true born Englishman, impart certain feelings of pride and exultation; feelings that are not to be repressed, but which may nevertheless be greatly increased or modified, according to the justice or injustice of the cause in which these successes may have been obtained; and it is to be feared that the last accounts from the Cape of Good Hope, though bringing intimations of victory, will not with the most patriotic amongst us be unalloyed with regret that blood-stained laurels should have been culled on ground, where not having planted, we had undoubtedly little claim to reap; and that human life to a large amount has been expended in a cause, which-more especially during these ultra-philanthropic times of peace-on reviewing the real state of the matter, will scarcely be admitted as justifiable in any single point of view.

The case of the Dutch settlers at the colony of the Cape of Good Hopein many respects exclusively peculiar-may briefly be stated as follows. Some two hundred years ago, a commercial establishment was formed by the Batavian East India Company, at the furthest point of Southern Africa, whose proceedings from the first foundation-as regarded its intercourse with the few scattered and wandering tribes of savages then found in that part of the world-were ever marked by the dictates of justice and humanity.

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This factory shortly afterwards became a rapidly increasing colony; the Dutch having purchased land from the natives, whom they denominated Hottentots," gradually spread themselves over the country, and engaged the latter into their service, not as slaves, but in the capacity of paid and domestic servants; and finally, after a lapse of 150 years, had extended their occupation of territory to the borders of the Great Fish River, where they came in contact with, and thus formed the only check to, Kaffir encroachment from that quarter.

Such was the condition in which we found the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, when, towards the latter end of last century, conquestsubsequently ratified by treaty-converted it into a British dependence, by which event a very mixed population became suddenly metamorphosed into British subjects. This population consisted of some forty or fifty thousand Hottentots-generally speaking employed as herdsmen, labourers, or domestic servants-of about as many slaves from Mozambique, Madagascar, or the Coast of Guinea; whilst the remainder (including a half-caste population) was composed of "Boers," descendants from the original, or subsequent Dutch settlers at the Cape.

This involuntary transfer of allegiance, effected without their wishes on the subject being in the least consulted, was no doubt repugnant in the extreme to the feelings of the white population; and we should by every available means in our power, and by conciliatory and soothing measures, have endeavoured to soften down, and eventually eradicate, the natural feelings of repugnance and irritation thus created towards us; nor would such a judicious course have probably been found either difficult or unsuccessful with our newly-acquired subjects.

Inheriting from his Fatherland a phlegmatic and supine disposition, the South Africa Boer is, by nature, neither restless, irritable, or cruel. Give him his quantum of meat, drink, smoke, and sleep, and he will neither trouble himself, his servants, or neighbours. Such a people, with proper management, it would have been particularly easy to conciliate, and it was evidently our interest so to do; for they were (with our generally small military force on the frontier) the best, the cheapest

-and, in short, the only available defence against Kaffir plunder and depredation.

Although, as above described, the Boers-by nature and disposition too indolent and apathetic to be either cruel or vindictive-generally speaking treated the servile population (including slaves and Hottentots) with kindness and consideration, a few solitary exceptions may possibly have occurred to the above as a general rule, and these exceptions were eagerly laid hold of by certain interested parties, and exaggerated to such a degree, as to give rise in 1828 to a notorious enactment, which, by removing every necessary restraint from the colonial population, suddenly infested the colony with hordes of robbers and vagrants; and whilst depriving the white population of many hitherto useful hands for labour, moreover frequently exposed their property to the most vexatious spoliation.

This ill-advised decree was followed by a still more suicidal blow to the interests and welfare of the colony; we allude to the “ we allude to the "Emancipation Act," or rather to the hasty and premature manner in which a measure-no doubt just and humane in itself was without due preparation carried into effect,—a measure which, whilst in reality injurious to the cause of humanity, by turning adrift and thereby converting into thieves, plunderers, and vagabonds, a large population utterly unable to provide for themselves, completely ruined the white agricultural inhabitants of the colony, and thus effectually crippled the few remaining resources of the farmers in particular, and generally speaking of all the Boers.

"They complained that the sudden emancipation of the slaves and Hottentots had deprived them of the means of living either profitably or comfortably in the colony, and most bitterly reprobated the exaggeration and falsehoods which had, in many instances, been spread abroad, on their general treatment of the coloured races, by interested missionaries and other purveyors of horrors; and added, that not only was the compensation given for their slaves miserably small, but that the difficulties, delays, and formalities to be undergone, before they could touch the money so given, were so great and costly, as to render its acquisition scarcely worth the trouble.

