The Life of Froude

by Herbert W. Paul

CHAPTER VII

SOUTH AFRICA

Before Froude had written the last chapter of The English in Ireland he was visited by the greatest sorrow of his life. Mrs. Froude died suddenly in February, 1874. It had been a perfect marriage, and he never enjoyed the same happiness afterwards. Carlyle and his faithful friend Fitzjames Stephen were the only persons he could see at first, though he manfully completed the book on which he was engaged. It was long before he rallied from the shock, and he felt as if he could never write again. He dreaded "the length of years which might yet lie ahead of him before he could have his discharge from service." He took a melancholy pride in noting that none of the reviewers discovered any special defects in those final pages of his book which had been written under such terrible conditions. Mrs. Froude had thoroughly understood all her husband's moods, and her quiet humour always cheered him in those hours of gloom from which a man of his sensitive nature could not escape. She could use a gentle mockery which was always effective, along with her common sense, in bringing out the true proportions of things. Conscious as she was of his social brilliancy and success, she would often tell the children that they lost nothing by not going out with him, because their father talked better at home than he talked anywhere else. Her deep personal religion was the form of belief with which he had most sympathy, and which he best understood, regarding it as the foundation of virtue and conduct and honour and truth. He attended with her the services of the Church, which satisfied him whenever they were performed with the reverent simplicity familiar to his boyhood. Happily he was not left alone. He had two young children to love, and his eldest daughter was able to take her stepmother's place as mistress of his house. With the children he left London as soon as he could, and tried to occupy his mind by reading to them from Don Quixote, or, on a Sunday, from The Pilgrim's Progress. To the end of his life he felt his loss; and when he was offered, fifteen years later, the chance of going back to his beloved Derreen, he shrank from the associations it would have recalled.

He took a house for his family in Wales, which he described in the following letter to Lady Derby:

"CROGAN HOUSE, Corwen, June 3rd, 1874.

"I do not know if I told you upon what a curious and interesting old place we have fallen for our retirement. The walls of the room in which I am writing are five feet thick. The old part of the house must have been an Abbey Grange; the cellars run into a British tumulus, the oaks in the grounds must many of them be as old as the Conquest, and the site of the parish church was a place of pilgrimage probably before Christianity. Stone coffins are turned over on the hillsides in making modern improvements. Denfil Gadenis' (the mediaeval Welsh saint's) wooden horn still stands in the church porch, and the sense of strangeness and antiquity is the more palpable because hardly a creature in the valley, except the cows and the birds, speak in a language familiar to me. It was Owen Glendower's country. Owen himself doubtless has many times ridden down the avenue. We are in the very heart of Welsh nationality, which was always a respectable thing—far more so than the Celticism of the Gaels and Irish. We are apt to forget that the Tudors were Welsh." Fortunately a plan suggested itself which gave him variety of occupation and change of scene. Disraeli's Government had just come into office, and with the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, Froude was on intimate terms. Froude had always been interested in the Colonies, and was an advocate of Federation long before it had become a popular scheme. As early as 1870 he wrote to Skelton:

"Gladstone and Co. deliberately intend to shake off the Colonies. They are privately using their command of the situation to make the separation inevitable."* I do not know what this means. Lord Dufferin has left it on record that after his appointment to Canada in 1872 Lowe came up to him at the club, and said, "Now, you ought to make it your business to get rid of the Dominion." But Lowe was in the habit of saying paradoxical things, and it was Disraeli, not Gladstone, who spoke of the Colonies as millstones round our necks. Cardwell, the Secretary for War, withdrew British troops from Canada and New Zealand, holding that the self-governing Colonies should be responsible for their own defence. That wise policy fostered union rather than separation, by providing that the working classes at home should not be taxed for the benefit of their colonial fellow- subjects. Lord Carnarvon himself had passed in 1867 the Bill which federated Canada and which his Liberal predecessor had drawn. He was now anxious to carry out a similar scheme in South Africa, and Froude offered to find out for him how the land lay. His visit was not to be in any sense official. He would be ostensibly travelling for his health, which was always set up by a voyage. He was interested in extending to South Africa Miss Rye's benevolent plans of emigration to Canada; in the treatment of a Kaffir chief called Langalibalele; and in the disputes which had arisen from the annexation of the Diamond Fields. Thus there were reasons for his trip enough and to spare. He would, it was thought, be more likely to obtain accurate information if the principal purpose of his visit were kept in the background.

