Page:The Transvaal war; a lecture delivered in the University of Cambridge on 9th November, 1899.djvu/19

 slaves in 1833, when parliament voted £20,000,000 to compensate the slave holders. The Dutch in the Cape Colony were exceedingly angry at the emancipation of the slaves taking place at all, and the compensation which was allotted to them was insufficient, I believe about two-thirds of the real value—not that they got an unfair share of the £20,000,000, but that the £20,000,000 was insufficient—and there was an undue delay in paying it. The consequence was that there commenced the great trek, as it is called in Dutch, or emigration, of the Dutch farmers from the colony into the interior, in order to shake off the dust from their feet against us. The trek commenced in 1835, and went on through several successive years. The emigrants issued a manifesto in which they denounced the "vexatious laws" passed in the interests of the slaves, and complained of the loss thereby inflicted upon them. They also complained of "the continual system of plunder which" they said they had "endured from the Kaffirs and other coloured classes," and of the "unjustifiable odium" cast upon them by "interested and dishonest persons under the cloak of religion," by which they meant missionaries. At the end of the manifesto they said, " we quit this colony under the full assurance that the English government has nothing more to require of us, and will allow us to govern ourselves without interference in the future."

They moved from Cape Town eastward into Natal, in the south-eastern part of Africa, and northward into the interior, first across the Orange river and then across the Vaal river. They founded republics in all these districts, and the British followed them. Our claim to follow them was based on the doctrine of perpetual allegiance, by which they could not shake off their British allegiance, and, as a consequence, whatever they acquired was acquired by the British crown. That was the legal basis, and the basis of policy was the fear lest the high handed dealings of the Boers with the natives should provoke a general native rising which might be of the greatest