. South Africa. ced before us, but every one is to remain quiet andin peace. In short, we are frankly bored by all thishubbub, we are shopkeepers, not imperialists, and aman who tries to administer a country righteously in-stead of devoting himself to the meat supply of ourships is a confounded nuisance. Thus the Seventeen argued and thus the conspiratorswon. Van der Stel begged to be allowed to remain inthe Cape if only for a year, as a forgotten burgher,but he was curtly told to get out; Huysing threatenedhim with a preposterous lawsuit; the lives of the re-maining officials were made a burd
. South Africa. ced before us, but every one is to remain quiet andin peace. In short, we are frankly bored by all thishubbub, we are shopkeepers, not imperialists, and aman who tries to administer a country righteously in-stead of devoting himself to the meat supply of ourships is a confounded nuisance. Thus the Seventeen argued and thus the conspiratorswon. Van der Stel begged to be allowed to remain inthe Cape if only for a year, as a forgotten burgher,but he was curtly told to get out; Huysing threatenedhim with a preposterous lawsuit; the lives of the re-maining officials were made a burden by the meantriumph of the disaffected; without land they werehelpless to provide even their own eatables and wererobbed unmercifully; Huysing got the whole of themeat contract; the wool industry started by van derStel disappeared, and the poor Hottentots weremurdered and robbed and enslaved until there werenone left but a few miserable landless and cattlelessserfs on the farms of the burghers. The cause of152. Hut^uenots Building their Homesteads THE HOUSE OF VAN DER STEL iniquity triumphed, and, as in revenge, the days of theDutch East India Company were numbered. The reign of the van der Stels is the golden periodof the Cape—the period of expansion, of discovery,of industry, of house-building, of land , the Drakenstein, and Frenchhoek andthe glorious Land of Waveren—all these valleys oforchard and cornland and vine were settled by thepersonal labours of these two great governors—and fortheir reward they were robbed, insulted, and abused bythe very men whom they had benefited. In thisrespect they are not alone in the history of SouthAfrica, as we shall see hereafter. Yet I will make bold to say that their names willremain, when those of their detractors past and presentare forgotten. South Africa of the future will read itshistory aright, and will look back on the van der Stelsas the two great statesmen who laid down the lines ofthe true policy
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