D1.8.23: [Untitled]

D1.8.23: [Untitled]

Newspaper Clippings

Bleek reflects on the death of the statesman, John Fairbairn, and that of his son-in-law, Frederick Watermeyer, several months prior. He laments the loss of men of 'eminent usefulness' to the Cape Colony. Frederick Watermeyer was troubled by Fairbairn's sizeable debts and worked frantically to lessen them, as Fairbairn had been ill for some time before dying. To a lesser extent, he comments on the desire of those in the Eastern Province to relocate Parliament to Graham's Town, which members in the Western Province fiercely oppose. He pivots from matters of death, political succession, and policy to the polarising Law of Inheritance debate, seeking to appease the Germanophone West and Anglophone East.

Printed newsprint glued on paper

30 March 1865

One cut-out column of printed newsprint mounted on foolscap folio (warped).

Responsible Government (its advocates), native servants (treatment of), Native Commission, Law of Inheritance Commission (in both the Western and Eastern Provinces)

Pressed clippings of Victorian current affairs opinion pieces by Wilhelm Bleek. Published in Het Volksblad on Thursday, March 30th, 1865. It is worth noting that Bleek applies the term 'barbarous' (and 'despotic') indiscriminately to both white and black polities and individuals. Despite him quoting the bench in his use here of 'barbarous', he co-opts it in other articles on the same topic.

Van de Sandt de Villiers & Co.