He found the Dutch rigidly opposed to him at every point. The great agencies of civilization in such a country as the Cape then was were the magistrates, the missionaries, the schoolmasters and the traders. But the Boer wanted none of them in the full English sense. He accepted the appointment of magistrates, or lauddrosts, but he desired them to be Dutch and to dispense Dutch law. Any religious element outside of the Dutch Reformed Church--which had become the embodiment of his own narrow views and prejudices--was alien and antagonistic, even without missionary interference amongst the natives. Schoolmasters were only good so far as they taught in accord with his crude and very limited ideas of education; while traders were obnoxious as introducing new and disquieting conditions into the loneliness of the veldt and into his relations with the dark-skinned population. Dr. Philip, however, had a plan to work out, and he proceeded with ability and determination to the end. He established himself at Cape Town, and used an influence which came from the strong feeling known to exist in England against slavery and in favor of sympathetic treatment of colored races, to bring about continuous modification in the relations of master and slave. Sometimes he was right and sometimes wrong, but in every case the Government was between two horns of a dilemma--the Colonial Office at home and the Dutch settlers at the Cape. The latter objected to every change in law or regulation; and every interference, no matter how slight, with their living chattels produced one more ember of smouldering hatred. But, in the fourteen years from the time of his arrival until slavery was abolished, Dr. Philip usually carried his point, and by 1834 had the conditions of servitude so moderated that the Abolition Act itself made substantially little difference to the slave. [Sidenote: The Incident of Slaghter's Nek]