THEWHITEINVADERS
Wesleyan-Methodists. Its thrust was directed at reducing political corrup-
tion, which had become endemic during the eighteenth century; eliminat-
ing the curbs on trade that. had been created by the-dense network of
mercantilist monopolies; and freeing the labor market from its prein-
dustrial constraints. Hence, the struggle for parliamentary reform, leading
to the Act. of 1832, which increased the number of voters and reduced
inequalities among the electoral divisions; the battle for the reduction of
protective tariffs, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; and
the agitation first to put an end to the slave trade, then to "ameliorate" the
institution of slavery, and finally to outlaw it.52
When Parliament banned British participation
in the slave trade in
18°7, it deprived the Cape colonial farmers of their customary influx of
fresh supplies of labor. They responded by increasing the work load of their
slaves and by agitating for greater control of the services of the indigenous
Khoikhoi people. After the Napoleonic Wars, however, critics were reveal-
ing and denouncing the excesses of plantation slavery in the British West
Indies, and businessmen who suffered from competition from the products