"There must be some truth in all this, when we consider, that for these causes, they, and the majority of the richest and most respectable of their countrymen, have quitted the lands on which they were born and to which they were attached; in many instances, without even attempting a sale of their properties. In other cases they disposed of valuable farms for the new gun or waggon, or some such consideration offered to them in their misery, by the rapacious speculators on the temper of mind, into which this state of things had driven their victims.

"The hasty, fanatical, and oppressive manner in which the emancipation of the slaves was conducted in this colony, has been the means of driving into the lawless regions, beyond our controul, five-sixths of the wealthy and most respectable of the Dutch Boers, and of converting these previously loyal subjects into bitter enemies, as well of ourselves as of the native inhabitants among whom they are located. Such was the haste with which it was thought necessary to endow the astonished bondsmen in this and other colonies with liberty, that the ruin and misery of their white brethren were not taken into account; lest, in considering any means by which they might be mitigated, time should be lost, and the wretched saturnalia delayed for a brief space.

"Let no one, however, imagine that I am an enemy to the complete freedom of any colour or race of the human family. I only regret that while one hand was employed in the beneficent operation of severing the bonds of the slaves, it should have been thought necessary to employ the other, allied with the tongue, in the ruin of their former masters. It seems to be unfortunately essential, that oppression should exist in all nations and societies, and it has been lately the rage to suppose that white shoulders are more capable of bearing with impunity the heavy burden than black ones.'

Despairing therefore of obtaining redress from that foreign government, under whose sway they had been, against their inclinations, thus forcibly placed; unprotected from foreign and barbarous invasion; plundered by their former servants and slaves-for the loss of whose labour they had received little or no compensation-in short, roused from their usual phlegmatic apathy by a long course of real injuries and petty vexations, the Boers were at last driven to the desperate and unprecedented step of abandoning their homesteads-of emigrating en masse across the colonial border, and of plunging with their families into the boundless wilderness; in the vain hope of being there allowed to enjoy unmolested that state of independent competence, which had been denied to them within the limits of the British territories.

Under ordinary circumstances, there can be no doubt that, legally speaking, no colony, however distant, can, unauthorised and of its own free will, throw off its allegiance to an established government; but when that government becomes either incapable or unwilling to protect its remote subjects from internal abuse or external violence, the wisest course it can then pursue is to absolve them with the best possible grace from such allegiance; or most assuredly-as history can amply testify-its unprotected or abused colonial subjects will save the trouble of taking such a step. As to the instance in point, it must moreover be borne in mind, that the Dutch emigrants-deserters, rebels, or whatever other designation may be deemed applicable to the hostile Boers-were comparatively speaking very recently, and without having a voice in the matter, suddenly converted, by "treaty," from Batavian into British subjects; that they long patiently endured their manifold wrongs, till finding the burthen insupportable, they resolved by flight, by the abandonment of their domestic hearths, by quitting for ever the country of their birth and adoption, to escape poverty, neglect, groundless aspersion, marked injustice, an unprotected condition against savage aggression; and lastly, a state of existence which had become intolerably irksome and oppressive.

But no-we could not allow these poor people to depart in peace-for even as Pharaoh pursued the Israelites when attempting to escape from the land of bondage-so must we needs follow the unhappy Boers into the wild and desert "Karroo," there to impose a galling and hateful yoke; and thus having fairly persecuted them into open hostilities, we are now reaping the consequences of such ill-judged and reckless measures!†

From "The Cape and its Colonists," by George Nicholson, Esq. (1848.) + Return of killed and wounded, in the affair at Bloem Plaats, August 29, 1848:- Officers, 1 killed, 6 wounded; men, 8 ditto, 39 ditto; horses, 11 ditto, 13 ditto. Names of Officers wounded:-Lieutenant-Colonel Buller, Rifle Brigade, severely; Captain Murray, ditto, mortally (since dead); Captain Armstrong, Cape Mounted Rifles, severely; Lieutenant De Salis, ditto, dangerously; Lieutenant Mill, ditto, severely; Ensign Steele, ditto, dangerously; Ensign Crampton, 91st Regiment, dangerously.

Measures, whose fatal consequences may prove incalculably disastrous, if through this means, the native tribes be once more raised against us, and should unite their efforts with those of our present enemies.

"Two facts," says that periodical peculiarly devoted to the colonial interests of Great Britain,* "two facts connected with the action (at Bloem Plaats) deserves to be recorded.

