British Immigration Encouraged
The prohibition of the language in official and legal matters was a more important grievance. It arose out of the movement of English-speaking settlers into the country after 1819, when it was found, according to the Census of that year, that there were only 42,000 white people in the whole region. The Colonial Office and Parliament thereupon resolved to encourage colonization, voted $250,000 for the purpose, and, between 1820 and 1821, established some five thousand immigrants of British birth in the Colony. Within a few years about one-eighth of all the Colonists were English-speaking, and it was then decided to issue the order regarding the official use of the one language. It was a very mild copy of the principle which the Dutch had formerly applied to the Huguenots and which the United States has never hesitated to apply to subject races such as the French in Louisiana or the Spaniards and Mexicans elsewhere. It must be remembered also that the white population of the Colony was not at the time larger than that of a third-class English town, and that the statesmen in question were trying to legislate for a future population in which it was naturally supposed the English people would constitute a large majority. The policy did not go far enough, was not drastic enough, to effect the object in view, and may in any case have been a mistake; but in Lower Canada, where the opposite course was taken, the tiny French population of 1774 has developed into nearly two millions of French-speaking people in 1899, and not a small part of the population of the present Dominion think that a great error was made in the liberal practice inaugurated by the Quebec Act. It is hard to satisfy everyone. By 1828 the language arrangement was completed, so far as laws could effect it, but without the autocratic educational regulations which had made the Dutch treatment of the Huguenots so thorough. The policy certainly had an irritating effect upon the Dutch settlers, who promptly refused, as far as possible, to have anything to do with the Government, or the Courts, or the high-class Government schools which had been for some time established throughout the country, and where English was, of course, the language taught.
The Paper Money Policy
The paper money matter was a more complicated affair, and one which the ignorant settlers were naturally unable to comprehend. The monetary system of the Colony was practically an inheritance from the days of Dutch rule. The Company had not been very scrupulous about the security of its paper money, and the succeeding Batavian Government seems to have been utterly unscrupulous. In 1807 Lord Caledon found mercantile transactions in an almost lifeless state, and the currency not only depreciated and contracted, but the subject of usurious charges of all kinds. Every effort was made by him and succeeding Governors to effect a betterment in the mass of half-useless paper which was floating about, and, by 1825, there remained only some three and a half million dollars' worth in nominal value, of which one-third had been created by the British authorities in various attempts to ease the financial situation, while the greater part of the balance was of Dutch origin. Lord Charles Somerset finally took the desperate, but apparently necessary, course of cutting down the currency to three-eighths of its nominal value and making British silver money a legal tender at that rate of exchange. The result was the practical ruin of a number of people and the creation of much discontent; but at the same time the measure placed trade and commerce upon a permanent footing and laid the basis of future monetary safety. For the time, however, it was like the amputation of a limb in the case of an ignorant and unsatisfied patient—producing suffering and discontent without that feeling which a belief in the necessity of the operation and confidence in the skill of the physician would have given.
Other Grievances or Reforms
These were some of the earlier grievances which are claimed to have caused the evolution of Dutch feeling against the British. Others arose between 1826 and 1836, when the Great Trek was inaugurated. In 1828 the Courts were all remodelled upon the English plan, and the existing Dutch system replaced by a Supreme Court, in which the Judges were appointed by the Crown and were to be independent of the Governor. Minor and local matters were in the hands of Civil Commissioners and resident magistrates and justices of the peace in the various scattered communities. The Dutch code, or law, was to be retained, but English forms and customs were to be observed. It is hard to see why this rearrangement and admitted improvement should have added so deeply to the sullen discontent of the Boers or Dutch farmers. In being allowed the retention of their own peculiar laws they were given more than any other country would have granted in those days and at the same time they obtained what French Canada was not to have for years afterwards—an independent Judiciary. The only explanation is the fact that hatred toward the more progressive and liberal Englishman (or English-speaking man) was swelling strongly and surely in the Dutchman's breast, and that every British reform or change had the effect of deepening this sentiment. The reform in the legal system was accompanied by changes in the municipal system of the capital. The antiquated "burgher senate" of Cape Town was abolished, and the Government assumed charge of the municipal and miscellaneous duties performed by that body. The measure was beneficial on the score of efficiency; but, of course, it produced some dissatisfaction amongst the Dutch residents. There were also some disputes in the interior districts as to the necessity of all jurymen understanding English, and this was eventually settled by an ordinance issued in 1831 which defined the qualifications required but omitted any language test. At the same time official salaries were greatly reduced and one of the standing causes of complaint thus removed.
Governor D'Urban's Policy
In 1828 Sir Lowry Cole became Governor and made several legislative experiments in connection with the Hottentots, which were looked upon by the Dutch with open suspicion and dislike. Four years later Sir Benjamin D'Urban succeeded with a policy of extensive retrenchment in expenditures and the inauguration of Legislative and Executive Councils after the style of other Colonial Governments of the time. Some petitions had previously been sent to England asking for representative institutions, but the Colonial Office naturally shrank from giving popular power into the hands of the evidently discontented Dutch settlers—ignorant as they were of all constitutional principles and practices. Moreover, public opinion in England would not then have permitted the grant of any legislative authority which would have limited the right of the Colonial Office, for good or ill, to manage native affairs and protect native interests. The Council of Advice, which had previously existed, was, however, changed into an Executive Council composed of four high local officials, and the new Legislative Council was made up of the Governor, as President, five of the highest officials and five representative Colonists selected by the Governor. But the primary and central object of Sir Benjamin D'Urban's policy was the emancipation of the slaves, and this touched a subject of so much importance as to require the fullest consideration. It was from the early evolution of peculiar and unique racial characteristics in the Dutch farmer that the South African question has been born; but it was from the opposing principles connected with the Dutch and English view, or treatment, of native affairs that the first pronounced phase of that question was produced. All other considerations were subsidiary.