For several years prior to the Rebellion, the high rate of rents was generally felt as a burden. It was talked about, and talked about loudly. Every report on Native Affairs showed that such was the case. On the other hand, one heard not a word in regard to the hut tax imposed by the Government.[76] The justice of it was approved and its amount considered reasonable. As a matter of fact, the complaint that made itself heard, was not against the European farmers, but against the system which had initiated freehold, leasehold, or any other tenure, as distinct from the purely communal. Because the Natal Government did not abolish landlordism, or at least prohibit landlords from charging tenants more than, say £1 per hut, and ejectment on failure to pay, Natives considered they had just ground for complaint against the Government. In their ignorance of the history of freehold, they looked on the colonists as having initiated, and as being responsible for, a system that flourished in Europe long before Vasco da Gama sailed up the coast of South Africa to set eyes on and name the country occupied by their artless ancestors. Associated with this question were those of usury and cruelly extortionate charges by certain members of the legal profession, notably such as practised in the "country districts." In consequence of many tenants being unable to meet their obligations, largely through loss of cattle from disease, they were driven to borrowing money. For many years past, it had been the practice for them to draw on their cattle to overcome temporary embarrassment. In the absence of a law regulating the interest chargeable on loans, a few of the lenders demanded and received fabulous rates. It would, however, be unfair to hold the administration responsible for not providing a law, practically unknown in civilized communities, until necessity therefor had actually revealed itself. However that may be, the position must be looked at as it was. Here was a people compelled in the main to meet their financial obligations, public and private, with no better means than the earnings of their sons. These sons, aware that their fathers were depending largely on them, instead of _vice versa_, began to assume an unusually independent attitude in respect, not only of their parents, but of everyone else. The parents complained to the Government and pressed for the application of correctives. What one of the correctives was will presently appear.[77] This independence, indeed, was but a symptom characteristic of the age. Its growth had, for many years, been observable, though, in former days, not nearly so aggravated as it became in later ones. To such an extent did it develop by 1906, that contempt for authority, particularly Native authority, began to manifest itself in numerous ways, quickened and accentuated by the evil influences of European towns.