— *Table Talk of Shirley, p. 142. —

There was one great and fundamental difference between the case of Canada and the case of South Africa. Canada had itself asked for federation, and Parliament simply gave effect to the wish of the Canadians. Opinion in South Africa was notoriously divided, and the centre of opposition was at Cape Town. Natal had not yet obtained a full measure of self-government, and the lieutenant-Governor, Sir Benjamin Pine, had excited indignation among all friends of the natives by arbitrary imprisonment, after a mock trial, of a Kaffir chief. Lord Carnarvon had carefully to consider this case, and also to decide whether the mixed Constitution of Natal, which would not work, should be reformed or annulled. A still more serious difficulty was connected with the Diamond Fields, officially known as Griqualand West. The ownership of this district had been disputed between the Orange Free State and a native chief called Nicholas Waterboer. In 1872 Lord Kimberley, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, had purchased it from Waterboer at a price ludicrously small in proportion to its value, and it had since been annexed to the British dominions by the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly. Waterboer, who knew nothing about the value of money, was satisfied. The Orange State vehemently protested, and President Brand denounced the annexation as a breach of faith. Not only, he said, were the Diamond Fields within the limits of his Republic; the agreement between Waterboer and the Secretary of State was itself a breach of the Orange River Convention, by which Great Britain undertook not to negotiate with any native chief north of the River Vaal. Lord Kimberley paid no heed to Brand's remonstrances. He denied altogether the validity of the Dutch claim, and he would not hear of arbitration. By the time that Lord Carnarvon came into office thousands of British settlers were digging for diamonds in Griqualand West, and its abandonment was impossible. Brand himself did not wish to take the responsibility of governing it. But he continued to press the case for compensation, and the British Government, which had forced independence upon the Boers, appeared in the invidious light of shirking responsibility while grasping at mineral wealth. If it had not been for this untoward incident, the Dutch Republics would have been more favourable to Lord Carnarvon's policy than Cape Colony was. The Transvaal was imperfectly protected against the formidable power of the Zulus, and a general rising of blacks against whites was the real danger which threatened South Africa.

That peril, however, was felt more acutely in Natal than in Cape Colony. The Cape had for two years enjoyed responsible government, and its first Prime Minister was John Charles Molteno.

Molteno was not in any other respect a remarkable man. He had come to the post by adroit management of a miscellaneous community, comprising British, Dutch, and Kaffirs. He was personally incorruptible, and he played the game according to the rules. He would have called himself, and so far as his opportunities admitted, he was, a constitutional statesman, justly proud of the position to which his own qualities had raised him, and extremely jealous of interference Downing Street. He had no responsibility, he was never tired of explaining, for the acquisition of the Diamond Fields, and he left the Colonial Office to settle that matter with President Brand. Local politics were his business. He did not look beyond the House of Assembly at Cape Town, which it was his duty to lead, and the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, with whom he was on excellent terms. His own origin, which was partly English and partly Italian, made it easy for him to be impartial between the two white races in South Africa. For the Kaffirs he had no great tenderness. They had votes, and if they chose to sell them for brandy that was their own affair. Of what would now be called Imperialism Molteno had no trace. He would support Federation when in his opinion it suited the interests of Cape Colony, and not an hour before.

Froude left Dartmouth in the Walmer Castle on the 23rd of August, 1874. He occupied himself during the voyage partly in discussing the affairs of the Cape with his fellow-passengers, and partly in reading Greek. The "Leaves from a South African Journal," which close the third volume of Short Studies, describe his journey in his most agreeably colloquial style. A piece of literary criticism adorns the entry for September 4th. "I have been feeding hitherto on Greek plays: this morning I took Homer instead, and the change is from a hot-house to the open air. The Greek dramatists, even Aeschylus himself, are burdened with a painful consciousness of the problems of human life, with perplexed theories of Fate and Providence. Homer is fresh, free, and salt as the ocean."

No sooner had Froude landed at Cape Town than he began tracing all its evils to responsible government. The solidity of the houses reminded him that they were built under an absolute system. "What is it which has sent our Colonies into so sudden a frenzy for what they call political liberty?" A movement which has been in steady progress for thirty years can scarcely be called sudden, even though it be regarded as a frenzy, and so far back as 1776 there were British colonists beyond the seas who attached some practical value to freedom. A drive across the peninsula of Table Mountain suggested equally positive reflections of another kind. "Were England wise in her generation, a line of forts from Table Bay to False Bay would be the northern limit of her Imperial responsibilities."

This had been the cherished policy of Lord Grey at the Colonial Office, and the Whigs generally inclined to the same view. But it was already obsolete. Lord Kimberley had proceeded on exactly the opposite principle, and Lord Carnarvon's object in Federation was certainly not to diminish the area of the British Empire.

If Froude talked in South Africa as he wrote in his journal, his conversation must have been more interesting than discreet. "Every one," he wrote from Port Elizabeth, on the 27th of September, 1874, "approves of the action of the Natal Government in the Langalibalele affair. I am told that if Natal is irritated it may petition to relinquish the British connection, and to be allowed to join the Free States. I cannot but think that it would have been a wise policy, when the Free States were thrown off, to have attached Natal to them." Lord Carnarvon disapproved of the Natal Government's action, released Langalibalele, and recalled the Lieutenant- Governor. His policy was as wise as it was courageous, and no proposal to relinquish the British connection followed. Froude was a firm believer in the Dutch method of dealing with Kaffirs, and he had no more prejudice against slavery than Carlyle himself. But his sense of justice was offended by the treatment of Langalibalele, and if he had been Secretary of State he would have done as Lord Carnarvon did. With the Boers Froude had a good deal of sympathy. Their religion, a purer Calvinism than existed even in Scotland, appealed to his deepest sentiments, and he admired the austere simplicity of their lives. No one could accuse a Cape Dutchman of complicity in such horrors as progress and the march of intellect. On his way from Cape Town to Durban Froude was told a characteristic story of a Dutch farmer. "His estate adjoined the Diamond Fields. Had he remained where he was, he could have made a large fortune. Milk, butter, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit, went up to fabulous prices. The market was his own to demand what he pleased. But he was disgusted at the intrusion upon his solitude. The diggers worried him from morning to night, demanding to buy, while he required his farm produce for his own family. He sold his land, in his impatience, for a tenth of what he might have got had he cared to wait and bargain, mounted his wife and children into his waggon, and moved off into the wilderness." Froude's sarcastic comment is not less characteristic than the story. "Which was the wisest man, the Dutch farmer or the Yankee who was laughing at him? The only book that the Dutchman had ever read was the Bible, and he knew no better."*

