may be said, little is gained unless measures are pursued to permanently restrain them within their own Territory. This will be my chief care in future, and I fear that for some time it will engage the services of the whole of the Cape Regiment.

Letter from the Deputy Colonial Secretary to the President of the Lombard Bank.

SECRETARY'S OFFICE, January 23rd 1812.

SIR,-By the proclamation of the 15th instant, you will have perceived his Excellency the Governor's intention of increasing the capital of the Lombard Bank by a further sum of Rds. 100,000; paper currency to which amount has in consequence been prepared, and is lodged at this moment in the receiver-general's office. I am now therefore to acquaint you, that in pursuance of instructions from His Majesty's government at home, the sum of Rds. 100,000 in question will be paid into the Lombard Bank, in increase of the capital of that bank; but that it is to be from time to time issued by the bank on loan to the colonial government, not to be employed in any part of the ordinary colonial expenditure, but to be laid out in colonial buildings and works; and that such fixed property will be mortgaged to the Lombard Bank, in security for the sums so lent, at the usual interest, which interest will be payable out of the public treasury.

The expenditure which has been already gone into, and which has been defrayed from the ordinary colonial revenue, is,—

On account of land purchased for the establishment at the
Swarteberg

10,000

Rds. 49,639

This amount, therefore, is to be repaid in the first instance to the public treasury; and his Excellency has directed that the

building of the civil offices (late the Slave Lodge,) the public buildings erecting at George's Drostdy, and those erecting at the Swarteberg, shall be specially hypothecated to the Lombard Bank for the amount which shall actually be disbursed upon each of these works.

It being also his Excellency's intention to advance a proportion of the currency to the improvement of the communication between George's Drostdy and the interior districts, his Excellency has directed tolls to be levied towards defraying this expenditure, and he has desired that the proceeds of these tolls may likewise be hypothecated to the bank for the security of such sums as may be advanced for this object. I have, &c.

Letter from W. S. VAN RYNEVELD, ESQRE., to DEPUTY
SECRETARY BIRD.

DROSTDY, TULBAGH, January 24th 1812.

SIR,-On my arrival at this place, which was the day before yesterday, I had the honor to receive your letter dated the 14th instant signifying to me His Excellency the Governor and Commander in Chief's desire that on the subject of a correspondence which had taken place between yourself and His Majesty's Fiscal respecting the tenures of the settlement, and which correspondence you had the kindness of communicating to me shortly before I left town, I should give this subject a serious consideration, and acquaint His Excellency with my opinion as to the form of tenure most desirable to be hereafter adopted, and also, in consideration of the present vague and uncertain tenures, particularly that of the loan lease, to have my ideas of the practicability and expediency of making such alterations as will give the holders a complete property therein upon terms of mutual advantage to the Government and the parties.

I am at a loss how to fulfil the wishes of His Excellency at present, for being here without any document relating to this important subject, to which I should have recourse before putting

an opinion upon paper, I should therefore have taken the liberty of begging His Excellency's indulgence until my return to Cape Town, when I would immediately have made the whole of your letter a subject of my serious consideration.

However your mentioning that numerous applications for land now lying in the office render it of the highest moment that some fixed principles should be adopted in the future grants or leases made in this settlement, and hinting at the same time His Excellency's wish to have my report as soon as possible, I therefore thought I could not lose a moment to consider of this subject, and to lay my sentiments upon it before His Excellency.

I shall not enter into the particulars of the tenures of this Colony or in the different titles the landholders or owners of places have of their possessions. This point, as far as I recollect, is so completely investigated and cleared up in said correspondence that it would be superfluous, and even presumptuous in me, to say a word upon that particular subject; I, however, with due deference to the better judgment of the able men who are the authors of said correspondence, beg leave to differ only about one point in a little degree with their opinion respecting the precarious state of tenure in regard of loan places, and the positive and indisputable right they have laid down as a principle that Government had without any cause whatsoever ever to resume the same.

It is true that the original lease of a loan place (ordonnantie) consists in nothing else but in a mere permission to the possessors to graze their cattle on a certain spot on condition of paying a certain rent, obliging them at the same time to have the lease renewed annually.

