal was favourable 
 to the Confederation scheme, if it had been put 
 forward in a statesmanlike manner. The ap- 
 pointment of President Burgers had been a 
 failure. He had evolved a large and far- 
 reaching policy which was to have raised the 
 Republic into a great State at one bound, but 
 the burghers required patient government and 
 gradual consolidation rather than airy castle- 
 building, and the President himself had more 
 power of imagining what might be done than 
 of doing the work that was under his hand. 
 Sir Bartle Frere, who saw him afterwards at 
 Cape Town, said of him, '' There is to my mind 
 more of the charlatan and less of the poetical 
 
in South Africa i6i 
 
 element in his consistency than I had expected." 
 Whether charlatan or poet, Burgers never 
 won the confidence of the Boers, and his 
 dreams all ended in moonshine. He went to 
 Holland to try to raise a loan for the construc- 
 tion of a railway from Pretoria to Delagoa 
 Bay. He managed to scrape ;^90,ooo together, 
 and spent it in railway material, which after- 
 wards rotted at Lourenzo Marquez. Then the 
 Republic was involved in war with Sekukuni, 
 chief of the Bapedi tribe, and the burghers, 
 having lost all confidence in their President's 
 capacity, neither mustered with their usual 
 loyalty nor behaved with their usual gallantry 
 in the field. Moreover, they had to attack 
 almost impregnable fastnesses, always a diffi- 
 cult task for the amateur soldier, and they 
 suffered a severe reverse at Steelpoort in 1876. 
 It thus appeared that the Boers might be"^ 
 readily induced to accept a scheme of confedera- 
 tion, or even to ask the British authorities to take 
 over the management of their country, and 
 Lord Carnarvon wrote (September 22nd, 1876) : 
 '' Should the people of the Transvaal consider 
 it advisable, under the circumstances, to invite 
 Her Majesty's Government to undertake the 
 government of their territories on terms con- 
 
 II 
 
1 62 The English and the Dutch 
 
 sistent with the now well-known policy of Her 
 Majesty's Government, I am of opinion that 
 the request could not properly or prudently 
 be declined." The state of the country 
 was summed up as follows by the Trans- 
 vaal Argus and Potchefstroom Gazette of 
 October 13th, 1876, in an article which is per- 
 haps an interesting specimen of the colonial 
 journalism of that day: — ''A glance at the 
 political situation of this State at the present 
 moment reveals anything but a pleasant pro- 
 spect. There is a ' darkness that may be 
 felt ' stealing over the Transvaal. A crisis is 
 on us from which it is not any way probable 
 that we shall escape scathless. The head of 
 this State has forfeited the esteem of the 
 majority of those over whom he presides. . . . 
 Of the press of the country, one member has 
 gone rabid in Its Radicalism, and another has 
 totally lost every vestige of independence. 
 Of the Volksraad it can be truly said, that in 
 its last session It was not that which its name 
 implies — the People's Council ; Its members 
 did not fairly represent the opinion of the 
 public, and its acts are not endorsed by the 
 burghers. A pleasant prospect, verily ! An 
 empty treasury, an unsuccessful war, an In- 
 
in South Africa 163 
 
 creasing debt, a total loss of credit, an obstinate 
 President, a discontented people, a partly syco- 
 phantic, rebellious press, and a set of non- 
 representing representatives." 
 
 After the defeat of the Boer forces at Steel- 
 poort, Burgers commissioned Captain von 
 Schlickman, a Prussian officer, to raise a force 
 as best he could and carry on the war. Captain 
 von Schlickman was accused of fearful bar- 
 barities, but it must at least be said for him 
 that he denied these charges. The following 
 letter to the editor of the Gold Fields Meratry 
 has found its way into the blue-books of the 
 period: — "A gang of filibusters, under that 
 reckless adventurer Von Schlickman, of dia- 
 mond fields notoriety, are committing the 
 grossest outrages on humanity in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Steelpoort. They are butchering 
 helpless women and children, burning Kaffir 
 kraals promiscuously, laying waste the country. 
 . . . For God's sake, sir, — for the sake of 
 humanity, — for the sake of 'civilised' Africa, 
 try and get this Infamy put a stop to ! I blush 
 to have to write it, I feel deeply humiliated 
 to have to state it, there are Englishmen, 
 British subjects, lending themselves to this 
 horrible work. Even one who claims to hold 
 
164 The English and the Dutch 
 
 a commission In Her Majesty's army Is a 
 leader amongst them." According to rumour, 
 there were some 600 Englishmen in the Boer 
 service at this time, but Sir Henry Barkly 
 wrote to Lord Carnarvon, that '' the number of 
 English volunteers who have joined the Trans- 
 vaal forces from the diamond fields is under 
 1 50." The condition of the Transvaal Republic, 
 as shown in these extracts, which have been 
 selected as the most highly-coloured pictures 
 of its internal and external helplessness, fav- 
 oured the hope that the Boers might, if tactfully 
 approached, welcome a scheme of confederation. 
 Undeterred by the failure of Mr. Froude's 
 mission. Lord Carnarvon now selected Sir 
 Bartle Frere '' nominally as governor [of the 
 Cape], but really as the statesman who seems to 
 me most capable of carrying my scheme of con- 
 federation into effect, and whose long adminis- 
 trative experience and personal character give 
 me the best chances of success." No better 
 choice could have been made, and if Sir Bartle 
 Frere had gone and essayed this task in his own 
 way and failed, he would have proved at least 
 that confederation was impossible under any 
 circumstances. As it was, he never had a 
 chance, for his hand was spoilt for him before 
 
in South Africa 165 
 
 the cards were even dealt. The Transvaal, in 
 its disunited and irritated condition, required 
 very careful handling, and should obviously 
 have been left to the man to whom the whole 
 scheme of confederation was intrusted ; but 
 the home authorities put this most difficult 
 matter into the hands of Sir Theophilus Shep- 
 stone, who held a special commission direct 
 from the Queen, and though nominally respon- 
 sible to the governor, was practically given 
 powers to act as he pleased with regard to the 
 Transvaal and the neighbouring territories. 
 
 If Sir T. Shepstone had been an angel from 
 heaven, his appointment on these terms, side 
 by side with Frere, would have been not only 
 grossly unfair to Frere, but in every respect 
 most injudicious. But he had both the virtues 
 and the failings of an honest, vigorous English 
 gentleman ; he was brave, obstinate, and pos- 
 sessed of wide experience of the South African 
 natives, and fond of winning, or losing, his 
 game off his own bat. The powers granted to 
 him by the terms of his commission were so 
 important, that they must be repeated in the 
 words of the document itself, which ran thus : 
 " Whereas grievous disturbances have broken 
 out in the territories adjacent to our colonies in 
 
1 66 The English and the Dutch 
 
 South Africa, ... if the emergency should 
 seei^ to you to be such as to render it necessary, 
 in order to secure the peace and safety of our 
 said colonies, etc., that the said territories, or 
 any portions of the same, should provisionally, 
 and pending the announcement of our plea- 
 sure, be administered in our names and on our 
 behalf; then, and in such case only, we do 
 further authorise you, the said Sir Theophilus 
 Shepstone, by proclamation under your hand, 
 to declare that from and after a day to be 
 therein named, so much of any such territories 
 as aforesaid, as to you after due consideration 
 shall seem fit, shall be annexed to, and form 
 part of our dominions. . . . Provided that no 
 such proclamation shall be issued by you with 
 respect to any district, territory, or State unless 
 you shall be satisfied that the inhabitants 
 thereof, or a sufficient number of them, or 
 the Legislature thereof, desire to become our 
 subjects." 
 
 Sir T. Shepstone entered the Transvaal in 
 January 1877, and v/as met with every sign of 
 cordiality. At Heidelberg, every house was 
 decorated with flags, and addresses of welcome 
 poured in from the inhabitants, British and 
 Dutch. The tone of these documents, how- 
 
in South Africa 167 
 
 ever, was studiously platonic ; a good example 
 is a memorial from thirty Boers of Flak Fontein, 
 which said that, ''though unacquainted with 
 the object of your visit in this Republic, we 
 hesitate not to express our full reliance that 
 your visit will tend to the welfare of the South 
 African Republic and of the whole South 
 Africa." When the commissioner neared 
 Pretoria, Burgers sent his official carriage to 
 meet him and bring him into the city. The 
 horses were taken out, and Shepstone was 
 drawn into Pretoria by an enthusiastic mob. 
 An address of welcome was presented. The 
 crowd sang the first verse of '' God save the 
 Queen." Three cheers were given for Her 
 Majesty, and the proceedings culminated in a 
 luncheon. 
 