"Salis, the officer in command of the Cape Mounted Rifles, while leading on to the assault of the Boers, had his horse killed, his arm broken, and received a shot in the body. His men scampered off and left him. Two Boers," says the letter writer, who describes the affair, ' approached him. One cried out, Shoot him dead.'-' No,' said Salis, 'I have a wife and too many children, to die yet.' They then asked him if he was wounded, and when he said 'Yes,' they left him. He managed to crawl towards us, and, when perceived, was carried to the hospital waggon. This took place in the heat of the fight when men's bloods were up. After the fight, two prisoners fell into Sir Harry's hands; one was a deserter from the 45th regiment, the other a Dutchman of the name of Dneyer. They were both tried by court-martial, and both shot. The deserter's fate was inevitable, but the wisdom and humanity of shooting the former may be questioned."

Loth would we be to call in question either the justice or humanity of Sir Harry Smith, for they are ever the qualifications of the brave, and Sir Harry is, in every sense of the word, a gallant soldier; but (unless acting under special instructions) he appears certainly in this instance to have been carried rather beyond the limits of both. Nor does the act of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, -as set forth in the reported confiscation (mentioned in the above quoted paper), with the declaration that all marriages heretofore contracted in the district of Wynburg, and not recorded, as set forth in his proclamation, are illegal, and the offspring thereof incapable of inheriting property within the colonytally with preconceived notions of that forbearance and humanity, or even policy, so necessary to be observed (even under the actual deplorable circumstances) towards an unfortunate race, which, although trampled under foot, and, as Sir Harry asserts, now completely subdued, may yet, nevertheless, if driven to extremity, turn on and severely wound the heel that so recklessly treads them into the earth.

*

Let us therefore pause and consider well before we act;-let government, let the British public, let the "philanthropists" (if they deem white skins worthy of their attention), turn over all the above extenuating circumstances in favour of the hostile Boers; let it be matter of serious consideration, if it do not better become a great nation, magnanimously to acknowledge an error, than wrongfully to continue in the same mistaken course ;-to consult at once justice, generosity, and self-interest, by declaring the independence of the Dutch Africanders, and then allowing them to establish whatever government they deem fit beyond the colonial limits. By following such a course, we should interpose a secure defensive belt, between our possessions and native depredation; establish pioneers to discovery, commerce and civilisation, into the hitherto unknown regions of Central Africa ;-and from bitter foes, would, no doubt, instantaneously convert the "Rebel" Boers to our staunchest and most useful allies in Southern Africa.

See the Colonial Gazette for the 2nd of December, 1848.

A NIGHT'S ADVENTURE AT THE "BLACK EAGLE" AT AUGSBURG.

ORIENTAL historians inform us that when Mahomet, in order to avoid the Koreish who had conspired to assassinate him, fled from Abu Bekir's house, he took refuge in a cave of Mount Thor, to the south-east of Mecca, where he lay concealed for three days, during which time his pursuers came to the spot, but observing that a spider had covered the mouth with her web, and concluding, consequently, that no person could have recently entered, they hurried forward in another direction, and their intended victim saved his life. If we reflect that the man thus preserved, subsequently founded a dominion which in eighty years extended itself over more kingdoms and countries than the Romans could subdue in eight hundred, and which still maintains its ascendancy in several powerful and populous states, it becomes difficult to appreciate the world-importance of the little insect-weaver, from every one of whose slender filaments a future empire may be said to have depended. The Count de Lauzun, while a prisoner in the Bastille, solaced himself by forming an intimate acquaintance with a spider: Robert Bruce, when concealed like Mahomet, derived a lesson which had an important influence on his future life, from observing the indefatigable perseverance of the same little insect and every school-girl has read the story, rather an alarming one in these worsted-working days, of Arachne's metamorphosis into a spider, for presuming to compete with Minerva in tentstitch and cross-stitch.

Well am I aware that the unpopular animalcule whose name I have ventured to mention in the following pages, and against whom the finger and thumb of man and woman kind is instinctively upraised, has seldom been deemed a fit subject for presenting to any society, except, perhaps, the entomological; but if a mere maker of cobwebs can be honourably recorded in history, both real and fabulous, why may not the tiny harlequin of our dormitories leap from the contemptuous obscurity to which he has been condemned, and become the hero of a magazine article, especially when the facts stated are strictly and literally true? As it is by no means improbable that many of my readers hurried to see the industrious fleas lately exhibited throughout England, I will not offer any further apology for introducing an individual of the species, who, in the language of Shakspeare, might justly be termed, “a valiant flea, that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion."

During last summer I had become so debilitated by two severe attacks of influenza, that I determined to make a little excursion to the Continent, in the hope of deriving benefit from a temporary change of air, as well as amusement from visiting new scenes. As I was then engaged Jan.-VOL. LXXXV. NO. CCCXXXVII.

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