But reflecting upon what has been the consequence of said leases, and the constant practice since even one century, not only under the eyes of Government but even countenanced by the

same;

Considering that many subsequent acts have been committed on the part of Government by which the idea of a possession of a loan place by a bare permission revocable every end of a year, has been commuted in a certain right on the part of the farmer, consisting of course in nothing else than in good faith between the Sovereign and the subject, but relative to the Sovereign of a most complicated nature;

Considering further that this kind of tenure (loan places namely)

VIII.

S

having for such a length of time fluctuated in said manner, are now become at least five-sixths of all the property of individuals in this Colony;

I therefore look upon this point as of great consequence, and should be much inclined to think that the tenures about loan places are not so very precarious as is thought of. Nay that upon the whole Government under those circumstances will never assume the right of revocation of loan leases, but with great delicacy and not without very strong cause or reasons for it.

Among the acts I am alluding to committed on the part of the Government there is one particular instance in which Government has committed itself in regard of loan places, viz. by laying a duty upon the transfer of the premises (Opstal) of a loan place either sold or disposed of by a Will.

It was never allowed to any man possessing a loan place to sell or transfer the same, but only the premises or opstal. The grant of a renewed lease was however never refused to the purchaser or legatee. In the mean time Government knew very well that many premises consisting only but in a hut not worth more than 25 or 30 dollars were selling for 20 or 25,000 gulden. Government received the duties upon this sum, confident that it was not the mere opstal, but the real value or calculated utility of the place for which said duty was paid, so that not only the opstal but the whole place was virtually disposed of with the complete sanction of Government.

When now the purchaser who bonâ fide had paid his 25,000 gulden and the duty upon it to Government, having also under the eyes and with the sanction of his Government bonâ fide acquired the possession of a loan place, and got the usual lease of it, I should suppose that such a man fulfilling the obligation he lies under on his part, might then consider himself safe in the possession of his place, at least so far that he might reasonably expect not to be dispossessed from it on the part of his Government but for des causes Majeures, and then even with an adequate indemnification either in payment or in granting him such a proportion of the place on Freehold (the best title in the Colony) as according to circumstances might be considered sufficient for an indemnification to the owner or bonâ fide possessor of the same.

I own, considering the footing upon which the Farmer originally stands in regard of his loan place, if he had to deal with a private

individual, his possession would be considered a most precarious one, exposed to all the effects of arbitrary power which avarice, caprice, or other inducements could dictate, without even finding redress by a recourse to strict Justice.

But this cannot be the case now. He is vassal (as we strictly speaking all are) of the direct Government in the Mother Country, who, wishing to colonize, therefore never has anything else in view but the good of the colony at large. It is not strict justice that the subject here has recourse to with his Sovereign, but it is equity, which never will be denied him.

The Government has always acted upon these principles. There are instances that Government had occasion for this disposal of loan places, viz. the establishment of Drostdies, as even lately under both the British and Dutch Governments the Drostdies of Tulbagh, Uitenhage, Graaff-Reinet, and Jan Dissels Vallei, the different leases of the loan places required for that purpose have been revoked under proper indemnification of the owners. In these instances we see that Government has only made use of the right it had over all property whatsoever in the Colony, which instances certainly cannot serve otherwise but to strengthen the idea of the people holding loan places, that their possession is not so unsafe in regard to Government as by a strict refinement of their title deeds only, and as if they unfortunately had to deal with an individual, might be considered.

In fact the effect of this good faith on the part of the farmers is so strongly manifested, in the trouble and expenses some of them have been using for the improvement both in buildings and in cultivation of the ground. In my present journey I found places of that description so far advanced in point of buildings and cultivation as any freehold place in the Colony.

Government in the mean time has on the other hand in some instances and for some good reasons made use of its strict right by revoking leases of loan places without any ceremony.

Of this I even found an instance in the vicinity of the very Drostdy where I am writing this, and where the lease of a loan place Onder Klindjes Kraal, belonging to Andries Streso, had been revoked and the place resumed on account of the possessor's having wilfully neglected paying the usual rent (recognitie) to Government, of which place six morgen, under the name of Vredenburg, have since been given on Freehold to an individual