 This enthusiasm on the part of the urban 
 trading population, strongly leavened with 
 foreign immigrants, may have deluded Shep- 
 stone into the belief that he had the whole 
 country with him ; but if so, he forgot Bis- 
 marck's saying, that three shrieking women 
 make more noise than a thousand silent men. 
 The silent men in the country districts said 
 nothing, and the commissioner seems never 
 to have troubled about their opinion. A few 
 
1 68 The English and the Dutch 
 
 days after his arrival he met the President and 
 the Executive Council, and stated that the 
 weakness of the Republic had become a source 
 of danger to itself and its neighbours, and that 
 the object of his mission was to discuss meas- 
 ures for initiating a new state of things, under 
 \ which security would be guaranteed. He wrote 
 to Lord Carnarvon that *' Mr. Paul Kruger, 
 who Is a member of the Executive Council and 
 the only opponent of Mr. Burgers for the 
 position of President, did not object to the 
 discussion of the causes which are said to 
 provide Insecurity or inconvenience to neigh- 
 bouring States or governments, but positively 
 declined to enter upon the discussion of any 
 subject that might involve in any way the 
 independence of the State as a Republic." 
 
 This meeting resulted in the appointment of 
 two English and two Dutch representatives to 
 discuss the state of affairs. The two Boers 
 were Mr. Kruger and Dr. Jorissen. During 
 the course of their discussions, which lasted 
 some time, and were as bootless as might have 
 been expected, the news was received at Pre- 
 toria that SekukunI had made peace. Shep- 
 stone's only excuse for hasty action was thus 
 taken away, but he seems to have arrived with 
 
in South Africa 169 
 
 his mind already made up, and undeterred even 
 by an elaborate scheme of internal reform which 
 President Burgers produced, he *' found him- 
 self in a position," on April 12th, 1877, to annex 
 the Transvaal, and make one more addition to 
 the lonor list of breaches of the Conventions of 
 1852 and 1854. 
 
1 70 The English and the Dutch 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 From the Annexation of the Transvaal to 
 THE Restoration of its Independence — 
 1877-1881 
 
 Sir Theophilus Shepstone's commission had 
 given him power to annex the Transvaal 
 Republic, on condition that such an act was 
 ''necessary in order to secure the peace and 
 safety of our colonies " in South Africa, and 
 that a ''sufficient number" of the inhabitants 
 were in favour of the annexation. That the 
 home authorities, with their Confederation 
 scheme hanging in the balance, should have 
 allowed the use of the word "annexation" 
 under any "circumstances, unless it were asked 
 for by an overwhelming majority of the burghers 
 of the Transvaal, is only another example of 
 the fact that South African affairs were little 
 understood in the Colonial Office of those days. 
 We have seen how carefully Lord Carnarvon 
 explained that even confederation was to be 
 
in South Africa i 7 1 
 
 offered for the spontaneous and voluntary 
 acceptance of the Dutch States, and that no 
 pressure was to be placed on their decision in 
 the matter. Again he had written and pointed 
 out that, if the people of the Transvaal were to 
 ''invite" the British authorities to undertake 
 the government of the territory, the request 
 could not prudently be declined. Such was 
 the cautious and tactful language in which the 
 question of confederation was at first discussed, 
 but a few months later we find the much graver 
 question of annexation practically left to the 
 discretion of one special commissioner. This 
 is one of the most puzzling of all the somer- 
 saults in Imperial policy that the history of 
 these times reveals, for, by its performance. 
 Lord Carnarvon simply rendered his pet scheme 
 of confederation impossible. Sir Theophilus 
 Shepstone naturally understood his commission 
 as an order to annex the Transvaal. It is true 
 that the war with Sekukuni had ended before 
 he issued his proclamation, but he could point 
 to the power and restlessness of the Zulus as 
 justification on the score of ''peace and safety," 
 while the shouts of the mob in Pretoria gave 
 him his "sufficient number" of inhabitants on 
 his side. As pretexts, these conditions would 
 
172 The English and the Dutch 
 
 have served their purpose, though as real 
 reasons they have been shown to be worthless 
 by subsequent history. For the annexation, so 
 far from securing the peace and safety of South 
 Africa, was almost Immediately followed by 
 the Zulu war, and risings in various parts of the 
 British territories, while the farmers of the Trans- 
 vaal showed. In an unmistakable manner, that, 
 though Pretoria might sing *' God save the 
 Queen," they preferred their Independence to the 
 possibility of better government by the British. 
 These Boers were the men, and the sons of men, 
 who had trekked continually northward to avoid 
 that British rule which had, as they thought, 
 pressed so heavily upon them. Being but half- 
 educated, they had not Impaired their memories 
 by much reading, so that the events that had 
 happened In their days, and those of their 
 fathers, were as fresh as If they had taken 
 place yesterday ; and not having been subject 
 to British rule since the time of Dr. Philip 
 and Lord Glenelg, they naturally believed that 
 British policy was still guided by similar spirits, 
 and they had their own reasons for thinking 
 that any hardships and dangers could be more 
 easily borne than life under an administration 
 of that sort. 
 
in South Africa 173 
 
 Shepstone, however, underrated both their 
 power and their determination. He knew that 
 they had been beaten by Sekukuni, and he 
 therefore jumped to the conclusion that their 
 martial spirit was dead, though afterwards, 
 when, having annexed the country, he began 
 to look Into Its condition, he wrote, that 
 ''fuller information has convinced me that the 
 failure of the Republican forces on this occasion 
 was caused chiefly by internal political dis- 
 union." With regard to the danger from the 
 Zulus, Shepstone was afterwards able to quote 
 a letter which he received from Cetewayo, 
 saying, " I thank my Father Somtseu for his 
 message. I am glad that he has sent It, because 
 the Dutch have tired me out, and I Intended 
 to fight them once, once only, and drive them 
 over the Vaal. You see my impis are gathered. 
 It was to fight the Dutch I called them to- 
 gether. Now I will send them back to their 
 homes." That this letter was dictated by 
 Cetewayo with his tongue in his cheek Is 
 fairly evident from the last paragraph, which 
 runs : " I shall wish to ask my Father's permis- 
 sion to fight with the Amaswazi for their 
 wrong-doing. They fight together, and kill 
 one another. This Is wrong, and I want to 
 
174 ^^^ English and the Dutch 
 
 chastise them for It." The Zulu danger was 
 never acknowledged by the Boers, who pointed 
 out that, In attacking Sekukuni's strongholds, 
 they were at a great disadvantage, while the 
 Zulus would have simply rushed upon their 
 laagers, which had been proved over and over 
 again to be Impregnable. They had fought the 
 Zulus too often to be caught napping as our 
 troops were at Isandlhwana, and an invasion 
 by Cetewayo would at once have rallied the 
 farmers and put an end to that internal discord 
 which was the cause of the defeat at Steel- 
 poort. Moreover, had the danger from the 
 Zulus been ever so serious, that would not have 
 been a just reason for taking away the Boers' 
 freedom, for they had crushed the Zulus in 
 Natal In 1840, and it was only our interven- 
 tion, and our policy of '' Black Alsatlas," that 
 allowed these savages to reconstruct their 
 terrible *' fighting machine." 
 