— * Short Studies, iii. 497. —

The state of Natal, which was then perplexing the Colonial Office, puzzled Froude still more. Four courses seemed to him possible. Natal might be annexed to Cape Colony, made a province of a South African Federation, governed despotically by a soldier, or left to join the Dutch Republics. The fifth course, which was actually taken, of giving it responsible government by stages, did not come within the scope of his ideas. The difficulty of Federation lay, as it seemed to him, in the native problem.

"If we can make up our minds to allow the colonists to manage the natives their own way, we may safely confederate the whole country. The Dutch will be in the majority, and the Dutch method of management will more or less prevail. They will be left wholly to themselves for self-defence, and prudence will prevent them from trying really harsh or aggressive measures. In other respects the Dutch are politically conservative, and will give us little trouble." If, on the other hand, native policy was to be directed from home, or, in other words, if adequate precautions were to be taken against slavery, a federal system would be useless, and South Africa must be governed like an Indian province.

Pretoria Froude found full of English, loudly demanding annexation. He told them, speaking of course only for himself, that it was impossible, because the Cape was a self-governing Colony, and the Dutch majority "would take any violence offered to their kinsmen in the Republics as an injury to themselves." To annexation without violence, by consent of the Boers, the great obstacle, so Froude found, was the seizure, the fraudulent seizure, as they thought it, of the Diamond Fields. He visited Kimberley, called after the Colonial Secretary who acquired it, "like a squalid Wimbledon Camp set down in an arid desert." The method of digging for diamonds was then primitive.

"Each owner works by himself or with his own servants. He has his own wire rope, and his own basket, by which he sends his stuff to the surface to be washed. The rim of the pit is fringed with windlasses. The descending wire ropes stretch from them thick as gossamers on an autumn meadow. The system is as demoralising as it is ruinous. The owner cannot be ubiquitous: if he is with his working cradle, his servants in the pit steal his most valuable stones and secrete them. Forty per cent of the diamonds discovered are supposed to be lost in this way."* The proportion of profit between employer and employed seems to have been fairer than usual, though it might, no doubt, have been more regularly arranged.

At Bloemfontein Froude called on President Brand, "a resolute, stubborn-looking man, with a frank, but not over-conciliatory, expression of face." Brand was in no conciliatory mood. He held that his country had been robbed of land which the British Government renounced in 1854, and only resumed now because diamonds had been discovered on it. The interview, however, was neither unimportant nor unsatisfactory. It was followed by an invitation to dinner, and frank discussion of the whole subject. So firmly convinced was Froude of the President's good faith and of the injustice done him that he pleaded the cause of the Free State with the Colonial Office, and Lord Carnarvon settled the dispute in a friendly manner by the payment of a reasonable sum.+ But that was not till 1876, after Brand had visited London, and seen Lord Carnarvon himself.

— * Short Studies, vol. iii. p. 537. + 90,000 lbs. —

At the end of 1874 Froude returned to England, and reported to Lord Carnarvon what he had observed. The Colonial Secretary, just, but punctilious, was unwilling to reverse Lord Kimberley's policy, and Froude discovered that party politics, to which he traced all our woes, had much less to do with administration than he imagined. Under the influence of Bishop Colenso, an intrepid friend of the natives, Lord Carnarvon had already interfered on behalf of Langalibalele, but that only involved overruling the Government of Natal. After mature consideration he wrote a despatch to Sir Henry Barkly in which stress was laid upon the importance of arranging all differences with the Orange State. Then he proceeded to the subject of Federation, which was always in his mind and at his heart. Here he unfortunately failed to make allowance for the sensitive pride of Colonial statesmen. He proposed the assemblage of a Federal Conference at Cape Town, at which Froude would represent the Colonial Office. For Cape Colony he suggested the names of the Prime Minister, Molteno, and of Paterson, who led the Opposition.

In June, 1875, Froude went back to South Africa, this time as an acknowledged emissary of the Government, but by ill luck his arrival coincided with the receipt of the despatch. The effect of this document was prodigious. Molteno considered that he had been personally insulted. The Legislative Assembly was defiant, and greeted the recital of Carnarvon's words with ironical laughter. A Ministerial Minute, signed by Molteno and his colleagues, protested against the Colonial Secretary's intrusion, and especially against his rather ill advised reference to a proposed separation of the eastern from the western provinces of the Cape. It was a fact that Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, where there were very few Dutch, considered that they paid proportionately too much towards the colonial revenues, and desired separate treatment. But the people of Cape Town strongly objected, and it was unwise for the Secretary of State to take a side in local politics. Froude found his position by no means agreeable. Molteno, though never discourteous, received him coldly, and objected to his making speeches. The Governor, who liked to be good friends with his Ministers, gave him no encouragement. The House of Assembly, after proposing to censure Carnarvon in their haste, censured Froude at their leisure. That did him no harm. But he disliked the new position in which he found himself, and in his private journal he expressed his sentiments freely.

