Boer History1882 in South Africa: Customs, Port Elizabeth, Wellington, and Fairbridge
The order in council of 22 February — Cape 1882
On the 22nd of February 1882 an order in council repealed all previous customs enactments for the Cape Colony. That order is this year’s fact at the custom house. British goods from British possessions anywhere except the East Indies were to pay 3 per cent of the value. East Indian produce, and goods from foreign countries, were to pay 10 per cent. Ships of countries in amity with Great Britain could bring to the colony the growth, produce, or manufacture of their own countries, and could take Cape produce to any part of the world, on the same terms as British ships. Hoops, staves, and casks used in the wine trade were to be free of duty. What hung on that list was not a new jetty. It was who paid, and at what rate, when a cargo was entered at Table Bay or Port Elizabeth. [3]
An order in council could rewrite Cape duties because London, not a Cape assembly, had held the customs since the second occupation. Immediately after the conquest, Major-General Baird had fixed British goods in British ships at 3 per cent of the value — the same rate the Batavian government had levied on Dutch goods in Dutch ships. British goods in foreign ships, or foreign goods in British ships, paid 7 per cent. Foreign goods in foreign ships paid 10. Those figures were only provisional. They were superseded by instructions brought out by the earl of Caledon and enforced after his arrival. British goods in British ships were then admitted free. Mixed cargoes paid 5 per cent, raised in 1809 to 10. Foreign goods in foreign ships paid 15. That is why a rate on a British bale in 1882 was not a new kind of tax. It was the latest figure in a chain that had begun with Baird’s 3 per cent. [3]
Export duties on colonial produce were removed after the 18th of October 1811. An order of the 1st of October 1811 had already closed the ports to foreign ships after the 12th of April 1812, except for refreshment, or enough cargo sold to pay a distressed ship’s expenses. For revenue, after the 8th of July 1813, British goods in British ships — now almost the only merchandise admitted except Indian produce — paid 3 per cent again. From 1806 to the close of 1814 the imports averaged 105026 pounds a year. English merchants, afraid that peace might restore the colony to the Netherlands, made no effort to extend the Cape trade, and imported only enough for the most pressing demands. That caution is why the custom house of those years was a wartime till, not a free port. [3]
Trade from foreign countries in amity with Great Britain was thrown open by an order of the 12th of July 1820 and an act of July 1821, except in cotton, wool, or iron, at 10 per cent, with foreign ships on the same footing as British. Cape produce exported in foreign ships paid 8 per cent unless the foreign country granted equal privileges. On the 14th of November 1821 British goods in British ships were rated at 3.25 per cent for revenue. A statute of the 5th of July 1826, and an amending act the next year, made foreign access depend on whether the foreign country had, before the 6th of July 1826, granted similar advantages to British navigation. On the 16th of July 1827 the secretary of state ordered that no foreign country was to be treated as qualified until an order in council named it. An order of the same time listed the countries permitted to trade with the Cape, and fixed the duty on goods in their vessels at 10 per cent of the value. Those regulations remained in force until the 22nd of February 1882. That span is why this year’s order is not a footnote to D’Urban. It is the date on which the 1827 list was repealed. [3]
The 3 per cent of 1882 applied to British goods from British possessions, not to everything that came over the bar. East Indian produce was held with foreign goods at 10 per cent. Friendly foreign ships were no longer shut out after a date on the calendar: they could land their own countries’ goods, and take Cape produce anywhere, on British terms. The free list for hoops, staves, and casks was a Cape carve-out. Wine had long been the first colonial export. Packaging for that trade was not to be taxed as if it were merchandise for sale. What hung on the 22nd of February was therefore a new scale, not a new custom house. British imperial goods at 3 per cent. East Indian and foreign goods at 10. Friendly ships equalled to British. Wine casks free. [3]
Port Elizabeth: magistrate replaced — February 1882
In February 1882, owing to the necessity for retrenchment, an ordinance was issued substituting for the resident magistrate of Port Elizabeth a special justice of the peace. That substitution is this year’s fact in the town. In one respect the town had gone backward. A port that kept a resident magistrate was a district town. A port that kept only a special justice of the peace was being run cheaper. What hung on that ordinance was not a new harbour wall. It was whether Algoa Bay still rated a full magistrate after the books were cut. [3]
The town that was being cheapened had not always been a village with a peace officer. In 1834 Port Elizabeth contained 1200 residents. The Independents had a place of worship there, and on the 12th of January 1834 St. Mary’s was opened for the English episcopalians. That census is why a later ordinance cutting the magistrate is not a note about a hamlet. It is a cut in a port that already had a church, a congregation, and more than a thousand people before D’Urban’s frontier war. [3]
It had grown past a special justice once. Every year saw an increase in the volume of trade through Algoa Bay, and by an order in council dated the 13th of April 1836 it became a free warehousing port. Upon Captain Stockenstrom’s proposal, on the 6th of February 1837 an ordinance created 3 districts, named Port Elizabeth, Colesberg, and Cradock. Port Elizabeth had altogether outgrown that stage when its requirements could be met by a special justice of the peace. The new district comprised only a small tract about the town, from a point on the coast about 15 miles west of Cape Recife to the source of the Little Zwartkops, that stream to the Zwartkops, and the Zwartkops to the sea. For fiscal purposes it remained connected with Uitenhage. John George de Villiers was appointed resident magistrate. That appointment is the measure of 1837. A special justice was no longer enough. [3]
