After prolonged negotiations the States-General sent out two commissioners to investigate the state of affairs in the Cape colony and to recommend measures of reform. The degree of relief proposed was considered inadequate—especially by those who dwelt in the more distant settlements. Therefore, in 1795, the people of the interior rose up in revolt against the Company’s government—professing, however, unabated loyalty to the mother country. The magistrates appointed by the company were deposed, and little republics were set up, each with a representative assembly. It would have been an easy matter for the government at the Cape to have suppressed these uprisings by cutting off their food supplies. But just then other events claimed the attention of both the governor and the governed—events which drew South Africa into the tumultuous tide of European politics and led to the immediate contact of Boer and Briton, and initiated a struggle between the two which has been renewed at intervals, with varying fortunes, for more than a hundred years. Before going forward to the event of 1795—the first contact of Boer and Briton—it will be well to note some of the more important features of the condition in which that contact found the Boer. The total Boer population of South Africa in 1795 was about seventeen thousand, with a rapid rate of increase. In the mixed blood of the people the proportions of national elements were: Dutch, a little less than two-thirds; French, one-sixth; the remainder was principally German, with a sprinkling of other nationalities. The popular language differed largely from that of Holland at the close of the eighteenth century. The amalgamation with a large body of foreigners, the scant instruction in book learning, and above all the necessity of speaking to the slaves and Hottentots in the simplest manner possible had all tended to the destruction of grammatical forms. The language in common use by the Boer had become a mere dialect, having a very limited vocabulary. But the Dutch Bible—a book that every one read—greatly increased the number of words with which he was familiar. With this addition, however, most of the uneducated South African colonists were unable to understand fully the contents of a newspaper of the time printed in Holland, or a book treating of a subject unfamiliar to them. Naturally this dialect of the Dutch was greatly beloved by the people using it—it was the language of mother, of lover, of friend to friend in parting to meet no more. In no other country were women more completely on an equality with men than in South Africa. Property belonging to a woman while she was single, or acquired by her after marriage, was secured to her in perpetuity so that her husband could neither squander it nor dispose of it in any way without her consent. Neither was it subject to seizure for debts contracted by him, but was as absolutely hers as if no marriage existed.