Lame Excuses of the Governor.

The committee of the chamber of Amsterdam investigated the matter very thoroughly. Unfortunately the debates were not recorded, and only the resolutions were preserved, just as in the proceedings of a legislative body to-day. But these resolutions show that all possible trouble was taken to arrive at the truth, and notwithstanding the urgency of the case, there was no undue haste, for it was only on the 11th of October 1706 that a report to the chamber was sent in.[82] In addition to the documents examined by the committee, it had taken the evidence of the exiled burghers and of the ships’ officers who had been two months at the Cape. Some of these had lived on shore during that time, and had witnessed the violent acts that had put the whole settlement into confusion and the manner in which signatures to the certificate in the governor’s favour were obtained, so that document was held as of no weight whatever. The governor’s comments upon the charges against him also were so weak that they were utterly valueless.[83]

For instance, his only excuse for his possession of Vergelegen was that if the Company’s servants had no land they, himself included, would be obliged to buy what grain, cattle, wine, vegetables, fruit, and other necessaries they required from unreasonable farmers at whatever rates might be demanded, and might even be at the mercy of those farmers to be supplied or not. This would surely, he said, be intolerable to officials of rank. That was the best and indeed the only excuse he could make for having in his possession, in opposition to the direct orders of the directors, a thousand head of horned cattle and eighteen thousand eight hundred sheep, for producing eleven hundred muids of wheat and fifty-six leggers of wine yearly. And that too when he was provided by the Company with rations[84] on an exceedingly liberal scale, when he was legally and honestly entitled to whatever vegetables and fruit he needed for his own family’s use out of the Company’s gardens in Capetown, at Rustenburg, and at Newlands, when he had an adequate table allowance in money to purchase anything else that was needed, as may be seen in the yearly accounts, and when he was provided with twenty slaves as domestics, who were entirely maintained by the Company.

Historical Sketches.

As for the woolled sheep that he was accused of taking from the farmers without payment, his defence was that he had sent out two men to obtain them either in exchange for others or for money, that they had returned with one hundred and seventy-eight, and that he thought he had paid for them. He denied positively that he had taken bribes for giving title-deeds to ground, but it was proved conclusively that he had received large presents and had made extensive purchases without payment from those whom be favoured. The whole defence was as weak as these examples, except in a few particulars, and with the oral evidence against him, the committee could only come to one conclusion.

Report of the Chamber of Amsterdam.

The chamber of Amsterdam approved of the report of its committee, and requested the members to go over it again carefully and draw it up in such a form that it could be presented in the name of the full body to the assembly of seventeen. On the 25th of October accordingly the report was brought before the full chamber and adopted, when it was signed by all the members present, sixteen in number, and was then forwarded to the directors. Among those who signed it was the same Wouter Valckenier[85] who had granted Vergelegen to Van der Stel, who was then a member of the chamber of Amsterdam, and immediately afterwards was elected to a seat in the directorate.

In this report the burghers who signed the complaints against Van der Stel and others were acquitted of sedition, conspiracy, or treason, and the action of the governor towards them was consequently declared to have been unjust.

It was recommended

That all those banished from the Cape should be restored to their homes at the Company’s expense, and all those imprisoned be liberated.