 As leader of the free burghers opposed to the Dutch East India Company and governor of the Cape, Willem Adriaan van der Stel, Tas personified the struggle against colonialism.The trustees of the library raised the funds needed to publish the diary in 1914.With surplus money from the publication fund, it was decided to publish Baron van Pallandt's "General Remarks on the Cape of Good Hope", an 1803 pamphlet originally written in French, printed clandestinely and suppressed by Uitenhage De Mist in 1803, and consequently a rare work.