Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa since September 1795, Volume 1 (1908).pdf/271

1816] become strangely distorted, and the execution of the five farmers has down to our own day been regarded in the secluded districts of South Africa as an act of dire oppression. That it was a political mistake time has fully proved. Thirty years after the event Judge Cloete heard from the emigrant farmers in Natal that they "could never forget Slachter's Nek." More than double that period passed away, and Sir Bartle Frere heard the same expression from people north of the Vaal. In public discussions during eighty years it has been constantly referred to as a cruel and unjustifiable stretch of power, and more than any other single occurrence it has kept alive a feeling of hostility to British rule. It may, however, be hoped that as the incontrovertible facts of the event become known, this feeling will cease to operate, and that the capital punishment of the leading insurgents will be attributed, as it should be, to the spirit of the criminal code in England as well as South Africa in the early years of the nineteenth century, which was infinitely harsher than it is to-day.