 Shepstone, however, was so confident of the 
 strength and justice of his policy that he decided 
 to annex the territory, though he had with 
 him only an escort of twenty-five Natal mounted 
 police. He told Burgers of his intention, and 
 the charlatan-poet President only replied that 
 he would be obliged to issue a protest. This 
 
in South Africa i 7 5 
 
 protest was read to Shepstone on the day 
 before he published his proclamation, and he 
 then learnt that Kruger and Jorissen would be 
 sent to England to lay the Republic's case 
 before the authorities there. On April 12th,**- 
 1877, the proclamation, declaring the Trans- 
 vaal to be under the Queen's sovereignty, was 
 read, as Shepstone tells the story, '' to a small 
 crowd of the inhabitants, mostly English, by 
 whom, of course, the most hearty cheers were . 
 given for Her Majesty. Mr. Burgers' protest 
 and proclamation were immediately afterwards 
 read, and were received in respectful silence. 
 . . . . Every effort had been made during the 
 past fortnight by, it is said, educated Hollanders 
 residing at the seat of government to rouse the 
 fanaticism of the Boers, and to induce them to 
 offer ' bloody ' resistance to what it was known 
 I intended to do." But the ''educated Hol- 
 landers," and their efforts to make trouble in a 
 hurry, were overruled by the moderation of 
 Mr. Paul Kruger, who is generally represented 
 as having acted the part of a firebrand at this 
 time. Anyone v/ho will look carefully into the 
 blue-books and original documents dealing with 
 the period will find that Kruger did all that 
 he could to put off the appeal to arms. He was 
 
176 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ^certainly determined that If the Boers could not 
 recover their freedom In any other way, they 
 must and ought to fight for It, but, Hke Presi- 
 dent Brand in the matter of the diamond fields, 
 he believed in English ** equity and justice," and 
 the fact that he made two journeys to London, 
 and one to Cape Town, to try to undo Shep- 
 stone's proclamation by peaceful means, shows 
 conclusively how closely he stuck to his belief 
 that a clear statement of the Republic's case 
 would appeal to the English sense of fair play, 
 and how reluctantly he was forced Into the 
 only other path open to any of the Boers who 
 valued the freedom that had been guaranteed 
 to them by the Sand River Convention of 
 1852. Shepstone, however, overrated his own 
 personal influence, just as Sir Harry Smith 
 had done In former days, and he attached too 
 much Importance to addresses and memorials 
 signed by the immigrant population of the 
 towns and villages, forgetting that the fighting 
 strength of the country was scattered over the 
 up-country farms, and that he could not call 
 the country loyal until he had the farming 
 class on his side. 
 
 Meanwhile Kruger and Jorissen were on 
 their way to England. They took their stand 
 
in South Africa 177 
 
 on a point expressed In a resolution of the 
 Executive Council, dated April 1 1 th, 1877, which 
 began by saying that '' Whereas, according to 
 public statements of Her Majesty's Secretary 
 of State for the Colonies, Lord Carnarvon, 
 there exists no desire on the part of the British 
 Government to force the people of the South 
 African Republic, against their wish, under the 
 authority of the British Government. And 
 whereas, the people, by memorials or other- 
 wise, have, by a large majority, plainly stated 
 that they are averse to it," etc. Unfortunately 
 they did not understand that another somer- 
 sault had been turned, that Lord Carnarvon's 
 previous utterances had, therefore, no longer 
 any weight, and that the justice of the annexa- 
 tion was not regarded as a matter for discussion. 
 Lord Carnarvon, however, soon put them right 
 on this point. He wrote to Shepstone on July 
 1 2th, 1877 : *' You will be prepared to learn that 
 I lost no time in explaining to the delegates 
 that it is altogether impossible for Her Majesty's 
 Government to entertain the idea of reversing 
 the action taken by you in proclaiming the 
 Queen's sovereignty in the new province." 
 Under these circumstances discussion was, of 
 course, bound to be bootless, and the deputies 
 
 12 
 
178 The English and the Dutch 
 
 returned empty-handed. They had gathered, 
 however, that Lord Carnarvon doubted their 
 assertion that the majority of the Boers were 
 averse to the annexation, and they still hoped 
 that, if they could come back to London with 
 definite proofs on this point, their freedom 
 might be restored. 
 
 A petition to the Queen had in the meantime 
 been forwarded by Sir Bartle Frere, signed by 
 more than 5400 inhabitants of the Cape Colony, 
 Some of its clauses are worth repeating, as 
 they bring out a fact which Englishmen some- 
 times forget, namely, that the sympathies of 
 the Dutch inhabitants of the Cape Colony — 
 who still, in spite of the various emigra- 
 tions, outnumber those of British descent — 
 are strongly on the side of their kinsmen across 
 the Orange and the Vaal, and that interference 
 with their rights does not encourage these Cape 
 colonists in loyalty to the Empire. This petition 
 stated, '' That your Majesty's petitioners are 
 aware that among the descendants of the old 
 Cape colonists there has been, ever since the 
 country came under British rule, a feeling that, 
 from distrust or want of sympathy on the part 
 of the British Government, their interests were 
 not properly cared for, and that accordingly 
 
in South Africa 179 
 
 those colonists have a long series of grievances 
 to record against that Government. That the 
 free institutions which it has pleased your 
 Majesty to grant to this colony would have 
 gone far to obliterate that feeling, were it not 
 that interference on the part of your Majesty's 
 Government with what the old colonists con- 
 sider to be their rights guaranteed by solemn 
 treaties to their brethren and kinsmen in the 
 neighbouring Republics, had constantly re- 
 minded them of those old grievances which 
 they would fain forget. . . . That it is your 
 Majesty's petitioners' firm belief that, by this 
 departure from the policy announced by your 
 Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, 
 not only an injustice has been committed in 
 regard to the South African Republic, but also 
 a serious mistake has been made, the prospects 
 of a cordial union between the several States of 
 South Africa having been greatly interfered 
 with by a measure tending to alienate from 
 your Majesty's Government the minds both 
 of the inhabitants of the Republics, and of a 
 large number of the Cape colonists." These 
 are plain words, which may well be remem- 
 bered in these days, but they had no effect 
 on a Government, which, as Lord Carnarvon 
 
i8o The English and the Dutch 
 
 said, was not of opinion "that there has been 
 any room for discussion on the question whether 
 it was right or expedient that the Transvaal 
 should become British territory." 
 
 On his return from England, Kruger found 
 his countrymen excited and angry, and had some 
 difficulty in restraining the fierce spirits among 
 them and persuading them that a petition show- 
 ing an overwhelming majority against annexa- 
 tion should next be prepared. He wrote on 
 January 31st, 1878, to the British authorities 
 at Pretoria, informing them that this memorial 
 was being drawn up, and adding, "In case 
 the majority should be for annexation, I have 
 openly stated that I am prepared to stoop under 
 and obey the authority of the Queen of England, 
 and it appears to me that I shall succeed in 
 moving my countrymen also thereto." Shep- 
 stone read this communication with "much 
 surprise and regret," and in his reply acknow- 
 ledged that Kruger and his followers would most 
 probably get "a large majority against annexa- 
 tion," though he stated that many signatures 
 would be given to them as the result of intimi- 
 dation, and added that in this case they would 
 find themselves "face to face with the alter- 
 native of taking overt action against Her 
 
in South Africa i8i 
 
 Majesty's Government," and that such action 
 would have no other issue but failure. 
 
 Shepstone was beginning to find himself in 
 a very uncomfortable position. Instead of 
 securing the " peace and safety " of South 
 Africa, the annexation was followed by a wave 
 of general unrest, which Shepstone himself 
 described in a despatch of February 23rd, 1878 : 
 " The representations made by Cetewayo to 
 Sekukuni, and the influence exercised by Cete- 
 wayo's messengers, who are still with Sekukuni, 
 to which must be added the effects of the ex- 
 citement among the Boers of the Transvaal and 
 the seditious language openly used by many of 
 them, and of the treasonable overtures which it 
 is believed, with too much appearance of truth, 
 have been and are being made to certain native 
 chiefs, of whom Sekukuni is one, by reckless 
 and unprincipled white men, among whom 
 it is said are some Englishmen, have tempted 
 Sekukuni to commence hostilities with his 
 neighbours, who are known to be loyal to the 
 Government. . . . What Sekukuni has done 
 is merely the preliminary step to further aggres- 
 sion, which it will be impossible to allow without 
 risking a general rising among the numerous 
 native tribes in and surrounding the Transvaal, 
 
