Memoir of the Life and Services of Vice-Admiral Sir Jahleel Brenton, Baronet, K.C.B.

by Unknown

The letter with which the last chapter was closed, is one of many that remain, and which might have been inserted in this Memoir with advantage, if it had not been desirable to restrain the size of a volume, which already exceeds its proposed dimensions; and if enough had not been already said, to answer the purpose for which their insertion might be desirable, the completion of the portraiture of the subject. The reader therefore is at liberty to infer from the tone of one letter, the character of the correspondence in general; and he may perhaps admit that it is one of the felicities of the age to see such a correspondence existing in such a quarter of the world. While men whose lot is cast in the extreme corner of Africa; that portion of our world, which has seemed throughout the history of man to have been resigned to barbarism; are found discussing such topics, and in such a spirit, the wilderness may indeed be said to blossom as a rose, and the desert is like the garden of the Lord.

But interesting and profitable as such communications must have been to both parties concerned, they were neither of them men likely to leave their talents unimproved, or to allow religious conviction to evaporate in religious discussions. They felt that the light they had received was to shine before men; and the love of Christ, the principle on which their whole mutual scheme of belief centred and moved, constrained them to live, not for themselves, but for others; and to evince the gratitude they felt for the mercy that had visited them, and the love which burnt within their own breasts towards Him who had made them what they were, by acts of kindness and benevolence to all around them.

We find Sir Jahleel accordingly at one time warmly interested in the case of the captured Negroes, who had been set at liberty in the Cape, and were employed in the Government works and dockyard. An Act of Parliament had rescued these poor creatures from slavery, but the boon of freedom had been bestowed in a manner which rendered it a slight, or at least a questionable blessing; and such was the condition in which they were left in the colony, that some doubts might have been felt, whether their happiness would not have been consulted, if the ship which conveyed them from Africa, had been allowed to complete its course, and to discharge its cargo in the West Indies. The men were captured, and were in consequence declared free by law; but they were set free in a country where they were strangers and destitute of all means of subsistence; and where the means of support were not provided for them at first, nor always attainable by any efforts of their own. The consideration of the Colonial Government had gone so far, as to have assigned them employment in the dockyards; but it was not easy to persuade an emancipated Negro, that it was necessary to work; nor was it easier to teach him how to work so as to make him useful. On this account it seemed necessary to treat them like children, to convert their slavery into a servitude, limited in time and measure; and to consider them as apprentices, that some kind of restraint might thus be exercised over those, who were in point of fact made free, but who seemed hardly capable of making a proper use of their freedom. The form of apprenticeship assimilated their condition in the colonial law to that of the Hottentot; but in doing this, it exposed them to all the injuries under which that injured race of men were groaning, through the system which the Dutch laws had established; and which left them too much at the mercy of the Boors to be regarded as independent or secure.

We have seen in an earlier part of the memoir how earnestly Sir Jahleel strove to obtain protection for these people; and we cannot be surprised if his efforts, extended to the Government at home, as well as to that of the colony, should have brought him into connection with that individual, who filled at the moment the glorious, though unsolicited office of being the advocate of the oppressed throughout the world. While resident at the Cape, Sir Jahleel was induced to address himself to Mr. Wilberforce, and not only to call his attention to the stealthy modes in which the trade in slaves was carried on through the channel of Mozambique, and to the danger of the Cape becoming a depôt for that nefarious traffic; but likewise to the state of the emancipated Negroes, and the native population of the colony. Mr. Wilberforce, whose ear was ever open to the cry of distress, felt at once the value of his new correspondent, and the importance of the appeal. The case of the Cape colony was included in the succeeding measures for the abolition of the slave trade. Public attention was drawn to the existence of the traffic on the eastern coast of Africa, and in the Indian Ocean; and that quarter of the world was protected from the encroachment of the evil, which has blighted the prosperity of the west.

Sir Jahleel Brenton’s zeal in behalf of the emancipated Negroes led him likewise to consider the state of the Hottentot population at the Cape; and here he found Dr. Philip engaged in a long, and almost hopeless contest with the Colonial Government, in behalf of that despised and injured people. The original natives of the country, they had been reduced by the Dutch settlers to a state of servitude, in some degree worse than slavery; as the master felt, that while both slave and servant were equally at his disposal and equally under his control, the slave had been purchased, and had cost him something; and the servant had come under his dominion for nothing. Both therefore were to all intents bondmen; for the servant had no power of changing his master, at least no power which he dared to exercise; and the circumstance of his having been born to nominal freedom, availed nothing, where the law was framed for the sole purpose of securing the master’s rights; and where distance from the seat of Government, and the wild independence of the Boor’s life, made an appeal to justice all but impossible. The character of the Dutch settlers likewise, sordid and covetous on principle, and at that time filled with hatred of the British influence, as being the dominion of a conqueror; and of British intercourse as likely to introduce a rival and encroaching population; placed them in an attitude of suspicion and defiance. Every attempt made by the Government to ameliorate the condition of the Hottentots was viewed with jealousy by the Boors, as an abridgement of their own rights; and every disposition in the Hottentots to complain was crushed by increased severity, as if it were an act of insurrection. The very efforts of the missionaries to convey to that benighted race the knowledge of the gospel, were contemplated with prejudice and ill-will by the colonists. In consequence every obstacle was thrown in their way. The attendance of the servants was forbidden at all occasions of social worship, or religious instruction. The wish for instruction was considered a crime in the Hottentot; and all that the fierce violence of a brutal mind could suggest, was too often done by the farmers, to subdue the rising spirit of religion, whenever it had been excited by the preaching of the missionaries in their neighbourhood. It is a painful and humiliating fact that the local regulations of Protestant colonies have been uniformly less favourable to the spiritual improvement of the natives, than those established in Roman Catholic colonies. Not that Protestantism is less lenient in its character, or less congenial with liberty than Romanism, for it is confessedly more so; but the Protestant colonies having been formed in later times, and at times when the church had lost that influence with the state, which it once possessed; the colonial legislation in all the later European settlements was constructed on purely secular grounds, and religion had no voice, because the church had no power.

