Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa since September 1795, Volume 1 (1908).pdf/395

1825] This was not the only contention which Lord Charles Somerset had with the press. On the 2nd of December 1823 he formally gave leave to Messrs. Pringle and Faure to publish the magazine which they proposed to edit, and on the 5th of March 1824 the first number of the South African Journal appeared, followed in April by the first number of the Nederduitsch Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift. Each magazine was issued as an octavo pamphlet of sixty-four to one hundred pages. The second number of the Journal appeared on the 7th of May, and contained, among other articles, one upon the state and prospects of the British settlers, in which their distress was partly attributed to "an arbitrary system of government and its natural consequences: abuse of power by local functionaries, monopolies, restrictions, etc."

On the 13th of May the fiscal sent for Mr. Pringle, and demanded security that he would abstain in future from political and personal controversy. This Mr. Pringle declined to give. The governor then sent for him, and in offensive language upbraided him with being ungrateful. His Excellency had enlarged the grant to his party of settlers at Glen Lynden by nine thousand four hundred acres of ground, and had conferred upon himself the situation of sub-librarian of the public library in Capetown, with a salary of £75 a year. Mr. Pringle replied that he presumed the grant of ground had been made as a matter of public duty, and as for the sub-librarianship he begged to resign it. Lord Charles then expressed a wish that the South African Journal should be continued, but that care should be taken to avoid the publication of offensive matter in it. Mr. Pringle, however, declined to conduct it longer, unless it was protected by law from arbitrary interference on the part of the executive branch of the government, and to this no reply was made.

The Zuid-Afrikaansch Tijdschrift continued to be published. as before, but the Journal expired with the second number. An academy conducted by Messrs. Pringle and Fairbairn, and