ustifiable encroachments on the part of
the European settlers. D'Urban was instructed, therefore, to reinstate
the Kafirs in the districts from which they had retired under the
treaty of September, 1835, and to cancel all grants of land beyond the
Fish River--the original eastern boundary of the Colony--which the
Colonial Government had made to its European subjects from 1817
onwards; while, as for compensation, any indemnity was altogether out
of the question, since the colonists had only themselves to thank for
the enmity of the natives--if, indeed, they had not deliberately
provoked the war with a view to the acquisition of fresh territory.

The divergence between these two opinions is sufficiently well marked.
To trace the precise agencies through which two diametrically opposed
views were evolved on this occasion from the same groundwork of facts
would be too lengthy a business; but, by way of comment, we may recall
two statements, each significant and authentic. Cloete, writing while
the events in question were still fresh in his mind, says of Lord
Glenelg's despatch: "A communication more cruel, unjust, and insulting
to the feelings not only of Sir Benjamin D'Urban ... but of the
inhabitants ... could hardly have been penned by a declared enemy of
the country and its Governor." And Sir George Napier, by whom D'Urban
was superseded, stated in evidence given before the House of Commons:
"My own experience, and what I saw with my own eyes, have confirmed me
that I was wrong and Sir Benjamin D'Urban was perfectly right; that if
he meant to keep Kafirland under British rule, the only way of doing
so was by having a line of forts, and maintaining troops in them."

[Sidenote: The Great Trek.]

This settlement of a South African question upon a basis of British,
or rather non-South African, ideas was followed by events as notorious
as they were disastrous. It must be remembered that in 1819-20 the
first and only effort to introduce a considerable British population
into South Africa had been successfully carried out when the "Albany"
settlers, to the number of some five thousand, were established in
this and other districts upon the eastern border of the Cape Colony.
The colonial farmers who suffered from the Kafir invasion of 1834-5
were not exclusively Boers. Among them there were many members of the
new British population, and the divergence of opinion between D'Urban
and Lord Glenelg was all the more significant, s