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ower. When, in 1828, Hottentots and other free coloured people were placed by governmental ordinance on an equal footing with whites as regards private civil rights, the colonists were profoundly disgusted, and their exasperation was increased by the enactment of laws restraining their authority over their slaves, as well as by the charges of ill-treating the natives which continued to be brought against them by the missionaries. Finally, in 1834, the British Parliament passed a statute emancipating the slaves throughout all the British colonies, and awarding a sum of twenty million pounds sterling as compensation to the slave-owners. The part of this sum allotted to Cape Colony (a little more than three millions sterling) was considerably below the value of the slaves (about 39,000) held there, and as the compensation was made payable in London, most slave owners sold their claims at inadequate prices. Many farmers lost the bulk of their property, and labour became in many districts so scarce that agriculture could hardly be carried on. The irritation produced by the loss thus suffered, intensifying the already existing discontent, set up a ferment among the Dutch farmers. Their spirit had always been independent, and the circumstances of their isolated life had enabled them to indulge it. Even under the government of their Dutch kinsfolk they had been restless, and now they received, as they thought, one injustice after another at the hands of alien rulers. To be watched and denounced by the missionaries, to have black people put on a level with them, to lose the fruits of their victory over the Kafirs--all these things had been bad enough. Now, however, when their property itself was taken away and slavery abolished on grounds they could neither understand nor approve, they determined to endure no longer, and sought for some means of deliverance. Rebellion against so strong a power as that of Britain was evidently foredoomed to failure. But to the north and east a great wild country lay open before them, where they could lead that solitary and half-nomadic life which they loved, preserve their old customs, and deal with the natives as they pleased, unvexed by the meddlesome English. Accordingly, many resolved to quit the Colony altogether and go out into the wilderness. They were the more disposed to this course, because they knew that the wars and conquests of Tshaka, the ferocious Zulu king, had exterminated the Kafi
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