hands of white farmers and officials. Van der Kemp died in 181 I. His
colleague James Read survived him but was unable to sustain many of the
charges he brought against individual farmers before the colonial circuit
court in 1812.
In 1819, a far more effective and equally radical personality appeared
on the scene. John Philip, a director of the LMS,was sent to the Cape by his
fellow directors to supervise the work of the mission in South Africa. The
son of a Scottish handloom weaver, Philip projected into the South African
situation his experience of life in Scotland during a period when the condi-
tion of skilled workers was improving. Education, Christianity, and free-
dom from preindustrial constraints were a recipe for welfare for all South
Africans, Boers and British, slaves and Khoikhoi. As a radical evangelical,
Philip was committed to fighting for the liberation of oppressed classes.I?
He identified initially with the cause of the British settlers, chairing a
committee that assisted distressed colonists and joining in their criticisms
of Governor Somerset. But in 1821 he found correspondence at Beth-
elsdorp that convinced him that the circuit court had been wrong in throw-
ing out most of the charges against the farmers. He also discovered that the