The Dutch system of Government at the Cape had in other respects much to recommend it. The established religion of the mother country had been introduced in the colony, and been endowed. The character of the settlers, at least of those in the town, would have borne comparison with that of any colony belonging to other European nations; and the Boors themselves, when political or personal jealousies did not intervene, were found hospitable, kind, and correct in general behaviour. The misfortune of the colony arose from the degree of power which was possessed by individuals, not prepared to exercise it properly, and who were subject to great and obvious temptations to abuse it; and thus it happened that the condition to which the Hottentots were reduced under the Dutch law was such, that it became the imperative duty of the British Government to take some steps towards correcting an evil, which seemed intolerable and disgraceful to a civilized country. These measures were regarded by the Boors, an uneducated, prejudiced, and overbearing race, as a breach of contract between the Government and themselves; and as an illegal encroachment on those rights which were guaranteed to them when the colony became a part of the British Empire. And these feelings, stimulated by designing men on one side, and aggravated by want of consideration and of conciliatory proceedings on the other, finally led to those acts of resistance which have required military interference, and have endangered for a time the peace and prosperity of this valuable colony.

Sir Jahleel witnessed the working of elements of evil, which were to have their fuller development after he had left the colony. He saw the state of the Negro and the Hottentot population, and he did what he could to ameliorate the condition of each. Had his power been greater, or even had his residence at the Cape been longer, he would have done much towards correcting the evil, and improving the general state of the society; for he possessed in no ordinary degree the qualities which fit man for command, or enable him without command to exercise influence on the minds of others. He had clearness of view, correct judgment, decision, and firmness, combined with patience, sweetness of temper, and the most conciliatory manners. Beyond this, he knew more accurately than most men, the nature of that foundation which must be laid as the security for all permanent prosperity. If the efforts which he did make, were not attended with complete success, their failure may be ascribed with more reason to the inveterate character of the evil, and to the strength of the opposition raised against them, than to any mistake on his part; and a dispassionate consideration of Cape politics during the last twenty years will justify the wisdom of his proceedings, and will leave room for nothing but regret, that his views were not adopted by those who had the power and opportunity of carrying them on to perfection.

The British Government it is true has done much towards the protection of the oppressed and ill treated Hottentot. The measures set on foot to check the trade in slaves, and to prevent the introduction of slavery into the colony have been successful; and in these respects, the plans which were commenced during Sir Jahleel’s residence at the Cape may seem to have been brought to the conclusion that he wished. But the efforts made for the amelioration of the state of the Hottentots were not so immediately successful, and the end which he there had in view has not been accomplished in the most satisfactory manner. At the time when the freedom of the Hottentots was secured by law, the Boors were not convinced that their interests were properly considered in the transaction. Means were not taken to explain to them the real nature of the alteration, which the executive Government felt it necessary to introduce; and men, ignorant as they were in general, and from national prejudice disposed to suspect evil in the measures of their new rulers, were easily persuaded to think that the British Government wished to be generous at their expence; and to establish a character for benevolence, by depriving them of what they considered as their rights. A compensation for the Hottentots, whom they regarded as slaves, was awarded; and a compensation, which if it had been paid on the spot, and in the currency with which they were familiar, would have satisfied all their wishes. But from a strange fatality of error, this compensation was paid in bills on London, and not in a currency with which they were familiar. The Boor unused to mercantile transactions, and unable to negociate the payment of such securities in the wilderness where his life was past, was obliged to put the bills into other hands, in order to obtain their liquidation. Dishonest adventurers introduced themselves, who offered to undertake the business; but who fixed their own terms, and made their own bargain; and the unfortunate farmer receiving a mere fraction of that which he considered to be the value of his slave, felt that he had been swindled out of his property, by the form of a legal transaction, and looked on the Government as the cause of the loss he had sustained.

The resentment which this treatment gave rise to, led to that singular movement of which we have been obliged to hear so much; and which is only practicable in pastoral nations; when the Boor population, with all its property of herds and flocks, quitted the territory which it used to occupy, and advanced into the Cafir districts, proclaiming as it went its own independence, and seeking a new settlement in the wilderness, exempt from the vexatious interference of the British Government.