1 82 The English and the Dutch 
 
 who are so far disappointed at the manifestation 
 in the Transvaal of British power, of which they 
 had heard so much." The annexation of the 
 Transvaal had been carried out and followed up 
 in that half-hearted, cheeseparing spirit which 
 has been shown so often in South Africa by the 
 Imperial Government even when it was most 
 strongly under the influence of the ^* forward 
 policy." Just as Sir Harry Smith after estab- 
 lishing the Orange River Sovereignty was 
 forced to leave it in the charge of a British 
 officer supported by a mere handful of Hot- 
 'tentots, so Shepstone's extension of the 
 Pax Britannica was not accompanied by any 
 adequate display of force, and thus seemed only 
 to invite disturbance. He wrote himself that, 
 '' What is really and urgently necessary in the 
 Transvaal is a considerable accession of Im- 
 perial troops. . . . The Boers see so little 
 change in the outward shape of things, and so 
 little evidence that the change in government 
 is, and is intended to be, irrevocable, that agita- 
 tors are encouraged and meet with much success 
 in unsettling the minds of the people." No 
 more complete confession of the failure of the 
 annexation to secure every purpose for which it 
 had been carried out, and of the falseness of the 
 
in South Africa 183 
 
 pretexts on which it was based, could be found 
 than these words of Shepstone's ; but it may be 
 added, as a concrete instance of the condition of 
 the Transvaal under British rule, that Shepstone 
 did not dare to call out a commando to take the 
 field against Sekukuni, but had to send to Gri- 
 qualand West for volunteers ; and a few more 
 blanks in his picture are filled up by a letter 
 which was handed to him by Kruger, who had 
 come to take his leave before starting once more 
 for England. '' The few inhabitants of the 
 country," it ran, '*who at the time considered 
 the state of affairs such as to welcome the an- 
 nexation as an act of Providence, are now, after 
 an experience of twelve months, of a contrary 
 opinion. The deplorable state in which the 
 country was then declared to be, has in every 
 respect more than double increased, and the 
 future is more than dark. The expectation 
 expressed in Parliament by the Prime Minister, 
 in order to excuse the annexation, namely, the 
 prevention of a general rise of the natives, and 
 the avoidance of danger to the British colonies 
 and interests in South Africa, has not been ful- 
 filled, but rather more hastened and increased." 
 As to the intimidation carried on by the ''mal- 
 content " party, which was protested against by 
 
184 The English and the Dutch 
 
 Shepstone, and afterwards by Sir Bartle Frere, 
 it cannot have been serious, as is proved by 
 subsequent events. For it may be possible to 
 terrorise timid men into signing petitions, but 
 hardly into fighting like heroes against heavy 
 odds. But in so far as it existed, it is only 
 another damning proof of the weakness of the 
 Government under which it was practised. 
 
 The new war against Sekukuni was begun by 
 a force of British troops. Diamond Field horse 
 and other volunteers, in the middle of 1878 ; it 
 dragged on without any result, and in Septem- 
 ber, Shepstone was obliged to make vain efforts 
 to secure the assistance of the Amaswazis. In 
 October the operations were '' unavoidably sus- 
 pended," and Frere wrote to Sir Michael Hicks 
 Beach, who was then Colonial Secretary, from 
 Natal at the end of that month, '' I regret that I 
 cannot report any improvement in the shape of 
 better prospects of peace. . . . The suspension 
 of the uncompleted hostilities against Sekukuni 
 had has its inevitable effect on friends as well 
 as foes and waverers." 
 
 In the meantime Kruger and Pieter Joubert 
 had started for London armed with a petition 
 ''signed by 6591 out of a possible 8000 
 electors, and dated January 7th, 1878." The 
 
in South Africa 185 
 
 Boers still hoped that these numbers would 
 convince the home authorities and cause the 
 restoration of their freedom. As Shepstone 
 wrote: "Great stress is laid upon the impression 
 under which it is said Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment acted in confirming the annexation, 
 namely, that but an insignificant minority of 
 the inhabitants of the Transvaal were opposed 
 
 to it It is believed, indeed insisted upon, 
 
 that this impression was the cause that moved 
 Her Majesty's Government to confirm the an- 
 nexation, and that when it is found, as by the 
 number of signatures it will be, that the majority 
 are against that measure, it will be annulled. 
 Mr. Kruger encouraged this idea, because he 
 said he believed in the justice of the British 
 Government." The delegates saw Sir Michael 
 Hicks Beach in July 1878, and handed him the 
 petition and a letter in which they sketched the 
 history of the Transvaal, and maintained that 
 the helplessness and anarchy described by Shep- 
 stone had been greatly exaggerated, and that 
 the danger from the Zulus ''has at no time been 
 felt by the Government of the Republic nor by 
 those who have struggled through similar dan- 
 gers with the same natives, when more united 
 then, under Dingan ; " and that '* as a matter 
 
1 86 The English and the Dutch 
 
 of fact the Zulu army never approached the 
 Transvaal boundary until the commissioner 
 had crossed it." Finally the annexation was 
 protested against on the following grounds : — 
 ^ I. ''That it is a violation of the convention 
 entered into at Sand River in January 1852. 
 
 2. " That the reports as to the nature of the 
 disturbances in the Transvaal and the peril to 
 the peace and safety of the adjoining colonies 
 thereby threatened, and upon which the in- 
 structions to Sir Theophilus Shepstone were 
 founded, were gross exaggerations of fact, and 
 misrepresented the actual condition of the 
 country. 
 
 3. " That the condition laid down in Her 
 Majesty's commission to Sir Theophilus Shep- 
 stone requiring the assent of the inhabitants, or 
 a sufficient number of them, or the Legislature 
 thereof, has not been complied with. 
 
 4. '' That the British Government cannot 
 with justice avail themselves of the plea that 
 the defencelessness and disorganisation of the 
 Republic, and the encroachment of the natives 
 and consequent danger to the British colonies, 
 made the intervention of their authority a neces- 
 sary act, inasmuch as those evils, if they existed, 
 
 ^were the direct result and consequence of the 
 
in South Africa 187 
 
 acts of their own representatives as above 
 referred to." 
 
 These contentions were of no avail. The 
 reply from Sir Michael Hicks Beach begins 
 with the statement that "it is impossible, for 
 many strong reasons, .... that the Queen's 
 sovereignty should be withdrawn," and then 
 proceeds to fence with the arguments which it 
 had thus refused, at the outset, to consider. 
 Among other things, it remarks that " the an- 
 nexation was undertaken most reluctantly." 
 This statement hardly tallies with Lord Car- 
 narvon's confidential despatch of the 9th 
 February 1867, asking Sir Philip Wodehouse 
 whether he thought that *' a suitable opportunity 
 had occurred " for declaring the Sand River 
 Convention to be no longer binding upon Her 
 Majesty's Government, but that, of course, had 
 been written eleven years before. Early in 
 January 1879 the deputies were back in the 
 Transvaal, and a meeting of the Boer Com- 
 mittee, which gathered to consider their report, 
 decided to "continue protesting" and "to con- 
 cert further measures towards the attainment of 
 their object." A few days after the Zulu War 
 broke out. The Imperial authorities had de- 
 liberately fostered this savage power as a check 
 
1 88 The English and the Dutch 
 
 on the Boers of the Transvaal. Sir Bartle 
 Frere described our policy towards them in a 
 letter to General Ponsonby, by saying, " The 
 fact is, that while the Boer Republic was a 
 rival and semi-hostile power, it was a Natal 
 weakness rather to pet the Zulus as one might 
 a tame wolf who only devoured one's neigh- 
 bour's sheep." We had petted and fattened this 
 wolf, and now we felt his teeth. The disasters 
 of the war are happily irrelevant to the subject 
 of this book, though it may be remarked that 
 they were caused solely by the neglect of the 
 English officers to heed the warnings given 
 them by Kruger and Joubert as to the dangers 
 of sudden surprise in fighting against Zulus, 
 and that some of the Boers fought bravely side 
 by side with the British troops : among them 
 was Piet Uys, whose father and brother had 
 been killed in the wars with Dingan forty years 
 before, when the Zulu power was crushed. He 
 and his son now lost their lives in the war which 
 the British policy of ''petting the wolf" had 
 caused. Colonel (now Sir Evelyn) Wood wrote 
 to Frere : '' To my great grief, Piet Uys was 
 killed yesterday. If I am killed, kindly 'father' 
 his children, and estimate his services, directly 
 and indirectly, at not less than ;^5o,ooo, though 
 
in South Africa 189 
 
 of course I don't mean that any such sum should 
 be given — nor indeed any money." Most of the 
 Boers, however, were too sore about the loss of 
 their freedom to help the English to quell the 
 power which had been fostered as a menace to 
 themselves. 
 
