The first regular British governor of the Cape was Lord Charles Somerset, who remained there from 1814 to 1826. He was autocratic. There was no representative government during his time and the only method of legislation was by proclamation. He antagonized journalists, missionaries and farmers of both races. The farmers he antagonized by a re valuation of their farms and a more strict exaction of their quit rents, and still more the Boers among them by his institution of a police force composed of natives, whom they regarded as an inferior race who should never be allowed to touch a white man. The culminating grievance with the Boers arose from the refusal of one Frederick Bezuidenhout to appear in a circuit court to answer for his treatment of a Hottentot. When the native police were sent to arrest him he resisted and was killed in the en counter; whereupon his brother, Prinsloo and other friends rose against the Government. The rebellion was easily suppressed, the other Bezuidenhout being also killed in the fighting, while of the survivors 32 were banished and five sentenced to be hanged. The execution of these five at Slachter's Nek in March 1816 was made worse by the bungling of the executioner on the scaffold.
One of the troubles on the eastern frontier had always been the paucity of settlers to resist raids by the Bantu tribes : moreover if the colony was ever to be securely under British dominion, it was important to obtain some settlers of British origin as a coun terpoise to the almost wholly Boer population. Accordingly Somerset had little difficulty in persuading the ministry and par liament to grant £50,000 to assist suitable immigrants, with the result that in 182o no fewer than 5.000 were brought out to settle in the eastern district of Albany round Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth, no attempt being made, as in the case of the Huguenot settlers, to disperse the newcomers among the original colonists and so weld all into one nation. This was the first organized settlement since the Dutch stopped immigration in 1707.
Very little more freedom was given under Somerset's successor. It is true that much needed reforms were introduced in 1828 in the administration of justice, the English criminal system being introduced, while, as in Que bec, civil procedure was left under the Roman-Dutch law. But in carrying out these reforms the Government swept away all the minor Dutch officials such as landdrosts and heemraden, substi tuting for them resident magistrates, who sometimes could speak no Dutch, while the old and familiar office of field-cornet was bereft of all its judicial functions. In a word almost all popular share in the government was swept away; nor was there any scope left for municipal government as an outlet for local feeling.
Most of the Boer grievances were connected in some way or other with native policy. In the first place the influence of the missionaries in regard to the treatment of natives was thoroughly distrusted by the Boers. Of the missionaries the most remarkable was the Scotsman Philip, who had much influence with several of the governors as well as with ministers and a large section of the British public at home. His policy was to segregate the natives in reserves under the supervision of Europeans who were to prevent their being tampered with by unscrupulous colonists and teach them to rise to a higher form of civilization. Philip and his
brethren were also ready to defend the natives in service from oppression by hard masters. The Boers on their side objected to the policy of reserves, as that would make it more difficult to obtain servants or slaves to work for them. Next they com plained of the indecision of the Government in dealing with native marauders on the borders, notably after the Kaffir war of
Then the governor, D'Urban (q.v.), had established British sov ereignty between the Kei and Keiskamma rivers as a precau tion against further raids, but was overruled by the colonial sec retary Lord Glenelg, who flouted colonial opinion by declaring that the marauders had been more sinned against than sinning. Lastly there was the grievance about slave emancipation passed by the British parliament in 1833. The Boers had causes of complaint in the inadequacy of the compensation offered ; much of which, too, had to go in commissions to agents who could obtain payment only in London.
Missionaries had penetrated to Bechuana land and Basutoland as well as to Pondoland beyond the Keis kamma river; since 1824, too, a few British traders had at tempted to settle on the coast of Natal, but were not encouraged by the Government ; and some Portuguese officials and half-caste soldiers clung to the coast line of Mozambique much at the mercy of the fierce Bantu tribes roaming about in their neighbour hood. Chaka the bold chief of the Zulus who had by training and an iron discipline made his fighting force the most formidable in South Africa, was holding, besides Zululand, most of Natal, having driven northward the Shangaans, who then harried the Portuguese settlements and advanced up to Lake Nyasa. A rebellious impi of the Zulus under Umsilikazi had broken off into the country north of the Orange river and then crossed the Vaal, driving the Bechuana clans almost up to the Kalahari desert. The Basutos, another small clan of the Bantus, had established them selves in the mountainous country west of Natal and there under their chief Moshesh, the greatest native statesman of South Africa, had formed one of the strongest native powers, largely by assim ilating refugees from other fighting clans. Into this seething welter of warring Bantus a large number of the Boer farmers determined to launch themselves rather than abide any longer under the hated British rule. Between 1835 and 1837 some hundreds of Boers left the colony under various leaders, the most noted being Trichardt, Pretorius (q.v.), A. H. Potgieter, Retief and Uys. It was a veritable exodus like that of the children of Israel from Egypt, the heads of families packing all their household goods with their women and children in the great lumbering ox-waggons, beside which they drove their vast herds of cattle and sheep,— indeed we hear of one party of 113 taking no less than f6o,000 worth. All started northward into the Free State, as it now is, but soon dispersed in separate detachments, some remaining on the level plateau of that state, others making their way across the Vaal and there again dividing, some to the western lowlands.