records the causes of the great emigration, and shows how the Boers
stood up for fair treatment, and fought the cause, not of Boers
alone, but of all colonists. Boers and British were alike harshly and
ignorantly treated by high-handed Governors, and an ill-informed and
prejudiced Colonial Office, who made no distinction on the grounds
of nationality between the two; for we read that Englishmen had been
expelled the country, thrown in gaol, had their property
confiscated, and their newspapers suppressed for asserting their
independence, and for trifling breaches of harsh laws. The following
extract gives the best possible synopsis of the causes, and should
whet an appetite which can be gratified by the purchase of Mr.
Theal's book:

Why, then, did these men abandon their homes, sacrifice whatever
property could not be carried away, and flee from English rule as
from the most hateful tyranny? The causes are stated in a great mass
of correspondence addressed by them to the Colonial Government, and
now preserved, with other colonial records, in declarations published
by some of them before leaving, in letters to their relatives and to
newspapers, and in hundreds of pages of printed matter, prepared by
friendly and hostile hands. The declaration of one of the ablest men
among them assigns the following as the motives of himself and the
party that went with him:

'GRAHAM'S TOWN,
'_January 22, 1837_

'1. We despair of saving the colony from those evils which threaten
it by the turbulent and dishonest conduct of vagrants who are allowed
to infest the country in every part; nor do we see any prospect of