 Sir Bartle Frere had promised that he would 
 come up to the Transvaal and meet the Boer 
 Committee himself, and as soon as the critical 
 stage of the Zulu War had passed he set out 
 to do so. Shepstone had by this time been 
 recalled, and Colonel Lanyon was in charge 
 of the province. The Boers had now many 
 serious grievances besides their chief complaint 
 against the loss of their independence, since 
 many of the promises given in the proclama- 
 tion by which the Transvaal had been annexed 
 had not been fulfilled. Those among them 
 who were prepared to dare all things for the 
 recovery of their freedom had gone into laager, 
 and Lanyon had been forced to take measures 
 for the defence of Pretoria, if necessary. It 
 was evident that the Boers were beginning 
 to tire of protesting, and of receiving the in- 
 variable answer that the question of the an- 
 nexation could not be discussed, and Frere's 
 task required all his tact and diplomatic ability. 
 
190 The English and the Dutch 
 
 He met the Committee at their camp on April 
 1 2th, 1879. He was very well Impressed by the 
 Boers, though he had been warned that they 
 would probably try to shoot him, and he came 
 to the Interesting conclusion that most of the 
 black sheep among them were — Outlanders. 
 " If I may judge," he writes to Sir Michael 
 Hicks Beach, ''from the gentlemen composing 
 the deputation, and others of their class whom 
 I have had the honour of meeting since coming 
 to the Transvaal, the leaders are, with few ex- 
 ceptions, men who deserve respect and regard 
 for many valuable and amiable qualities as 
 citizens and subjects. In simple faith, in 
 fidelity to all obligations of family, race, and 
 kindred. In reverential observance of all scrip- 
 tural obligations and precepts, as understood 
 by them from the Word of God, which is their 
 sole text -book and written authority, they 
 strongly remind one of the Puritans and Cove- 
 nanters of earlier days. In education, and 
 in the refinements which go with it, they are 
 obviously behind the better class of Dutch 
 farmers In the old colony, who belong to the 
 same original stock. The Transvaal farmer 
 is generally the son or grandson of a *Voor- 
 trekker,' whose descendants have lived, per- 
 
in South Africa 191 
 
 force, in the wilderness, far from schools and 
 all means of education ; comparatively few 
 have had the advantage of a whole year's 
 schooling of any kind. But this, to my mind, 
 only makes more meritorious the amount of 
 education, almost self-acquired, to be found 
 among them, and more touching their earnest 
 desire to give to their children advantages in 
 the way of education which have been denied 
 to themselves. The few exceptions are mostly 
 foreign adventurers of various sorts and nations 
 — English, Irish, and Scotch, Jews, Americans, 
 Hollanders, Germans, Belgians, and Portu- 
 guese, who, though often well educated and 
 naturally able, are rarely men of high character 
 or disinterested aims." 
 
 The conversation between Frere and the 
 Boer Committee could hardly have much lasting 
 result, as the Cape Governor felt himself bound 
 to support the action of Shepstone, who had 
 spoilt his hand by his hasty and ill-considered 
 proclamation. Frere is often held responsible 
 for the annexation, but this is a mistake. It 
 was proclaimed so soon after his arrival in 
 South Africa that Shepstone could not have com- 
 municated with him on the subject, and he was 
 surprised when he heard of its accomplishment, 
 
192 The English and the Dutch 
 
 and never pretended to have approved of it. 
 His loyalty to his fellow-officials, however, and 
 his dislike of the vacillation which has always 
 marked our policy in South Africa, forced him 
 to support the annexation after it had been 
 announced, and he could only give the Boers 
 the usual answer to the effect that it was ir- 
 revocable. He considered that he could not 
 give them back their independence, but he 
 promised them a free Constitution under the 
 Queen's sovereignty. This was not enough 
 for the Boers, who took their stand on the 
 Sand River Convention. 
 
 An amusing passage of arms between Frere 
 and Kruger on this point illustrates once more, 
 as it is told by Frere himself, the adroitness of 
 '' Dutch rural simplicity." One of the speakers 
 had implied that the Boers were now, under 
 British administration, governed by a set of 
 thieves, and Frere replied that if anyone had 
 had any goods stolen he had only to name the 
 thief and the Administrator would see that 
 justice was done. Whereupon Kruger said, 
 **When anyone has stolen any of my goods, 
 if I see any hope of getting it back, I will 
 name him, but not otherwise." "You can 
 give the name to the Administrator," replied 
 
in South Africa 193 
 
 Frere, ''and you may be sure that he will see 
 your stolen goods returned " ; and Kruger re- 
 torted, " I am satisfied to allow that case to be 
 taken into court. ... I hope it is perfectly 
 understood that the goods stolen is the Con- 
 vention of Sand River, and that is what we 
 want back." 
 
 Frere, however, persuaded the Boers to 
 postpone immediate action, and promised 
 to draw up a clear statement of their argu- 
 ments and send it to the British authorities, 
 and also to forward a petition from them to 
 the Oueen. In this interview with the Boer 
 leaders he had learnt, as is shown by the 
 despatch quoted above, to respect them per- 
 sonally, and what he saw of the condition of 
 the country proved to him clearly that they 
 had many real grievances besides the loss of 
 freedom, and that Shepstone had mismanaged 
 the affairs of the Transvaal from top to bottom. 
 "Unless I had seen it," he wrote to Sir 
 Michael Hicks Beach, " I could not have be- 
 lieved that in two years things could have 
 drifted into such a mess. They were ob- 
 viously bad enough when the country was 
 annexed, but nothing save lifelong habits of 
 trusting that ' something would turn up ' can 
 13 
 
194 The English and the Dutch 
 
 explain to my mind the apparent absence of 
 all effort to devise or substitute a better sys- 
 tem." On the other hand, Frere had won the 
 confidence and cordial esteem of the Boers. 
 He writes that one of the elders took him 
 by the hand and said, '' If we had been talked 
 to in that way from the first, all this trouble 
 would never have occurred," and one of them 
 said to Stegmann, his interpreter, " As for 
 this governor of yours, from all I hear he 
 might be a 'regt Dopper.'" 
 
 Whether Frere's personal charm and con- 
 summate tact could have induced the Boers 
 to give up their demand for complete inde- 
 pendence, is an open question, for he was 
 not allowed a chance of trying. The Imperial 
 Government had crippled him at the outset 
 by its appointment of Shepstone — of whom 
 he wrote that he ''would reform and report 
 nothing unasked, and would tolerate no partner 
 in his realm " — with a practically free hand in 
 the Transvaal ; and now that he was gone, 
 Frere was not even allowed to try to clear 
 up the trouble that Shepstone's policy and 
 administration had caused. It was the story 
 of Sir Benjamin D'Urban over again. The 
 wars that Frere had been obliged, as he con- 
 
In South Africa 195 
 
 sidered, to wage with the Kaffirs and the 
 Zulus, had displeased the Aborigines Protect- 
 tion Society, which was busily disseminating 
 statements on the authority of *' a disfrocked 
 clergyman, who had been in custody for 
 swindling," and ''a trader, who had been in 
 jail for gun-running."^ 
 
 By way of a sop to the English enthusiasts 
 who thought that they knew more about the 
 colony than Sir Bartle and the Cape colonists, 
 who were almost unanimous in support of his 
 policy, the British authorities censured the 
 governor, and took away half, and, under the 
 circumstances, the more important half, of his 
 authority. On the 20th of May 1879, Sir 
 Michael Hicks Beach wrote that the Imperial 
 Government had decided to place the chief 
 military and civil command in the eastern 
 portion of South Africa in the hands of Sir 
 Garnet Wolseley. " Sir Garnet Wolseley will, 
 in addition to his military command, be com- 
 missioned as Governor of Natal and of the 
 Transvaal, and High Commissioner for Native 
 and Foreign Affairs to the Northward and East- 
 ward of these Colonies." The despatch added 
 that ''above all. Her Majesty's Governmeut 
 
 1 Mr. MsLvtin^^n^s^Tra^tsvaa/ Trotible. 
 
1^6 The English and the Dutch j 
 
 are anxious that the larger and more com- 
 plicated questions connected with confederation 
 should be considered under your guidance," 
 etc. The same letter which ties Frere's hands 
 bids him set to work on the most difficult task 
 that a statesman could be asked to face. 
 
