In support of the charges against the Imperial Government, the
emigrants dwelt largely upon the devastation of the eastern districts
by the Kaffirs' inroad of December, 1834, which was certainly
unprovoked by the colonists. Yet Lord Glenelg, who was then Secretary
of State for the Colonies, justified the Kaffirs, and not only
refused to punish them, but actually gave them a large slip of land,
including the dense jungles along the Fish River, that had long
been part of the colony; and made no other provision against the
recurrence of a destructive invasion than a series of treaties with a
number of barbarous chiefs, who had no regard for their engagements.
This event is the most prominent feature in the correspondence of
the emigrants; it is fairly recorded, and the language used is in
general much more moderate than that employed by the English
frontier colonists when relating the same circumstance.

Next stands the removal of all restraint from the coloured population
of the colony, without the protection to the whites of even a Vagrant
Act. Several of the colonial divisions had been for ten or twelve
years overrun by fugitives from the Basuto and Betshuana countries,
who had been driven from their own homes by the troubles already
recorded. These people were usually termed Mantatees or Makatees,
from the supposition that they were all subjects of Ma Ntatisi.
Towards the eastern frontiers Kaffirs, and after the war Fingos,
wandered about practically wherever they chose. In the remainder of
the colony Hottentots, free blacks, and mixed breeds came and went as
they pleased. How is it possible, said the farmers, for us to
cultivate the ground, or breed cattle, with all these savages and
semi-savages constantly watching for opportunities to plunder
us--with no police, and no law under which suspicious characters can