As a secession like this militated against all principles of society, and must have led to an aggression on the property of the Cafir tribes, which would have exposed the colony to acts of retaliation on their part, it was necessary that the movement should be checked, and that the rebellious emigrants should be reduced to submission. This has not however been effected without bloodshed and difficulty; and the state of the colony exhibits a melancholy picture of the danger which results from ill-combined or precipitated measures, even when the object in view is one of unquestionable usefulness. The error in execution however must not be allowed to impugn the wisdom of the original design. Had Sir Jahleel Brenton been able to carry out the whole of his benevolent purpose, the feelings of the Boor masters would have been consulted, as well as the security of the Hottentot servant. Allowance would have been made for the jealousies of a prejudiced and ignorant class of men; and no unnecessary offence would have been given. All inevitable suspicion would have been provided for and removed, and the success of the scheme might have been secured by the patience and discretion with which it was advanced to its completion.
It has seemed but just to anticipate events, and to name what is now a matter of colonial history, in order to guard the subject of this memoir from the imputation of having originated, or pressed forward measures, which have led to painful results, and to a temporary disturbance of the peace of the country. There is every reason to hope that the movements which have thus been glanced at, are by this time effectually subdued, and that the pacification of the colony is secured; but it was necessary to shew that the real causes of the Boors’ insurrection were not the restoration of the Hottentots to the rights of human beings, but the working of national prejudices, inseparable from the condition of a conquered settlement; and the resentment cherished by covetous, but ill-informed men, who thought they had been atrociously wronged by a Government, which in their hearts they hated.
The farmers might have been gradually convinced, had proper pains been taken to explain the nature of the change, that it was not right to hold a fellow-creature in the sort of bondage to which the natives were reduced; and had proper measures been adopted in the payment of the compensation money, they might have been made to feel that a fair equivalent was given to them by the Government, which vindicated the slaves from their property, and curtailed the power they had been accustomed to exercise over them.
Sir Jahleel’s intimacy with Dr. Philip continued, though the correspondence seems to have dropped after he left the Cape, in proportion as other means were adopted for the improvement of the colony. But his agency was at a subsequent period most advantageously employed in furtherance of a benevolent plan, which originating with Captain Edward Pelham Brenton, was sanctioned and supported by his brother, for rescuing the juvenile delinquents which haunt the streets of London, from their life of misery and sin. It was found on enquiry, that a large portion of this wretched class, which it was at one time calculated amounted to nearly 15,000 lads and boys, living without a home or shelter, or anything like regular employment; consisted of deserted orphans, or of boys who had escaped from the metropolitan workhouses. These unhappy outcasts of society either earned a precarious living by sweeping the streets, and holding horses at markets, and places of public resort, or else maintained themselves by petty acts of plunder. Their dwelling was found in the uninhabited houses on the outskirts of London, the dry arches of bridges, or some such like receptacle; and here they were congregated together at night, if they failed in finding admission to some of the haunts of infamy and vice. Their habits necessarily exposed them to the suspicion of the police, and their wants soon brought them under its notice. The commission to prison for some petty theft put the stamp of crime on the character, and introduced them to the acquaintance of more advanced and hardened accomplices. The first imprisonment therefore was speedily followed by another. Crime followed crime by a kind of necessary sequence, though crime became more atrocious as it was repeated; and after a succession of imprisonments had been found ineffectual to reclaim an offender, who had no means of living but by the offence, which subjected him to punishment; the unhappy lad received a final sentence of transportation, and was sent to fill up the measure of his sufferings and his guilt in a penal colony.
Captain Brenton conceived that something might be done for these poor creatures, and that if it might be done, it should be done. He had seen the wonderful effect produced on the mind by the discipline of a king’s ship, when that discipline was tempered by discretion and kindness; and he resolved to make an experiment on that class, which the world was disposed to regard as the most lost and the most hopeless, the juvenile delinquents of the metropolis. The enquiries he had made into the cases of individuals had satisfied him, that their misery was often the occasion of their crime; and that they were driven by want of necessaries, which they had not any possible means of obtaining, to the acts of dishonesty which exposed them to punishment. Many of them had assured him, and with appearances of sincerity, which it would have been inhumanity to doubt, that they hated the life that they were leading; and that they should embrace with thankfulness any course of labour, which offered them security and food; and he was willing to make an experiment on a small scale, of what might be done towards recovering these outcasts of the world. Premises were taken in the parish of Hackney, and fitted up for the accommodation of seventy or eighty boys. A man eminently qualified for the situation of the head of such an establishment was found, and found willing to undertake it. An outfit of the simplest and most economical kind was provided, with cots for the boys to sleep in, spades and other tools for working in the garden, and the usual supply of school requisites for their education. In a little volume entitled ‘The Bible and the Spade,’ Captain Brenton explained the plan of his benevolent undertaking; and the place was soon filled with boys swept from the streets of London, and for the first time in their lives brought under the influence of Christian education; and allowed to taste the comforts of a settled home, cleanliness, warmth and a regular supply of food.