 The Boers had broken up their camp after 
 their meetings with Frere, and the interval 
 between the despatch of the memorial and the 
 receipt of the reply would have given him an 
 opportunity of showing that he, at anyrate, 
 was prepared to fulfil his promises. But owing 
 to this new departure the good effects of his 
 personal interviews with the leaders of the 
 ''malcontents" were lost, and the Boers, who 
 understood perfectly well what had happened, 
 and were able to compare the Aborigines 
 Protection Society and Bishop Colenso with 
 their traditions of Dr. Philip and the London 
 Missionary Society, had another example of 
 Imperial vacillation to stimulate their eager- 
 ness for independence. 
 
 Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived in South Africa 
 only to find the Zulu War, by which he had 
 hoped to add to his laurels, practically finished 
 by the battle of Ulundi. The administration 
 of the Transvaal was not a congenial task to 
 
in South Africa 197 
 
 him. He did, indeed, impose peace upon 
 Sekukuni after an admirably conducted cam- 
 paign, but with regard to the Transvaal and 
 its internal problems, he could only write to 
 Frere and ask him to ''carry out the confedera- 
 tion quickly, as that might calm the sullen 
 anger of these Dutchmen." He might as 
 well have asked Frere to drive a four-in-hand 
 before the horses were caught. He stated 
 repeatedly that no English Government would 
 ever dare to give back the country, and this 
 sort of language only angered the Boers. ^" 
 They held a meeting in December 1879, and 
 openly discussed the question of an appeal to 
 arms. Two of their leaders, Bok and Pre- 
 torius, were arrested for high treason. Bok 
 was allowed bail, and the prosecution against 
 him was dropped. Pretorius was refused bail 
 and imprisoned, and was then set free and 
 appointed a member of the new Legislative y,» 
 Council that was then being established. 
 
 The course of affairs in the Transvaal was^ 
 beginning to irritate the Dutchmen of the Cape 
 Colony very seriously. In a letter to Sir Henry^ 
 Ponsonby, written early in 1880, Frere says: 
 ** Whatever Sir Garnet Wolseley may say or 
 think of the general feeling up in the Trans- 
 
198 The English and the Dutch 
 
 vaal, the Dutch population down here, who 
 have relations up there, is seriously uneasy 
 and angry. . . . What may be the precise 
 extent and results of this change of feeling, 
 I shall hardly be able to judge till the Cape 
 Parliament meets next month. I am made 
 aware of it whenever I meet a genuine Dutch 
 Africander farmer, who Is apt to let me know 
 that his goodwill is personal to me and my 
 office, and Is * not to be misunderstood as 
 implying any approval of our doings in the 
 Transvaal.' . . . These Dutchmen are slow 
 to move, but bitter and obstinate when roused, 
 and apt to move in an angry crowd. If any 
 number of them join the Republican faction, 
 there will be serious trouble in South Africa, 
 and the drifting may end by these colonies 
 drifting away from the Empire." It was thus 
 beoflnnlnsf to become evident that the Trans- 
 vaal did not stand alone, and that there was 
 a point at which the kinsmen of the Boers in 
 the colony would refuse to stand by and see 
 their repeated demands refused. In the mean- 
 time Mr. Gladstone had been making speeches. 
 In the course of his famous Midlothian cam- 
 paign he spoke of the Transvaal as ''a country 
 where we have chosen, most unwisely, I am 
 
in South Africa 199 
 
 tempted to say insanely, to place ourselves in 
 the strange predicament of the free subjects of 
 a Monarchy going to coerce the free subjects 
 of a Republic, and to compel them to accept a 
 citizenship which they decline and refuse." In 
 another speech he said : '' Look at what have 
 been their [the Government's] spontaneous acts ! 
 They have annexed in Africa the Transvaal terri- 
 tory, inhabited by a free European Republican 
 community, which they have thought proper to 
 bring within the limits of a Monarchy, although, 
 out of 8000 persons in that Republic qualified 
 to vote on this subject, we are told that 6500 
 protested against it." He went so far as to 
 speak of repudiation on April ist, 1880. '' That 
 is the meaning," he said, "of adding places 
 like Cyprus and places like the country of the 
 Boers to the British Empire. And, moreover, 
 I would say this, that if these acquisitions were 
 as valuable as they are valueless, I would 
 repudiate them, because they are obtained by 
 means dishonourable to the character of our 
 country." 
 
 When the Boers heard that statements of 
 this sort were being made by the man who 
 was almost certain to become Prime Minister, 
 they thought that at last their patience would 
 
200 The English and the Dutch 
 
 be rewarded, their protests would receive a 
 hearing, and that a fair examination of the 
 circumstances of the annexation would lead to 
 its withdrawal. Not being versed in the 
 methods of English politics, they could not be 
 expected to know that these utterances, deli- 
 vered in the heat of an electoral campaign, 
 would not be considered binding on the states- 
 man when he took up his official duties at 
 Whitehall. They did not understand that it 
 is part of the political game, as played in this 
 country, to denounce the other party's actions 
 in unmeasured invective, and having thus 
 ejected it from office, to carry out those same 
 actions with a view to "continuity of policy." 
 The Boers only knew that Mr. Gladstone had 
 said that he would repudiate acquisitions such 
 as Cyprus and the country of the Boers, and 
 thought that he meant it. 
 
 In April 1880 his party was returned to 
 power with a large majority, and, in May, 
 Kruger and Joubert were at Cape Town, eager 
 to know what the new Government was going 
 to do about the Transvaal. They soon learnt 
 that the references to their country in the 
 Midlothian speeches were mere obiter dicta^ 
 and that **the sovereignty of the Queen over 
 
in South Africa 201 
 
 the Transvaal could not be relinquished." 
 They accordingly worked hard among their 
 Dutch kinsmen In the colony to secure the 
 overthrow of the Confederation proposal, which 
 was now before the Cape Parliament, and they 
 worked successfully. Sir Bartle Frere refers, 
 in a letter to Sir George Colley, — who had now 
 succeeded Sir Garnet Wolseley as High Com- 
 missioner of South-east Africa, — to the great 
 effect produced on the Dutch constituencies by 
 the ''stumping oratory of Kruger and Joubert;" 
 and he thus describes the course of the Con- 
 federation debate in the House of Assembly, 
 ascribing the failure of the measure to the 
 efforts of the Boers. ** It soon became evident 
 that the Transvaal deputies had made a very 
 effective impression on Dutch constituencies 
 here. One member of the habitual supporters 
 of the Government after another begged Mr. 
 Sprigg to let him off voting, or to allow him 
 to vote against the conference — not that he or 
 his constituents disapproved of it, but that 
 * they felt bound to show their sympathy with 
 the Transvaal by voting against any conference 
 till the Republic was restored.' At last it 
 became evident that, if they pressed for a 
 division, ministers would be In a minority, and 
 
202 The English and the Dutch 
 
 the question would be regarded as decided for 
 some time to come. So, as the smaller of two 
 evils, ministers elected to accept the 'previous 
 question.' " 
 
 The strength of this sympathy with the 
 Boers, which was thus able to defeat a measure 
 that was generally accepted with favour, but 
 could not be allowed to pass under the circum- 
 stances, Is a fact worth remembering in these 
 days, when Englishmen are apt to forget that 
 the Transvaal does not stand alone. The 
 
 a*. 
 
 Boers of the South African Republic were 
 ready enough to consider the question of con- 
 federation when it was first mooted in 1875, 
 before their independence had been taken from 
 them, and the Sand River Convention had 
 been pitched Into the waste-paper basket. But 
 just . as President Brand, of the Free State, 
 then refused to discuss confederation until the 
 question of the annexation of the diamond fields 
 had been settled, so now the Transvaal Boers 
 determined to oppose it, and their kinsmen at 
 the Cape supported them by deciding to vote 
 ''against any conference till the Republic was 
 restored." 
 
