308 
SOUTHERN AFRICA. 
cultivate their land ; and thus these boers were 
gradually and imperceptibly, eyen to them- 
selves, prepared for the reception of discon- 
tented, and easily excited trains of mind. 
The minor and primary causes for their dis- 
content, first sprang up about the year 1813, 
when the vast and reckless expenditure of the 
colonial revenues seemed to have laid the foun- 
dation for that distress throughout the country, 
which, when retrenchment began in 1815, was 
at once engendered. 
The administration of justice in the country 
districts of the Colony also tended to excite 
strife. There was at that time hardly any re- 
gular communication with the interior, and 
although the boards of landdrost and hem- 
raaden* in each district could take cognizance 
of minor offences and civil suits of a limited 
amount, yet access even to these two tribunals 
was (from the then vast extent of the districts) 
exceedingly difficult and precarious. To remedy 
this evil, Lord Caledon, then governor, very 
wisely instituted the " commission of circuit/ 5 
which consisted of two members of the supreme 
* The boards of " landdrost and hemraaden," was a judicial court 
formed under the old Dutch law of the colony, and consisted of a 
landdrost or chief magistrate, with six hemraaden or burghers under 
him, who acted throughout the country districts of the colony in the 
same capacity as our country magistrates and their courts do in 
England. 