The first results were highly satisfactory. The mixture of kindness and vivacity in the master’s manner, seemed to awaken the sluggish energies of the idle, and to attach the affections of boys, who had hardly ever been addressed in such a tone before. Activity prevailed in the school, and in the garden; and what was of still more importance, a sense of self-respect, and a desire of honest independence, began to shew itself in the boys, and to encourage hopes of the commencement of a moral change in the character of the inmates. The effect to be expected from the discipline of the school, would however have been less encouraging, if the boys were to have been returned to the society from which they were rescued, as soon as they were discharged. It could not have been hoped that such a change of habit as this temporary withdrawal from evil produced, should resist the temptations with which they would then be surrounded; and Captain Brenton shewed as much knowledge of human nature as benevolence, when he arranged as a subsidiary, but essential part of his system, the transfer of his pupils to a new and less exposed situation. The friendly services of Dr. Philip were therefore here called in to provide for these reclaimed delinquents, places of employment at the Cape. The services of an English boy, though ill-educated and rude, were of some value to colonists, who were dependent on the half reclaimed savages of the country; and the mere recollection of what these boys had known of the usages of civilized life, enabled them to imitate what their masters had never seen. The demand accordingly increased. The boys who had gone out, and who had found situations as servants, or cattle-keepers, wrote back favourable accounts of their condition; and a resource seemed opened, which might have relieved London of some of its misery, and might have carried some new comforts into the wilderness of the Cape.
It is with regret that the conclusion of the attempt must be reported; but it is well that men should be aware, that he who endeavours to assist the worst of his species, must lay his account to expect from them the worst of treatment in return.
Captain Brenton had been induced at the request of a worthless couple, to admit their son into the refuge, and to send him to the Cape as an apprentice. The parents when they found that the boy was gone, conceived that they had got the means of extorting money from his benefactor. They pretended to be anxious about their child, and to be dissatisfied with the representations made to them of his position. They carried their complaint to the Lord Mayor, and declared that the boy had been kidnapped. The public papers took the cause up with violence, and added publicity to the charge. The boy was sent for from the Cape, but before he could be brought back, a sudden attack of gout, to which Captain Brenton was subject, and which came on, the evening subsequent to a public meeting, carried him off; and left the refuge at Hackney Wick a monument of his benevolence, and of the ingratitude that he met with. It is to be hoped however that the benefit of his example will not be lost. The public seems now to be agreed that steps must be taken to remove the evil of such a population of juvenile delinquents; and will probably feel that as prevention is better than cure, it will be expedient to withdraw those who have once fallen, from the scene of past exposure, and to assist their removal to a country where a new course of life may be commenced under happier circumstances. The advantages of possessing such an agency as that of Dr. Philip, will then at least be appreciated, and the public will endeavour to renew a system, which twenty years ago was denounced.[26]
The time however came, when the more active part of Sir Jahleel’s life was to be closed, and he was to be withdrawn from his sphere of labour at the Cape. The general pacification which ensued after the battle of Waterloo justified the reduction of all our colonial establishments; and in the year 1821, Sir Jahleel received directions to wind up the accounts of the Naval Commissioner at the Cape, and to place the dockyard on a reduced scale. It was not possible that he should leave the Cape without deep feelings of regret, increased by the recollections of what he had lost, and what he had left there; but no regret that he experienced at leaving a place endeared to him by so many associations, could equal that of those who seemed to lose in him, the protector, the patron, and the friend whom they had learnt to value and appreciate. During the years of his residence there, he had been occupied unremittingly in some work of benevolence or kindness. There was hardly a class in society which had not received some benefit through his intervention; and there were many who felt that but for him they should have received none. The society in which he had moved were conscious that the mind that had added charms to their intercourse, and elevation to its tone, was to be withdrawn; while the poor and the oppressed, whether English or Dutch, Hottentot or Negro, felt that the resource to which they should have applied in the first place, and with the greatest hope of relief, was taken from them; and that no door would be found, to which they could turn with equal confidence, when that of the Commissioner’s was closed.
The brief narrative of his voyage home may be given in his own words, and as it is with this that his own memoir of his life concludes, it is well that he should tell the tale of his last experience on an element, where he had done so much and suffered so much.