Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447: Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852Various
History
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447: Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852
Various
Periodicals
The writer from whose letter some of the foregoing quotations are
made, strongly recommends that the government should offer 'unstinted
encouragement and liberal assistance' to promote emigration from Great
Britain; and considers that, if this were done, 'thousands of hardy
English and Scotch farmers would avail themselves of the advantages
which the country offers.' This is possible; but at the same time, it
should be known, that the excitement among the native tribes, caused
by the war in Caffreland, had extended across the Orange River into
the sovereignty, and that much confusion, and, unfortunately, some
bloodshed, had ensued. These disorders, it is true, were only local;
but it is evident that the neighbourhood of some 80,000 barbarians
must, for some time to come, be a source of considerable embarrassment
and danger to all settlers in the new colony. In time, no doubt, with
the progress of civilisation, this danger will be removed; and the
natives may become, as in New Zealand, a source of wealth to the
colony, as useful labourers--like the 'skipping Caffres' under the
brickmaker's instructions, or peaceful cultivators of the soil. At
present, however, the peril from this source is so evident and so
serious, that a warning reference to it could not with propriety be
omitted in any description of this otherwise promising settlement.
THE SECRET.
Jean Baptiste Veron, a native, it was understood, of the south of
France, established himself as a merchant at Havre-de-Grace in 1788,
being then a widower with one child, a young boy. The new-comer's
place of business was on the south quay, about a hundred yards west of
the custom-house. He had brought letters of high recommendation from
several eminent Paris firms; his capital was ascertained to be large;
and soon, moreover, approving him self to be a man of keen mercantile
discernment, and measured, peremptory, unswerving business habits, it
is not surprising that his commercial transactions speedily took a
wide range, or that, at the end of about fifteen years, M. Veron was
pronounced by general consent to be the wealthiest merchant of the
commercial capital of northern France. He was never, albeit, much of a
favourite with any class of society: his manner was too _brusque_,
decided, unbending--his speech too curt, frequently too bitter, for
that; but he managed to steer his course in very difficult times
quite as safely as those who put themselves to great pains and charges
to obtain popularity. He never expressed--publicly at least--any
preference for Royalism, Republicanism, or Imperialism; for
fleur-de-lis, bonnet-rouge, or tricolore: in short, Jean Baptiste
Veron was a stern, taciturn, self-absorbed man of business; and as
nothing else was universally concluded, till the installation of a
_quasi_ legitimacy by Napoleon Bonaparte, when a circumstance, slight
in itself, gave a clearer significance to the cold, haughty, repellent
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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