pleaded in its alleviation." The character of his government cannot be better exemplified than by this sentence. There is, and can be, but one opinion now: that throughout the British navy at that time the sailors had many and serious grievances. But with men of their class Lord Macartney had very little sympathy indeed. And Barrow, the writer who could not find words too strong to express the cruelty of colonists towards their Hottentot dependents, quotes the above sentence with approbation. It seems never to have occurred to him that the sailors in the king's ships were quite as badly treated as the Hottentots, even if all the tales of atrocities on frontier farms that had come to his ears were true.[1]
In the colony itself there were no disturbances while Lord Macartney was governor. The large military and naval force at his disposal prevented any show of disaffection, and the strength of his character and the purity of his administration commanded general respect.
Towards the close of 1798, however, the force at the disposal of the Cape government was greatly reduced. Napoleon had landed in Egypt with a French army, and the British authorities, fearing he had designs upon India, were intent upon strengthening the garrisons there and
- ↑ At the close of the eighteenth century benevolent sentiments had not yet acquired much force, and the severest discipline was regarded as necessary on a man-of-war, whose crew was often largely composed of pressed men. The log books of the ships, the proceedings of the courts martial, and the lists of punishments inflicted at sea, which were delivered by the respective captains to the admiral when ships arrived in port, together with the correspondence between the naval officers and the government, form the evidence upon which my account of the mutiny in the fleet on the Cape station is given. Though not directly connected with the history of the Cape Colony, an account of such an event, which occurred in South African waters, could not with propriety have been omitted.