He had not been long in Cape Town when he wrote, on the 9th of July, 1875, to his eldest daughter a full and vivid account of the political situation. "I am glad," he said, "that no one is with me who cares for me. No really good thing can be carried out without disturbing various interests. The Governor and Parliament have set themselves against Lord Carnarvon. The whole country has declared itself enthusiastically for him. The consequence is that the opposition, who are mortified and enraged, now daily pour every sort of calumny on my unfortunate head. I don't read more of it than I can help, but some things I am forced to look at in order to answer; and the more successful my mission promises to be, the more violent and unscrupulous become those whose pockets are threatened by it. I wait in Cape Town till the next English steamer arrives, and then I mean to start for a short tour in the neighbourhood. I shall make my way by land to Mossel Bay, and then go on by sea to Port Elizabeth and Natal, where I shall wait for orders from home. Sir Garnet* has written me a very affectionate letter, inviting me to stay with him. Here the authorities begin to be more respectful than they were. Last night there was a State Dinner at Government House, when I took in Lady Barkly. Miss Barkly would hardly speak to me. I don't wonder. She is devoted to her father; I would do exactly the same in her place. I sent you a paper with an account of the dinner, and my speech, but you must not think that the dinner represented Cape Town society generally. Cape Town society, up to the reception at Government House, has regarded me as some portentous object come here to set the country on fire, and to be regarded with tremors by all respectable people. Outside Cape Town, on the contrary, in every town in the country, Dutch or English, I should be carried through the streets on the people's shoulders if I would only allow it, so you see I am in an 'unexampled situation.'+ The Governor's dinner cards had on them 'to meet Mr. Froude.' I am told that no less than eight people who were invited refused in mere terror of me …. Things are in a wild state here, and grow daily wilder. I am responsible for having lighted the straw; and if Lord Carnarvon has been frightened at the first bad news, there will be danger of real disturbance. The despatch has created a real enthusiasm, and excited hopes which must not now be disappointed." "Never," he wrote a few weeks afterwards, "never did a man of letters volunteer into a more extraordinary position than that in which I find myself." Sir Garnet Wolseley stood by him through thick and thin. After Sir Garnet's departure he had no English friend. His local supporters were "all looking out for themselves," and there was not one among them in whom he could feel any real confidence."

—
* The present Lord Wolseley.
+ A favourite expression with Mrs. Carlyle.
—

Of Molteno he made no personal complaint, and he always considered him the fittest man for his post in South Africa. But Colonial politicians as a whole were "not gentlemen with whom it was agreeable to be forced into contact." To give the Colony responsible government has been "an act of deliberate insanity" on the part of Lord Kimberley and the Liberal Cabinet. Froude endeavoured loyally and faithfully to carry out the policy of the Colonial Office, and his relations with Lord Carnarvon were relations of unbroken confidence. His objects were purely unselfish and patriotic. It was his misfortune rather than his fault to become involved in local politics, from which it was essential for the success of his mission that he should keep entirely aloof. Circumstances brought him into much greater favour with the Dutch than with his own countrymen, for it was thought, not without reason, that he had brought Carnarvon round to see the truth about the Diamond Fields and the Free State. He made them speeches, and they received him with enthusiasm. With Molteno, on the other hand, he found it impossible to act, and the Governor supported Molteno. Barkly was not unfavourable to Federation. But he perceived that it could not be forced upon a self-governing Colony, and that he himself would be powerless unless he acted in harmony with his constitutional advisers. He, as well as Molteno, refused to attend the dinner at which Froude on his arrival was entertained in Cape Town. Molteno advised Froude not to go, or if he went, not to speak. Froude, however, both went and spoke, claiming as an Englishman the right of free speech in a British Colony. The right was of course incontestable. The expediency was a very different matter. Froude was not accustomed to public speaking, and only long experience can teach that most difficult part of the process, the instinctive avoidance of what should not be said. His brilliant lectures were all read from manuscript, and he had never been in the habit of thinking on his legs. In 1874 he could at least say that he spoke only for himself. In 1875 he committed the Colonial Office, and even the Cabinet, to his own personal opinions, which were not in favour of Parliamentary Government as understood either by Englishmen or by Africanders. He was accused of getting up a popular agitation on behalf of the Imperial authorities against the Governor of the Colony, his Ministers, and the Legislative Assembly of the Cape. He did in fact, under a strong sense of duty, urge Carnarvon to recall Barkly, and to substitute for him Sir Garnet Wolseley, who had temporarily taken over the administration of Natal.

