the feeling on the other side was that he had not expunged enough, and a
stringent remedy was forthwith applied to prevent all such shortcomings in
future. The fiscal was ordered to proceed to the printing-office, and assume
the censorship of the press. This interference, however deemed necessary on
the one side, was not to be tolerated on the other; and Pringle and his colleague, who had no other remedy, abandoned their editorships of the "South
African Commercial Advertiser," while Greig, its printer, for announcing his
purpose to appeal to the home government, was ordered to leave the colony
within a month. The "South African Journal" was the next point of attack on the part of the zealous fiscal, as in the second number, which had just been
published, certain obnoxious paragraphs had appeared; and although Pringle
declared that had he seen them in time he would have expunged them, or sup-
pressed the number, the plea of inadvertence, so available to journalists at
home, was not judged sufficient in South Africa. The dragon's teeth of Cadmus, which, if sown at the foot of Hymettus, would not have produced a dragonet, or even a lizard, were enough, in the mischievous soil of Bceotia, to bring forth a whole harvest of pugnacious homicides. The fiscal performed his duty
to his employer, and Pringle his to literature and the liberty of the press, so
that the magazine was discontinued, and the fact announced in the Gazette.
And now entered a third and more formidable element of discord to deepen the
confusion. The public at large were determined not to be bereaved of their periodical, and a petition to that effect, and numerously signed, was presented
to the colonial council. In this trying dilemma, the governor, Lord Charles Somerset, had recourse to what he would no doubt have called negotiation, but
which Pringle termed "bullying;" and sending for the latter, subjected him to a very stormy course of questioning, which he answered with equal spirit, and, perhaps, with almost equal asperity. The result was, that Pringle sent in his resignation of librarian, and thus shook himself loose of every government tie. But this was no expiation; on the contrary, it was regarded as a defiance of government, and as such it was treated. Every mode of disparagement was
therefore brought against him by the government officials and their adherents,
which soon told upon the prosperity of his seminary; for who could venture to
send his children thither, when its proprietor was under the ban of the colonial
aristocracy? The school was soon closed; and thus bereft of every resource, Pringle, with his wife and sister-in-law, left the colony, and arrived in London
on the 7th of July, 1826. He had still two sources of consolation in his affliction, of which his enemies could not deprive him. He had given such a literary and educational impulse to the colony, that the good work was certain to go on and prosper, even though it was deprived of his presence. And as for the
community which he had been the means of planting at Glen-Lynden, their numbers at his departure had been doubled, while their industry had so effectually enriched the wilderness, that every year promised to bring them additional comfort and abundance.
On returning home, Pringle applied at headquarters for a compensation of his losses, which he estimated at a thousand pounds; but the claim was disallowed, as his statement of wrongs sustained from the colonial government was contradicted by the Chief Justice of the Cape. To add to his difficulties, that sum which was refused him he must now refund, for he was a thousand pounds in debt, in consequence of the abrupt manner in which his prospects in the colony had been crushed. He must once more place his sole reliance in his pen,
