There was thus a broad line of demarcation between the colonists and such of the missionaries as held these views, and the tendency on each side was to make it still broader. It was deepened into positive antipathy towards those missionaries who, following Dr. Vanderkemp's example, united themselves in marriage with black women, and proclaimed themselves the champions of the black population against the white. Everyone acquainted with South African natives knows how ready they are to please their friends by bringing forward charges against anyone whom those friends dislike. Unfortunately the missionaries Vanderkemp and Read were deceived into believing a great number of charges of cruelty made against various colonists, which a little observation would have shown in most instances to be groundless; and thereupon they lodged accusations before the High Court of Justice. In 1811 between seventy and eighty such cases came before the Circuit Court for trial. There was hardly a family on the frontier of which some relative was not brought as a criminal before the judges to answer to a charge of murder or violent assault. Several months were occupied in the trials, and more than a thousand witnesses were examined, but in every instance the most serious charges were proved to be without foundation. Only a few convictions, and those of no very outrageous crimes, resulted from these prosecutions, which kept the entire colony in a ferment until long after the circuit was closed. Thus far everyone will approve of the sentiments of one party or the other according to his sympathy, but in what follows no unprejudiced person who will take the trouble to study the matter thoroughly can acquit the anti-colonial missionaries of something more faulty than mere error of judgment. For years their writings teemed with charges against the colonists similar to those they had brought before the High Court of Justice. These writings were circulated widely in Europe, where the voice of the colonists was never heard, and they created impressions there which no refutation made in South Africa could ever counteract. The acts, the language, even the written petitions of the colonists, were so distorted in accounts sent home, that these accounts cannot now be read by those who have made themselves acquainted with the truth, without the liveliest feelings of indignation being excited. The colonists learned that in England they were regarded as cruel barbarians because they refused to permit Hottentot herds, swarming with vermin, to be seated in their front rooms at the time of family prayer. They found themselves pictured as the harshest of taskmasters, as unfeeling violators of native rights. And of late years it had become plain to them that the views of their opponents were being acted upon at the Colonial Office, while their complaints were wholly disregarded.