Sir Garnet, however, had no such ambition. Soldiering was the business of his life, and he had had quite enough of constitutionalism in Natal. Barkly was for the present maintained, and Froude regarded his maintenance as fatal to Federation. But Sir Bartle Frere, who succeeded him, was not more fortunate, and the real mistake was interference from home. To Froude his experience of South Africa came as a disagreeable shock. A passionate believer in Greater Britain, in the expansion of England, in the energy, resources, and prospects of the Queen's dominions beyond the seas, the parochialism of Cape Colony astonished and perplexed him. While he was dreaming of a Federated Empire, and Paterson were counting heads in the Cape Assembly, and considering what would be the political result if the eastern provinces set up for themselves. If South Africa were federated, would Cape Town remain the seat of government? To Froude such a question was paltry and trivial. To a Cape Town shopkeeper it loomed as large as Table Mountain. The attitude of Molteno's Ministry, on the other hand, seemed as ominous to him as it seemed obvious to the Colonists. He thought it fatal to the unity of the Empire, and amounting to absolute independence. He did not understand the people with whom he had to deal. Most of them were as loyal subjects as himself, and never contemplated for a moment secession from the Empire. All they claimed was complete freedom to manage their own affairs, to federate or not to federate, as they pleased and when they pleased. They had only just acquired full constitutional rights; and if they sometimes exaggerated the effect of them, the error was venial. If Carnarvon, instead of writing for publication an elaborate and official despatch, had explained his policy to the Governor in private letters, and directed him to sound Molteno in confidence, the Cape Ministers might themselves have proposed a scheme; and if they had proposed it, it would have been carried. Had Froude said nothing at dinners, or on platforms, he might have exercised far more influence behind the scenes. But he was an enthusiast for Federation by means of a South African Conference, and he made a proselytising tour through the Colony. The Dutch welcomed him because he acknowledged their rights. At Grahamstown too, and at Port Elizabeth, he was hailed as the champion of separation for the eastern provinces. The Legislative Assembly at Cape Town, however, was hostile, and the proposed conference fell through. Lord Carnarvon did not see the full significance of the fact that the Confederation of Canada had been first mooted within the Dominion itself.

An interesting account of Froude at this time has been given by Sir George Colley, the brilliant and accomplished soldier whose career was cut short six years afterwards at Majuba:

"I came home from the Cape, and almost lived on the way with Mr. Froude …. It was rather a sad mind, sometimes grand, sometimes pathetic and tender, usually cynical, but often relating with the highest appreciation, and with wonderful beauty of language, some gallant deed of some of his heroes of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. He seemed to have gone through every phase of thought, and come to the end 'All is vanity.' He himself used to say the interest of life to a thinking man was exhausted at thirty, or thirty-five. After that there remained nothing but disappointment of earlier visions and hopes. Sometimes there was something almost fearful in the gloom, and utter disbelief, and defiance of his mind."*

— * Butler's Life of Colley, p. 145. —

The picture is a sombre one. But it must be remembered that the death of his wife was still weighing heavily upon Froude.

A few days after his return to London Froude wrote a long and interesting Report to the Secretary of State, which was laid before Parliament in due course. Few documents more thoroughly unofficial have ever appeared in a Blue Book. The excellence of the paper as a literary essay is conspicuous. But its chief value lies in the impression produced by South African politics upon a penetrating and observant mind trained under wholly different conditions. Froude would not have been a true disciple of Carlyle if he had felt or expressed much sympathy with the native race. He wanted them to be comfortable. For freedom he did not consider them fit. It was the Boers who really attracted him, and the man he admired the most in South Africa was President Brand. The sketch of the two Dutch Republics in his Report is drawn with a very friendly hand. He thought, not without reason, that they had been badly treated. Their independence, which they did not then desire, had been forced upon them by Lord Grey and the Duke of Newcastle. The Sand River Convention of 1852, and the Orange River Convention of 1854, resulted from British desire to avoid future responsibility outside Cape Colony and Natal. As for the Dutch treatment of the Kaffirs, it had never in Froude's opinion been half so bad as Pine's treatment of Langalibalele. By the second article of the Orange River Convention, renewed and ratified at Aliwal after the Basuto war in 1869, Her Majesty's Government promised not to make any agreement with native chiefs north of the Vaal River. Yet, when diamonds were discovered north of the Vaal in Griqualand West, the territory was purchased by Lord Kimberley from Nicholas Waterboer, without the consent, and notwithstanding the protests, of the Orange Free State. But although Lord Kimberley assented to the annexation of Griqualand West in 1871, he only did so on the distinct understanding that Cape Colony would undertake to administer the Diamond Fields, and this the Cape Ministers refused to do, lest they should offend their Dutch constituents.

It was not till 1878, when all differences with the Free State had been settled, and the Transvaal was a British possession, that Griqualand West became an integral part of Cape Colony. In January, 1876, Brand was still asking for arbitration, and Carnarvon was still refusing it.

