COMMISSION OF CIRCUIT. 309 
court, who were annually to travel through 
the districts, and hold court in each. 
The accumulation of crimes brought for- 
ward, "en masse," on the first circuit thus held, 
amounted to between seventy and eighty cases 
for murder, aggravated assaults, and such like. 
Two Missionaries, Dr. Yander Kemp and Mr. 
Eead, also came forward as protectors of the 
Hottentot race, and transmitted to the local 
government, charges of cruelty against mem- 
bers of almost every respectable family on the 
frontier. These were referred by the Govern- 
ment to the " commission of circuit," and it 
was occupied for a protracted period in inves- 
tigating them. It was not, in fact, until the 
third sitting, that they were brought to a con- 
clusion; of all these, no single case of murder 
was proved, and a very few of personal assault 
brought home and punished. These ill-judged 
prosecutions, however (in which nearly one hun- 
dred of the most respectable Dutch families on 
the frontier were implicated, and more that one 
thousand witnesses summoned and examined,) 
engendered a very bitter feeling of hostility, 
amongst the Dutch, towards the administration 
of justice in general, and more particularly 
against the Missionaries who brought forward 
these charges. 
The next "commission of circuit, J J in 1815, 