 Having thus successfully tested public opinion 
 at the Cape, Kruger and Joubert returned to 
 
In South Africa 203 
 
 the Transvaal, and an uprising of the 
 Boers to win back their freedom was only 
 a question of date. The home authorities, 
 with this very practical comment on the 
 annexation of the Transvaal from the Cape 
 Parliament before them, had an excellent 
 opportunity of reversing Shepstone's blunder 
 as a graceful concession to the wishes of the 
 Cape Colony. They could thus have undone 
 a great wrong in such a manner as to render 
 the act of reparation doubly pleasing. Such 
 adroitness was not to be expected from the 
 Colonial Office, however, and this favourable 
 moment was allowed to pass by. The Boers 
 did not hurry themselves. It was now more 
 than three years since the annexation had been 
 proclaimed, but though they had never for a 
 moment acquiesced in it, they had gone on in 
 their slow, stolid way drawing up protests and 
 signing petitions, following the advice of 
 Kruger, who held them back from violent 
 measures as long as he could, ''because he said 
 he believed in the justice of the British Govern- 
 ment." These facts should be remembered by 
 those who represent the Boers' rising as a 
 sudden impulse, due to the machinations of 
 a Fenian reneo^ade. The Boer malcontents 
 
204 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ^ad never concealed their intention of fighting 
 or trekking, if they could not win back their 
 freedom by other means, and now, perhaps, 
 owing to the strong sympathy that their Cape 
 kinsmen had shown them, they chose to fight. 
 In December 1880 the English authorities were 
 openly defied, and on Dingan's Day, Decem- 
 ber 1 6th, the flag of the Republic was hoisted. 
 Kruger, Joubert, and Pretorius had been 
 appointed as a Committee of Government. 
 
 There is no need to go into the details of 
 the war which followed. It is not a pleasant 
 story for Englishmen either to write or read 
 about. It is well known that the Boers, fighting 
 with all the heroism that their fathers had 
 shown in the wars against Moselekatse and 
 Dingan, inflicted a series of defeats on the 
 British troops, and that then, when consider- 
 able British reinforcements were on the way, 
 an armistice was arranged, and terms of peace 
 were drawn up which restored their independ- 
 ence to the Boers. This tardy act of reparation 
 could hardly have been carried out in a more 
 disastrous manner. It left the more ignorant 
 of the Boers with the impression that they had 
 defeated the British Empire, and extorted from 
 the English the freedom which they had refused 
 
in South Africa 205 
 
 to give back when approached with peaceful 
 and temperate representations. This impres- 
 sion, of course, had a considerable effect on the 
 attitude of the Boers towards the Enoflishmen 
 who live in their midst, and much of the friction 
 between the Dutch farmers and the English 
 Outlanders is the result of the manner in which 
 independence was given back to the Republic. 
 It had to be done, of course. It is easy to say- 
 that we could have crushed the Boers of the 
 Transvaal with the forces that were on their 
 way. But if we had crushed the Boers of the 
 Transvaal, we should have had to deal also^ 
 with the Orange Free State, which, as it was, 
 was held back with some difficulty by President 
 Brand from joining in the war, and also with^ 
 the Dutchmen of the Cape Colony. 
 
 Among his many shrewd observations on 
 South Africa, Lord Randolph Churchill wrote : 
 *' The surrender of the Transvaal, and the 
 peace concluded by Mr. Gladstone with the 
 victors of Majuba Hill, were at the time, and 
 still are, the object of sharp criticism and bitter 
 denunciation from many politicians at home, 
 quoruTn pars parva fin. Better and more 
 precise information, combined with cool reflec- 
 tion, leads me to the conclusion that, had the 
 
2o6 The English and the Dutch 
 
 British Government of that day taken advantage 
 of its strong miHtary position, and annihilated, 
 as it could easily have done, the Boer forces, it 
 would indeed have regained the Transvaal, : 
 but it might have lost Cape Colony. The 
 Dutch sentiment in the colony had been so ex- 
 asperated by what it considered to be the unjust, 
 faithless, and arbitrary policy pursued towards 
 the free Dutchmen of the Transvaal, . . . that 
 the final triumph of the British arms, mainly by 
 brute force, would have permanently and hope- 
 lessly alienated it from Great Britain." The 
 annexation — as is acknowledged even by Mr. 
 Worsfold, that most enthusiastic supporter of 
 the '' forward " policy, in his book on South 
 Africa — had to be cancelled. It is only to be 
 regretted that it ever was proclaimed, and that 
 the proclamation, having been made, was not 
 unmade sooner and under more favourable 
 circumstances. 
 
in South Africa 207 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 The terms agreed to at the close of the Boer 
 war Included complete amnesty to the In- 
 surgents, except persons who had committed 
 acts contrary to the rules of civilised warfare, 
 the appointment of a Commission to arrange 
 for the restoration of the Independence of the 
 Transvaal, and a promise that complete self- 
 government under British suzerainty should be 
 established within six months. The Commis- 
 sion was composed of Sir Hercules Robinson, 
 who had succeeded Sir Bartle Frere as Gover- 
 nor of the Cape, Sir Henry de Vllllers, and 
 Colonel Wood. It was arranged that President 
 Brand, of the Free State, was to be present at 
 the meetings of the Commission. The report 
 of the Commission resulted In the draftlnof of 
 the Convention of Pretoria, signed In August 
 1 88 1, which was modified slightly by the Con- 
 vention of London In 1884. The Queen's 
 
 207 
 
2o8 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ^suzerainty was recognised by an article which 
 bound the RepubHc to ''conclude no treaty or 
 engagement with any State or nation other than 
 the Orange Free State, nor with any native 
 tribe to the eastward or westward of the 
 Republic, until the same has been approved 
 by Her Majesty the Queen." 
 
 It was not to be expected that the country — 
 which had been in a far from satisfactory state 
 at the time of the annexation, and had then 
 gone through three years of bad and unsym- 
 pathetic government, and seething discontent, 
 ending in an armed revolt — could settle down 
 at once into an orderly and tranquil condition. 
 The war had attracted more rogues and wastrels 
 than ever into the Transvaal, and during the 
 first few years of its history after the restoration 
 of its independence there was something like 
 a return to the anarchy of former days ; and the 
 Government was unable to restrain the lawless 
 spirits who lived on its borders from making 
 filibustering attacks upon the neighbouring 
 natives. Those, however, who point to these 
 occurrences as violations of the conventions 
 must remember that British subjects from the 
 diamond fields took quite as active a part in 
 them as the Boers, and that the wrongdoing 
 
in South Africa 209 
 
 was not confined to one of the parties to the 
 conventions. Such outbreaks, however, have 
 now been rendered impossible by the consolida- 
 tion of a firm government, under President 
 Kruger, in the Transvaal, and by the establish- 
 ment of a British Protectorate in Bechuanaland. 
 
 The two really Important events which hap- 
 pened to the Transvaal between 1881 and 
 1895 were the discovery of the Rand gold- 
 field and the occupation of Rhodesia by the 
 Chartered Company of British South Africa. 
 Digging for gold had been carried on for 
 some years before the annexation In Lydenburg 
 and other districts, but the results were not 
 sufficiently remunerative to attract a large body 
 of Immigrants, though there were enough 
 British miners in the country to supply Shep- 
 stone with plenty of memorials in favour of 
 his establishment of British rule. The Rand 
 goldfield, on the contrary, was so rich that 
 its discovery led to an influx of English and 
 foreign capitalists and miners large enough to 
 compel the Boers to revise the conditions on 
 which they granted political rights. 
 
 It is no part of the object of this work to 
 enter Into a detailed discussion of the questions 
 at issue between the Boers and their foreign 
 14 
 
2 1 o The English and the Dutch 
 
 neighbours. Any attempt to do so would involve 
 an examination into matters which have hap- 
 pened too recently, and have been too hastily 
 and partially described to be within the bounds 
 of profitable discussion at present. The history 
 of recent events in Johannesburg has not yet 
 emerged from the stage of ex parte assertions, 
 and, moreover, some of them are still sub judice 
 both here and in the Transvaal. It is only 
 possible, therefore, to deal with the question by 
 detaching the broad principles involved from the 
 mass of disputed details which surround them. 
 