When he explained the Colonial Secretary's policy to the Colonial Secretary himself Froude came very near explaining it away. The Conference, he said, was only intended to deal with the native question and the question of Griqualand. Was Confederation then a dream? Froude himself, in a private letter to Molteno, dated April 29th, 1875, wrote, "Lord Carnarvon's earnest desire since he came into office has been if possible to form South Africa into a confederate dominion, with complete internal self-government."* That was the whole object of the Conference, which but for that would never have been proposed. That, as Froude truly says in his Report, was one of Molteno's reasons for resisting it. The Cape Premier thought that South Africa was not ripe for Confederation. If Froude had had more practice in drawing up official documents, he would probably have left out this deprecatory argument, which does not agree with the rest of his case. He attributes, for instance, to local politicians a dread that the supremacy of Cape Town would be endangered. But no possible treatment of the natives, or of Griqualand West, would have endangered the supremacy of Cape Town. The Confederation of which Froude and Carnarvon were champions would have avoided tremendous calamities if it could have been carried out. The chief difficulties in its way were Colonial jealousy of interference from Downing Street and Dutch exasperation at the seizure of the Diamond Fields. "You have trampled on those poor States, sir," said a member of the Cape Legislature to Froude, "till the country cries shame upon you, and you come now to us to assist you in your tyranny; we will not do it, sir. We are astonished that you should dare to ask us." Such language was singularly inappropriate to Froude himself, for the Boers never had a warmer advocate than they had in him. But the circumstances in which Griqualand West were annexed will excuse a good deal of strong language. At Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown Froude was welcomed as an advocate of their local independence, which was what they most desired. When, with unusual prudence, he declined to take part in a separatist campaign, their zeal for Confederation soon cooled. On the other hand, the Dutch papers all supported the Conference, although Brand refused to lay his case before it, or to treat with any authority except the British Government at home.

— * Life of Molteno, vol. i. p. 337. —

Neither Froude nor Carnarvon made sufficient allowance for Colonial independence and the susceptibilities of Colonial Ministers. Many of Froude's expressions in public were imprudent, and he himself in his Report apologised for his unguarded language at Grahamstown, where he said that Molteno's reply to Carnarvon's despatch would have meant war if it had come from a foreign state. Yet in the main their policy was a wise one, and they saw farther ahead than the men who worked the political machine at Cape Town. Froude was too sanguine when he wrote, "A Confederate South African Dominion, embracing all the States, both English and Dutch, under a common flag, may be expected as likely to follow, and perhaps at no very distant period." But he added that it would have to come by the deliberate action of the South African communities themselves. That was not the only discovery he had made in South Africa. He had found that the Transavll, reputed then and long afterwards in England to be worthless, was rich in minerals, including gold. He warned the Colonial Office that Cetewayo, with forty thousand armed men, was a serious danger to Natal. He saw clearly, and said plainly that unless South Africa was to be despotically governed, it must be administered with the consent and approval of the Dutch. He dwelt strongly upon the danger of allowing and encouraging natives to procure arms in Griqualand West as an enticement to work for the diamond owners. The secret designs of Sir Theophilus Shepstone he did not penetrate, and therefore he was unprepared for the next development in the South African drama. The South African Conference in London, which he attended during August, 1876, led to no useful result because Molteno, though he had come to London, and was discussing the affairs of Griqualand with Lord Carnarvon, refused to attend it. This was the end of South African Confederation, and the permissive Act of 1877, passed after the Transvaal had been annexed, remained a dead letter on the Statute Book.

Although the immediate purpose of Froude's visits to South Africa was not attained, it would be a mistake to infer that they had no results at all. Early in 1877 the annexation of the Transvaal, to which Froude was strongly opposed, changed the whole aspect of affairs, and from that time the strongest opponents of Federalism were the Dutch. But the credit of settling with the Orange Free State a dispute which might have led to infinite mischief is as much Froude's as Carnarvon's, and as a consequence of their wise conduct President Brand became for the rest of his life a steady friend to the British power in South Africa. Ninety thousand pounds was a small price to pay for the double achievement of reconciling a model State and wiping out a stain upon England's honour.

More than four years after his second return from South Africa, in January, 1880, Froude delivered two lectures to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, in which his view of South African policy is with perfect clearness set forth. He condemns the annexation of the Transvaal, and the Zulu war. He expresses a wish that Lord Carnarvon, who had resigned two years before, could be permanent Secretary for the Colonies. "I would give back the Transvaal to the Dutch," he said. Again, in even more emphatic language, "The Transvaal, in spite of prejudices about the British flag, I still hope that we shall return to its lawful owners."* What is more surprising, he recommended that Zululand should be restored to Cetewayo, or Cetewayo to Zululand. He had predicted in 1875 that Cetewayo would prove a troublesome person, and few men had less of the sentiment which used to be associated with Exeter Hall. The restoration of Cetewayo, when it came was disastrous both to himself and to others. Frere understood the Zulus better than Froude or Colenso. The surrender of the Transvaal, which was a good deal nearer than Froude thought, was at least successful for a time, a longer time than Froude's own life. He did not share Gladstone's ignorance of its value; he knew it to be rich in minerals, especially in gold. But he knew also that Carnarvon had been deceived about the willingness of the inhabitants to become British subjects, and he sympathised with their independence. It illustrates his own fairness and detachment of mind that he should have taken so strong and so unpopular a line when the Boers were generally supposed in England to have acquiesced in the loss of their liberties, and when his hero Sir Garnet Wolseley, to whom he dedicated his English in Ireland, had declared that the Vaal would run back to the Drakensberg before the British flag ceased to wave over Pretoria.

