The Dutch East India Company endeavoured to limit the Cape to the original design of a port for refreshing their ships, and they threw obstacles in the way of its becoming a flourishing settlement; they allowed no trade but what passed through the hands of their own servants, and made it dependent on the governor-general of Batavia, concluding that the settlers would thus be made equally submissive to their orders from Europe, and from the seat of their wealth and influence in the East. This illiberal policy afforded little stimulation to industry; the settlers became conspicuous for habits of indolence, and education being neglected, the manners of the colonists degenerated towards barbarism, united with a cruel propensity to tyrannise over the Hottentots, whose lands they had seized, and from whom they exacted labour without due compensation. A number of French Protestants found an asylum at the Cape, where they introduced the cultivation of the vine; but the colony did not flourish under the Dutch. The natives, however, proved a patient and submissive race; they were the best labourers and herdsmen in the colony, and many of them proved valuable soldiers in the service of Holland. [Sidenote: 1794] [Sidenote: 1795] The declining commerce of the Dutch, towards the close of the eighteenth century, made the Cape a burden to them; little doubt was entertained of their willingness to part with it for a small compensation, and overtures would, probably, have been made from England, but at that period the French Revolution, and its destructive consequences, unsettled the affairs of Europe. The favourable reception, which the doctrine of equality met with in Holland, having disposed the Dutch to separate from the Allies, with the result of the campaign of 1794 in Flanders, and other causes, occasioned the United Provinces to be brought under the dominion of France. The Prince of Orange fled to England, and he furnished letters authorizing the British to take possession of, and to hold, the colony of the Cape of Good Hope in his name. Many of the colonists had, in the meantime, imbibed French principles; they had become clamorous to declare themselves a free and independent republic; and lists of worthy and influential persons to be consigned to the guillotine, or banished from the colony, for holding different views, were prepared; at the same time the slaves, who were much more numerous than the whites, were holding meetings to decide upon the fate of the free and independent burghers when the period of their own emancipation should arrive. At this important crisis the revolutionists were suddenly disconcerted by the arrival of a British armament under Admiral Sir G. K. Elphinstone, and Major-General James Craig, to take possession of the colony. The governor refused to consign the place to the protection of the British, and ordered the inhabitants to leave Simon’s Town. The English were careful not to commit any