February 1882 walked that appointment back. The ordinance of retrenchment did not unmake the district on the map. It took the resident magistrate off the bench and put a special justice of the peace in his place — the very office the port had outgrown in 1837. Colesberg and Cradock are not this heading’s towns. This heading’s town is Port Elizabeth, and the cut that was made there because the books would not carry a full magistrate. What hung on that February was a grade, not a name on a chart. The port still sat on Algoa Bay. The bench below St. Mary’s was cheaper than it had been. [3] [3]
The missionary college at Wellington — 1882
In 1882 Andrew Murray, junior, founded at Wellington the missionary training college of the Dutch church, in which young men were prepared for work in the mission field. That founding is this year’s fact in the Boland. The college was not a Sunday school. It was a house in which men were trained to be sent out. What hung on it was whether the Cape church would raise its own mission workers at Wellington, or go on looking elsewhere for them. [3]
Murray was not a new name in 1882. On the 12th of March 1849 he had been appointed minister of Bloemfontein and consulent of the other congregations north of the Orange. Schools had already been established at Bloemfontein, Winburg, and Smithfield. That inland appointment is why a Wellington college in this year is not an accident of a western town. It is the later work of the man who had been sent, as a young minister, to the Sovereignty’s capital. [3]
He was already the founder, in 1874, of the Huguenot seminary at Wellington in the Cape Colony. That seminary had branches in other parts of South Africa. Many hundreds of farmers’ daughters were receiving a thoroughly Christian and practical education there. The 1874 house is why Wellington in 1882 was not an empty village chosen at random. It was already the church’s school town for the daughters of the farms. This year’s college put young men on the same ground, for a different work. [3]
In both institutions the principal teachers were Americans, and from America much pecuniary aid had been received. That is not a footnote about salaries. It is how the Wellington schools were staffed and paid. The Cape church put the college on Cape ground. The classrooms were run, in large part, by teachers and money from the United States. For more than a quarter of a century Murray was moderator of the synod of the Dutch church in the Cape Colony. The volumes from his pen were published first in Dutch and then in English translations. He was held throughout South Africa for his work in education as well as in religion, and recognised in the English-speaking world as an evangelical writer. [3]
What hung on 1882 at Wellington was therefore a second school, not a first one. The seminary of 1874 trained farmers’ daughters. The college of this year trained young men for the mission field. Both sat in the same town. Both drew American teachers and American money. The synod’s moderator was the founder of each. The fact of the calendar is that the Dutch church’s missionary college was opened there in this year. [3]
Fairbridge and the Grevenbroek manuscript — July 1882
In July 1882, at the sale of the Sunderland library, a manuscript volume of 121 quarto pages was obtained and presented by C. A. Fairbridge of Cape Town to the South African Public Library. That gift is this year’s fact on the library table. A private English sale put a Cape letter into a Cape Town collector’s hands. The collector put it into the public library. What hung on July was not a new building. It was whether that letter would sit on a private shelf or in a public room in Cape Town. [3]
Fairbridge was not a chance buyer. The number of printed books referring to South Africa was very great, but most of them contained nothing of value in tracing past events. The only complete collection of those works in the colony was the one in his possession in Cape Town. That collection is why his name belongs on this page. A man who already kept the colony’s full printed shelf was the man who, in July 1882, added a manuscript to the public library. [3] [3]
The volume was a copy, made in 1695, of a letter of Mr. Grevenbroek to a clergyman in Amsterdam. Its Latin title named an elegant and accurate account of the African people living about the Cape of Good Hope. Grevenbroek had been the learned and able secretary of the council of policy during the government of Commander Simon van der Stel. That office is why a letter of his is not a traveller’s pamphlet. It is a secretary’s account, written from the Castle’s table, of the people around the settlement. [3]
There was hardly any later account of the South African natives more accurate than this one. When the Abbé La Caille was at the Cape he was informed that Grevenbroek had prepared a work which, after his death, fell into Peter Kolbe’s hands and was the basis of that author’s account of the Khoikhoi. The discovery of this letter, so long concealed from writers on the Cape, showed that La Caille’s information was in all probability correct. A few errors in it are also in Kolbe’s volumes, and in no other writings of that period. The letter may have been a condensation of a larger work, or a beginning from which a larger work afterwards grew. Besides observations upon the people, it contains some details of events that must have been written from memory after a lapse of several years, as they are not in agreement with the contemporaneous records in the colonial archives. [3]
What hung on July 1882 was therefore a public text, not a private curiosity. A 1695 copy of van der Stel’s secretary’s letter left an English sale and entered the South African Public Library by Fairbridge’s gift. The colony’s printed collection had sat in his house. This manuscript he did not keep. He gave it to the library in Cape Town. That is the dated fact of the year on the library side. [3]