— * Two Lectures on South Africa, pp. 80, 81, 85. —

Froude's South African policy was to work with the Dutch, and keep the natives in their places. He had no personal interest in the question. It was through Lord Carnarvon that he came in contact with South Africa at all, and there were few statesmen with whom he more thoroughly agreed. When Disraeli came for the second time into office, and for the first time into power, Froude was well pleased.

In 1875, after his legal disqualification had been removed, he was again invited to become a candidate for Parliament. But he did not really know to which party he belonged.

"Four weeks ago," he wrote to Lady Derby on the 3rd of April, "the Liberal Whip (Mr. Adam) asked me to stand for the Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities on very easy terms to myself. I declined, because I should have had to commit myself to the Liberal party, which I did not choose to do. Lord Carnarvon afterwards spoke to me with regret at my resolution. He had a conversation with Mr. D'Israeli, and it was agreed that if possible I should be brought in by a compromise without a contest. But it appeared doubtful afterwards whether the Liberals would consent to this without fuller pledges than I could consent to give. I was asked if I would stand anyhow (contest or not), or whether I would allow myself to be nominated in their interest for any other place when a vacancy should occur. I said, No. (I would stand a contest on the Conservative side, if on any.) I was neither Conservative nor Liberal per se, but would not oppose Mr. D'Israeli. So there this matter lies, unless your people have as good an opinion of me as the others, and want a candidate of my lax description. But indeed I have no wish to go into Parliament. I am too old to begin a Parliamentary life, and infinitely prefer making myself of use to the Conservative side in some other way …. I am at Lord Carnarvon's service if he wishes me to go on with his Colonial affairs. I came home from the Cape to be of use to him."

The Colonial policy of the Liberals Froude had always regarded with suspicion. Even Lord Kimberley's grant of a constitution to the Cape he interpreted as showing a centrifugal tendency, and Cardwell's withdrawal of troops from Canada was all of a piece. Disraeli, on the other hand, who never did anything for the Colonies, had been making a speech about them at Manchester, wherein all manner of Colonial possibilities were suggested. They did not go, if they were ever intended to go, beyond suggestion, and in 1876 the sudden crisis in Eastern affairs superseded all other topics of political interest.

When the Eastern Question was first raised, Froude had taken the side of the Government.

"I like Lord Derby's speech," he wrote to Lady Derby on the 19th of September, 1876, "to the Working Men's Association. So I think the country will when it recovers from its present intoxication. Violent passions which rise suddenly generally sink as fast if there is no real reason for them. It is impossible that the people can fail to recollect in a little while that the reticence of which they complain is under the circumstances inevitable.

"Gladstone and his satellites are using their opportunities, however, with thorough unscrupulousness. It is possible that they may force an Autumn Session, and even force the Ministry to resign- but woe to themselves if they do. They will promise what cannot be carried out, and will perhaps, in fine retribution for the Crimean War, bring the Russians to Constantinople. It will not be a bad thing in itself, but there will be an end of the English Minister who brings it about."

Again, three days later, to the same correspondent:

"I admire the Premier's speech. It is what I expected of him. The Liberal leaders are behaving scandalously, with the exception perhaps of Lord Hartington. The Cabinet I trust will now decide on an Autumn Session to remove so critical a matter out of the hands of irresponsible mobs. I was surprised to hear the war in Servia attributed to the secret societies. Cluseret I know has intended to ask for service with Turkey, with a view to a war, against Russia, and has been withheld only by some differences with General Klapha, the Turco-Hungarian, from doing so. I had a long letter from him to- day, in which he expresses his restlessness characteristically, J'ai la nostalgic de la poudre."

Afterwards Froude followed Carlyle, and went with Russia against Turkey. The "unspeakable Turk" was to be "struck out of the question and Bismarck invited to arbitrate. Such was the oracular deliverance from Cheyne Row, and Froude obeyed the oracle. He attended the Conference at St. James's Hall in December at which Gladstone spoke, and Carlyle's letter was read, sitting for the only time in his life on the same platform with Freeman. Next May, when war between Russia and Turkey had actually begun, when Gladstone was about to move his famous resolutions in the House of Commons, there appeared in The Times* another remarkable letter from the same hand. This time, however, it was no mere question of style, though "our miraculous Premier" was a phrase which stuck. Carlyle evidently had information of some design for giving Turkey the support of the British fleet in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, and was not very discreet in the use he made of it. The Cabinet were supposed to be divided on the question of helping Turkey by material means, which of course meant war with Russia, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, was known to be in favour of peace. A year later Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby had both left the Cabinet rather than be responsible for a vote of credit which meant preparation for war, and for calling out the Reserves.

— * May 5, 1877. —

Froude was in complete sympathy with the retiring ministers, and he regarded it as a profound mistake for England to quarrel with Russia on behalf of a Power which had no business in Europe at all. From his point of view the presence at the Colonial Office of so sympathetic a Minister as Carnarvon was far more important than the difference between the Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin. Of the Afghan War in 1878 he strongly disapproved.

