their native land. In
course of time they formed a valuable counterpoise to the Dutch
colonists, and they now constitute the most progressive element in the
colony. The advent of these immigrants was also the means of introducing
the English language at the Cape. In 1825, for the first time,
ordinances were issued in English, and in 1827 its use was extended to
the conduct of judicial proceedings. Dutch was not, however, ousted, the
colonists becoming to a large extent bilingual.

_Dislike of British Rule_.--Although the colony was fairly prosperous,
many of the Dutch farmers were as dissatisfied with British rule as they
had been with that of the Dutch East India Company, though their ground
of complaint was not the same. In 1792 Moravian missions had been
established for the benefit of the Hottentots,[4] and in 1799 the London
Missionary Society began work among both Hottentots and Kaffirs. The
championship of Hottentot grievances by the missionaries caused much
dissatisfaction among the majority of the colonists, whose views, it may
be noted, temporarily prevailed, for in 1812 an ordinance was issued
which empowered magistrates to bind Hottentot children as apprentices
under conditions differing little from that of slavery. Meantime,
however, the movement for the abolition of slavery was gaining strength
in England, and the missionaries at length appealed from the colonists
to the mother country. An incident which occurred in 1815-1816 did much
to make permanent the hostility of the frontiersmen to the British. A
farmer named Bezuidenhout refused to obey a summons issued on the
complaint of a Hottentot, and firing on the party sent to arrest him,
was himself killed by the return fire. This caused a miniature
rebellion, and on its suppression five ringleaders were publicly hanged
at the spot--Slachters Nek--where they had sworn to expel "the English
tyrants." The feeling caused by the hanging of these men was deepened by
the circumstances of the execution--for the scaffold on which the rebels
were simultaneously swung, broke down from their united weight and the
men were afterwards hanged one by one. An ordinance passed in 1827,
abolishing the old Dutch courts of _landroost_ and _heemraden_ (resident
magistrates being substituted) and decreeing that henceforth all legal
proceedings should be conducted in English; the granting in 1828, as a
result of the representations of the missionaries, of equal rights with
whites