ABSTRACT
It did not hesitate to draw the moral that the colonists should be left in future to pay for their own Kaffir wars.2
To find a parallel to this dramatic incident, men had to go back to the 'Boston Tea-party.' The treatment of the misguided Irish peasants on the Neptune, taken by itself, is difficult to justify: virtue so excessive and so aggressive surely becomes a vice. But on the general issue the colonists were dearly right in refusing to add another to their many perplexing social problems. The fact that Great Britain had financed their Kaffir wars was not really to the point. And their successful stand was a great encouragement to all opponents of the convict system.