 Anyone who has read the preceding chapters 
 of this book with an unbiassed mind will ac- 
 knowledge that the experience of the Dutch- 
 men under British rule at the Cape Colony 
 in the early part of this century, and their 
 knowledge of the vacillations and vagaries of 
 Imperial policy in South Africa, — which seems 
 unable to take a steady line and keep to it, but 
 wavers continually between Exeter Hall and 
 Maxim guns, — have justified them in the deter- 
 mination to suffer anything rather than a return 
 to British government. They cannot be ex- 
 pected to know that our colonial policy has 
 turned over a new leaf, and if they knew it, 
 they have good reason for suspecting that it 
 
in South Africa 2 i i 
 
 may shortly turn over another, like unto the 
 old. The words written by Sir George Clerk 
 in 1853 are as true now as when they were 
 written — still truer, in fact, since they are now 
 backed by the events that took place between 
 1854 and 1 88 1, the various breaches of the 
 conventions culminating- in the annexation of 
 part of the Free State and whole of the Trans- 
 vaal Republic. Sir George Clerk expressed 
 the conviction of a fair-minded Englishman 
 when he said, in his report on the state of 
 affairs north of the Orange, ''Your Grace is no 
 doubt aware that in reviewing the former policy 
 of the British Government one cannot escape 
 from the painful conviction, with reference to 
 the interest and feelings of the Dutch inhabi- 
 tants of the Cape Colony, that the measures 
 which, with few exceptions, it pursued towards 
 them, and the neglect or disdain with which 
 it habitually regarded them, have engendered 
 a spirit which leaves them, with few exceptions, 
 by no means desirous of remaining anywhere 
 under British dominion." 
 
 Such was the spirit that Sir George found 
 among the emigrant Dutchmen in 1853, and 
 it cannot be contended that subsequent events 
 were likely to have altered or softened it. 
 
2 1 2 The English and the Dutch 
 
 Under these circumstances we cannot wonder 
 that the Boers, when they found that the 
 Outlander population was increasing at such 
 a rate that It promised to outnumber them 
 shortly, made such alterations In their regula- 
 tions with regard to granting the franchise as 
 to keep the political power In their own hands. 
 They argue that men who merely come to the 
 country for a few years to dig for gold and 
 make money cannot expect to be allowed to 
 swamp, by force of numbers, the genuine in- 
 habitants of the country, the sons of the men 
 who won It from the savages under Moselekatse 
 and Dingan, by whom it had been ravaged and 
 depopulated. This contention is so logical that 
 it could never have been questioned, if English 
 opinion had not been so deeply prejudiced 
 against the Boers by their various traducers, 
 that any charge against them is at once ac- 
 cepted as true. It Is unreasonable to expect 
 the Boers to give full political powers to English- 
 men who would be numerous enough to hand 
 the country over to the Imperial Government 
 or the Chartered Company. Englishmen are 
 fond of talking about ''no taxation without 
 representation," and this Is certainly a sound 
 principle under ordinary circumstances, but it 
 
in South Africa 2 1 3 
 
 is not part of the scheme of the universe. If 
 English miners went to dig the gold of the 
 Ural mountains they would certainly be taxed, 
 but if they therefore demanded political rights 
 from the Tsar, they would probably find them- 
 selves in Siberia. Moreover, without going so 
 far afield, the Boers can point across their 
 borders to Rhodesia, where British subjects 
 live under an unqualified despotism. There is 
 plenty of taxation in Matabeleland, but no 
 representation. 
 
 The Boers can also point to the example of 
 Rhodesia when they are accused of taxing the 
 mining industry too heavily. Considering the 
 enormous profits realised by the Rand com- 
 panies, this contention is obviously absurd, but 
 if the imposts of the Transvaal are compared 
 with the claim of the Chartered Company to 
 fifty per cent, of the vendors' scrip, it will be 
 found that the Boers treat the miners much 
 better than the Company does. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the Outlanders have 
 legitimate grievances. One is the defective police 
 force of Johannesburg. Another is the condi- 
 tion of the water supply, though this, by the 
 way, is provided by an English company, which 
 has now set to work to carry out the necessary 
 
2 14 ^^^ English and the Dutch 
 
 reforms. Englishmen may also fairly complain 
 of the system of State-subsidised education, 
 which does not allow the use of the English 
 language in the schools. On these matters 
 they are entitled to grumble as loud as they 
 please, but they cannot urge with justice that 
 the Boers, after all the sacrifices they have made, 
 all the hardships they have borne, and all the 
 battles they have fought to win and preserve 
 their freedom, should throw it away by handing 
 over the government of their country to aliens 
 who are closely allied with their powerful and 
 ambitious neighbour, the Chartered Company. 
 
 Another Outlander grievance which has a 
 genuine basis is the granting of monoplies by 
 the Boer Government, and the exceptional 
 favour which it shows to Germans and Hol- 
 landers. These things are certainly to be 
 deplored, but it must be remembered that the 
 leanings of the Transvaal authorities in the 
 direction of certain foreign Powers are the 
 direct result of their suspicion, which a century 
 of British vacillation in South Africa has justi- 
 fied them in feeling, that their independence, 
 though once more solemnly guaranteed and 
 ratified, is at the mercy of any change of Im- 
 perial policy. By way of securing it, they 
 
in South Africa 2 i 5 
 
 have done all that they could to attract German 
 capital and to rouse German sympathy. This 
 policy of theirs, into which they were forced by 
 the memories of Imperial somersaults in the 
 past, and by the avowedly undisguised hostility 
 of some of the leaders of the ''forward" party, 
 has been shown to be of no avail. England 
 has proved that she would readily face a 
 European war rather than allow her suzerainty 
 in South Africa to be set aside ; and now that 
 we have shown the Boers that secret under- 
 standings with Germany will not help them, 
 what we have to do is to take away the causes 
 which drove them to look for external aid. 
 
 The preceding chapters have shown that 
 want of sympathy with the Dutchmen has been 
 the bane of Imperial policy from the beginning. 
 We have never attempted to consult their inter- 
 ests, or to understand their peculiarities, or to 
 conciliate their affection. In the early days of 
 our occupation of the Cape we ruled them des- 
 potically, under the influence of the reaction 
 against liberal principles caused by the excesses 
 of the French Revolution. When the pendu- 
 lum swung, it carried English opinion in the 
 direction, not of an enlightened policy towards 
 the Dutch, but of impossibly idealistic treat- 
 
2i6 The English and the Dutch 
 
 ment of the natives, and consequently of 
 antagonism towards the Dutchmen, whose 
 experience had taught them that the natives 
 were not improved or elevated by being given 
 liberty to live in barbarism. This antagonism 
 of British philanthropists, though modified 
 occasionally by the disastrous results, both to 
 natives and colonists, of the attempts to carry 
 out the idealistic policy, has never wholly died 
 out, and it has now been exceeded in vigour 
 and effectiveness by the antagonism of the 
 capitalists, who would like to ''run " the whole 
 of South and Central Africa as a gigantic 
 joint-stock enterprise. It is time that Eng-lish 
 public opinion should tell both philanthropist 
 and capitalist to mind their own business, and 
 should hold out the hand of fellowship to the 
 Boer, recognising that, in spite of his back- 
 wardness and stolid prejudices, he is possessed 
 of those very qualities on which Englishmen 
 have always prided themselves most — sober 
 conservatism in the matters of ordinary life, 
 combined with an indomitable spirit that will 
 dare all things rather than submit to arbitrary 
 domination ; and patience that is slow to angdr, 
 backed by magnificent bravery in the fiejd 
 whenever war is necessary. As Sir Bartle 
 
in South Africa 2 1 7 
 
 Frere told the Boers during the course of the 
 Conference at Erasmus Spruit, **We come of 
 the same stock, one of the most honoured 
 stocks of all white men," and the differences 
 of temperament which now separate the two 
 branches of the stock can easily be traced to 
 the difference in the circumstances under which 
 they have developed, and can readily be softened 
 by mutual forbearance and goodwill, if only the 
 philanthropist and the capitalist and the '' Im- 
 perial factor " would leave the English and 
 Dutch in South Africa to live together in 
 peace. Mr. Selous, the best authority on the 
 subject that could be found, has expressed his 
 conviction that since the South African Dutch- 
 men *' possess in such an eminent degree so 
 many of the qualities that Englishmen pro- 
 fess to admire, the two races would, with a 
 better knowledge of one another, soon shake 
 off their mutual prejudices, and agree to work 
 together for the common good and advance- 
 ment of the best interests of South Africa." 
 
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 MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH 
 
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 I