CiiAP. XXXIX.] SOUTHERN AFKICA. 345 



of the swarm of vagabonds by which the colony is 

 infested ; but, above all, the insecure state of the 

 eastern frontier, and the inadequate protection af- 

 forded by the English Government against the 

 aggressions of their wily and restless Kafir neigh- 

 bours, by whose repeated predatory incursions the 

 fairest spots have been laid desolate, and many 

 hundreds of the border colonists redticed to ruin, 

 are the inciting causes assigned by the emigrants 

 for the unprecedented and hazardous step they 

 have taken. 



If it be impossible to view the violent remedy 

 sought by these oppressed but misguided men in 

 othei- than a criminal light, yet no unprejudiced 

 person, who has visited the more remote districts of 

 this unhappy colony, will hesitate to acknowledge 

 that the evils they complain of actually exist. Long 

 subjected to the pilferings of a host of Hottentot 

 vagrants, whose lives are passed in one perpetual 

 round of idleness, delinquency, and brutish intoxi- 

 cation on the threshold of the gin-shop, the South 

 African settler has lately, in too many instances, 

 been reduced from comparative affluence to w-ant, 

 by being unseasonably, and without adequate com- 

 pensation, bereft of the services of his slaves — who, 

 prone to villany, and no longer compelled to labour, 

 have only served to swell the swarm of drones by 

 which it is his destiny to be persecuted. Far greater 

 than these, however, are the evils that have arisen 

 out of the perverse misrepresentations of canting and 

 designing men, to whose mischievous and gratuitous 



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