of settlers, dating from about the year 1820, contemporaneously with the advent of free settlers in Australia, suggested the possibility of racial oppression by the Dutch majority.  Yet if there was little real reason to fear oppression by the French in Canada, there was still less reason to fear such oppression in the Cape, where Dutch ideals and civilization were far more similar to those of the British.  In America the absorption of the Dutch Colonies in the seventeenth century had led to the peaceful fusion of both races, nor was there any reason why, under wise rule, the same fusion should not have occurred in South Africa.  Until 1834 authority was purely military and despotic.  In that year was established a small Legislative Council of officials and nominated members, with no representative element.  In 1837 came the Great Trek.

No one disputes that the Dutch colonists had grievances, without the means of redress.  As usual, we find a land question in the shape of enhanced rents charged by Government after the British occupation; the Dutch language was excluded from official use, and English local institutions were introduced with unnecessary abruptness; but the principal grievance concerned the native tribes.  Slavery existed in the Colony, and its borders were continually threatened by these tribes.  The Dutch colonists were often terribly brutal to the natives; nevertheless there is little doubt that a tactful and sympathetic policy could easily have secured for them a more humane treatment, and the abolition of slavery without economic dislocation.  But a strong humanitarian sentiment was sweeping over England at the time, including in its range the negro slaves of Jamaica and the unconquered Kaffirs of South Africa, but absolutely ignoring, let us note in passing, the economic serfdom of the half-starved Irish peasantry at our very doors.  Members of this school took too little account of the tremendous difficulties faced in South Africa by small handfuls of white colonists in contact with hordes of savages.  The Colonial Government, with a knowledge of the conditions gained only from well-meaning but somewhat prejudiced missionaries, endeavoured from 1815 onwards to enforce an impracticable equality between white and coloured men, and abolished slavery at one sudden stroke in 1833 without reasonable compensation.  A large number of the Dutch, unable to tolerate this treatment, deserted the British flag.  Those that remained were under suspicion for more than thirty years, so that political progress was very slow.  It was not till 1854 that the Colony received a Representative Assembly, and not until 1872, eighteen years later than in Australia, and twenty-five years later than in Canada, that full responsible government was established.