n most instances to be
groundless; and thereupon they lodged accusations before the High
Court of Justice. In 1811 between seventy and eighty such cases came
before the Circuit Court for trial. There was hardly a family on the
frontier of which some relative was not brought as a criminal before
the judges to answer to a charge of murder or violent assault.
Several months were occupied in the trials, and more than a thousand
witnesses were examined, but in every instance the most serious
charges were proved to be without foundation. Only a few convictions,
and those of no very outrageous crimes, resulted from these
prosecutions, which kept the entire colony in a ferment until long
after the circuit was closed.

Thus far everyone will approve of the sentiments of one party or the
other according to his sympathy, but in what follows no unprejudiced
person who will take the trouble to study the matter thoroughly can
acquit the anti-colonial missionaries of something more faulty than
mere error of judgment. For years their writings teemed with charges
against the colonists similar to those they had brought before the
High Court of Justice. These writings were circulated widely in
Europe, where the voice of the colonists was never heard, and they
created impressions there which no refutation made in South Africa
could ever counteract. The acts, the language, even the written
petitions of the colonists, were so distorted in accounts sent home,
that these accounts cannot now be read by those who have made
themselves acquainted with the truth, without the liveliest feelings
of indignation being excited.

The colonists learned that in England they were regarded as cruel
barbarians because they refused to permit Hottentot herds, swarming
with vermin, to be seated in their front rooms at the time of family
prayer. They found themselves pictured as the harshest of
taskmasters, as unfeeling violators of native rights. And of late
years it had become plain to them that the views of their opponents
were being acted upon at the Colonial Office, while their complaints
were wholly disregarded.

Several causes of dissatisfaction, besides those above mentioned,
contributed to the impulse of emigration, but all in a very slight
degree. Judge Cloete, in his 'Five Lectures,' mentions the severe
punishment inflicted upon the frontier insurgents of 1815 as one of
them; and there is no doubt that it was so with some families, though
no trace