such of the missionaries as held these views, and the tendency on
each side was to make it still broader. It was deepened into positive
antipathy towards those missionaries who, following Dr. Vanderkemp's
example, united themselves in marriage with black women, and
proclaimed themselves the champions of the black population against
the white. Everyone acquainted with South African natives knows how
ready they are to please their friends by bringing forward charges
against anyone whom those friends dislike. Unfortunately the
missionaries Vanderkemp and Read were deceived into believing a great
number of charges of cruelty made against various colonists, which a
little observation would have shown in most instances to be
groundless; and thereupon they lodged accusations before the High
Court of Justice. In 1811 between seventy and eighty such cases came
before the Circuit Court for trial. There was hardly a family on the
frontier of which some relative was not brought as a criminal before
the judges to answer to a charge of murder or violent assault.
Several months were occupied in the trials, and more than a thousand
witnesses were examined, but in every instance the most serious
charges were proved to be without foundation. Only a few convictions,
and those of no very outrageous crimes, resulted from these
prosecutions, which kept the entire colony in a ferment until long
after the circuit was closed.

Thus far everyone will approve of the sentiments of one party or the
other according to his sympathy, but in what follows no unprejudiced
person who will take the trouble to study the matter thoroughly can
acquit the anti-colonial missionaries of something more faulty than
mere error of judgment. For years their writings teemed with charges
against the colonists similar to those they had brought before the
High Court of Justice. These writings were circulated widely in