A.D. 1776 
— 1850. 
and of 
negroes in 
the West 
Indies. 
854 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
to carry out treaty obligations, and to maintain an efficient 
frontier police. But this system did not work in practice; 
the homes and farms of British subjects were constantly 
raided ; the fact that no punishment followed was interpreted 
by the natives as a sign of mere weakness, and the life of the 
farmers became intolerable. In 1836 the great emigration 
of the Dutch began towards regions beyond the Orange 
River, where they hoped to be able to carry out their own 
system of dealing with frontier troubles by organised com- 
mandos. The inability of the Home Government to grasp the 
actual difficulties of the situation and its susceptibility to the 
opinions of enthusiasts and doctrinaires, bore fruit in vacilla- 
tion and mismanagement, and sowed the seeds of bitter 
hatred between two races that might easily have amalgamated 
at the Cape as completely as they have done in New York. 
The newly aroused sentiment, as to the duties of English- 
men towards African races, gave rise to difficulties, not only 
in the Dark Continent itself, but in the West India islands, 
where the planters had been so long dependent on imported 
labour, The humanitarian movement, for putting down the 
traffic in slaves, had been aroused by the misery it caused in 
Africa and in the Middle Passage; but the logical result was 
an agitation against the existence of slavery in British 
possessions, and this was headed by Lord Brougham. The 
British Government paid a sum of twenty millions in com- 
pensation to the planters when slavery was abolished in 
1834. This was of course not a full compensation, as the 
value of West Indian slaves was said to be forty-three 
millions’. It might of course appear that the command 
which the planters had over a resident labouring population 
would enable them to carry on their operations without a 
full compensation for the money they had invested in stocking 
their estates with negroes. But as a matter of fact, and when 
viewed retrospectively, it is difficult to say that any compen- 
sation would have made up to the planters for losing control 
over their hands. There undoubtedly are populations who 
1 The compensation appears to have varied from a quarter to a half of 
the sworn value of slaves of different classes and ages. Accounts, 1837-8. 
rLvITL. 680.