Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1795 to 1872, Volume 1 (4th ed, 1915).djvu/54

30 change in the administration having taken place. To many of them this was very objectionable, and a few held back when summoned to appear before the officers appointed to administer it. The governor was firm. Dragoons were quartered upon several of the reluctant ones, and others were banished from the country. The late national commandant of Swellendam, Petrus Jacobus Delport, was among those who tried to evade taking the oath. He kept out of the way for a while, but a year later he was arrested, and was then placed on board a ship and sent into exile. This act of power greatly increased the disaffection towards the British authorities in the south-eastern districts, and was one of the causes that a little later led to an insurrection.

Quartering dragoons upon offenders holding jacobin principles was the ordinary method with Lord Macartney of "bringing them to reason." There was a scale of diet, according to which the dragoons could insist upon being provided, if they were not supplied with food to their liking. In some instances payment was made, but in others food and lodging were demanded free. Burghers who were suspected of being republicans, but whose language and conduct gave no opportunity of bringing them to account, were appointed to some petty unpaid office, and if they declined to perform the duty and take the stringent oath required, a sergeant and ten dragoons speedily appeared with a demand for free quarters.

Allowance, however, must be made for the circumstances of the time, England and France being then engaged in a desperate struggle, and men of the tory party, such as Lord Macartney, regarding republican principles with some- thing like horror.

The slightest indication of French proclivities roused the ire of the governor, as the following incident will show. In August 1798 Mr. Hendrik Oostwald Eksteen, of Bergvliet, between Wynberg and Muizenburg, invited a number of his friends to be present at his daughter's marriage,