[Sidenote: Slachter's Nek.]

No wonder that in 1815 a number of the Boers were driven into rebellion,
a rebellion which found an awful ending in the horrible occurrence of
the 9th of March, 1816, when six of the Boers were half hung up in the
most inhuman way in the compulsory presence of their wives and children.
Their death was truly horrible, for the gallows broke down before the
end came; but they were again hoisted up in the agony of dying, and
strangled to death in the murderous tragedy of Slachter's Nek. Whatever
opinions have been formed of this occurrence in other respects, it was
at Slachter's Nek that the first bloodstained beacon was erected which
marks the boundary between Boer and Briton in South Africa, and the eyes
of posterity still glance back shudderingly through the long vista of
years at that tragedy of horror.

[Sidenote: The missionaries.]

This was, however, but the beginning. Under the cloak of religion
British administration continued to display its hate against our people
and nationality, and to conceal its self-seeking aims under cover of the
most exalted principles. The aid of religion was invoked to reinforce
the policy of oppression in order to deal a deeper and more fatal blow
to our self-respect. Emissaries of the London Missionary Society
slandered the Boers, and accused them of the most inhuman cruelties to
the natives. These libellous stories, endorsed as they were by the
British Government, found a ready ear amongst the English, and the
result was that under the pressure of powerful philanthropic opinion in
England our unfortunate people were more bitterly persecuted than ever,
and were finally compelled to defend themselves in courts of law
against the coarsest accusations and insults. But they emerged from the