life, political life, or religious life. Gradually they succeeded in imposing their own language upon the new comers. In 1709 the use of French was forbidden in all public matters, and in 1724 the services of the French Church were for the last time performed in the French language. Before the end of the last century the language was gone. Thus the French comers with their descendants were forced by an iron hand into Dutch moulds, and now nothing is left to them of their old country but their names. When one meets a Du Plessis or a De Villiers it is impossible to escape the memory of the French immigration.
The last half of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth century saw the gradual progress of the Dutch depôt,—a colony it could hardly be called,—going on in the same slow determined way, and always with the same purpose. It was no colony because those who managed it at home in Holland, and they who at the Cape served with admirable fidelity their Dutch masters, never entertained an idea as to the colonization of the country. A half-way house to India was erected by the Dutch East India Company for the purpose of commerce, and it was necessary that a community should be maintained at the Cape for this purpose. The less of trouble, the less of expense, the less of anything beyond mechanical service with which the work could be carried on, the better. It was not for the good of the Dutchmen who were sent out or of the Frenchmen who joined them, that the Council of 17 at Amsterdam troubled themselves with the matter; but because by doing so they could assist their own trade and add to their own gains.