The following extracts from letters to Lady Derby show the phases of thought on the Eastern Question through which Froude passed, and are interesting also because they represent him in an unfamiliar light as the champion of parliamentary Government against the secret diplomacy of Lord Beaconsfield. Arbitrary rule might be very good for Irishmen. As applied to Englishmen Froude disliked it no less than Gladstone or Bright.

"February 16th, 1877.—The Opposition have no hope of making a successful attack on the present Parliament—but they are resolute. They know their own minds, and Gladstone (I know) has said that he has but to hold up his finger to force a dissolution and return as Prime Minister. I too think you are deceived by the London Press. Another massacre and all would be over. The Golden Bridge you speak of I conclude is for Russia; but if it was possible for the Cabinet, without changing its attitude, to make such a bridge, there would be no need of one. England has been, and I fear still is, the one obstacle to measures which would have long ago brought the Turk to his senses. I cannot but feel assured that you have thrown away an opportunity for securing to the Conservative party the gratitude of Europe and the possession of office for a generation. If more mischief happens in Turkey it will be on you that public displeasure will fall, and you may need a bridge for yourselves and not find one. I croak like a raven. Perhaps you may set it down to an almost totally sleepless night."

"April 30th, 1877.—You destroy the last hope to which I had clung, that Lord Derby, though opposed to Russian policy, would not consent to go to war with her. I remain of my old opinion that England (foolishly excited as it always when fighting is going on) will in the long run resent the absurdity and punish the criminality of taking arms in a worthless cause. I am sick of heart at the thought of what is coming, here as well as on the Continent. I have begged Carlyle to write a last appeal to The Times. We must agitate in the great towns, we must protest against what we may be unable to prevent. The Crimean War was innocent compared to what is now threatened, yet three years ago there was scarcely a person in England who did not admit that it was a mistake. I do not know what may be the verdict of the public about a repetition of it at the present moment. I know but too well what will be the verdict five years hence, and the fate which will overtake those who, with however good a motive, are courting the ruin of their party."

"December 22nd, 1877.—-The passion for interference in defence of the Turks seems limited (as I was always convinced that it was) to the idle educated classes. The public meetings which have been, or are to be, go the other way, or at least are against our taking a part on the Turkish side. The demonstrations which Lord B. expected to follow on the first Russian success have not followed. The Telegraph and Morning Post have used their whips on the dead Crimean horse, but it will not stir for them. It will not stir even for the third volume of the Prince Consort's Life. But I am very sorry about it all, for the damage to the Conservative party from the lost opportunity of playing a great and honourable part is, I fear, irretrievable."

"December 27th, 1877.—The accounts from Bulgaria and Armenia turn me sick. These sheep, what have they done? Diplomalists quarrel, and the people suffer. The management of human affairs will be much improved when the people tell their respective Cabinets that if there is fighting to be done the Cabinets must fight themselves, and that the result shall be accepted as final. Nine out of ten great wars might have been settled that way with equal advantage so far as the consequences were concerned, and to the infinite relief of poor humanity."

"March 10th, 1878.—I met Lord D. at the club the other night. He looked As Prometheus might have looked when he was 'Unbound.' He was in excellent spirits and talked brilliantly. Not one allusion to the East, but I guessed that he had a mind at ease."

"April 8th, 1878.—I wish I knew whether the Cabinet has determined on forcing war upon Russia at all events, or if Russia consents to go into the Conference on the English terms; the Cabinet will then bona fide endeavour after an equitable and honourable settlement. Lord B.'s antecedents all point to a determination to make any settlement impossible. He has succeeded so far without provoking the other Powers, but such a game is surely dangerous, backed though he by every fool and knave in England."

"July 15th, 1878.—I gather that the Opposition is too disorganised to resist; and if Parliament endure to be set aside, and allow the destinies of their country to be affected so enormously by the sole action of the Crown and the Cabinet, a change is passing over us the results of which it is impossible to estimate. We do, in fact, take charge of the Turkish Empire as completely as we took the Empire of the Moguls. In a little while we shall have to administer on the Continent as well as in Cyprus, and then will arise a new Asiatic army. This will bring wars with it before long, and a proportionate increase of the power of the Executive Government. If Parliament abdicates its authority now, what may we not anticipate? I have long felt that the House of Commons could not long continue to govern the great concerns of the British Empire as it has done. I certainly did not expect that it would yield without a struggle—nor will it. Sooner or later we shall see a fight against the tendency which is giving so startling an evidence of its existence—and what is to happen then?"

"July 21st, 1878.—Lord Derby's speech was as good as it could possibly be. What he says now all the world will say two years hence. How deeply it cut appeared plainly enough in the scenes which followed. It must be peculiarly distressing to you—distressing in many ways, for I feel as certain as ever that the end of it all will be irreparable damage to the Conservative party. One would like to know Prince Bismarck's private opinion of the Premier and private opinion also of the nation which has taken him for their chosen leader. Of course he will dissolve while the glamour is fresh; and before the effects of the bad champagne with which he has dosed the country begin to appear—first headache and penitence, and then exasperation at the provider of the entertainment."

"November 24th, 1878.—The evil shadow of the Premier extends over the most innocent of our pleasures. I had been looking forward to a few days at Knowsley as the most enjoyable which I should have had during the whole year. Yet I knew how it would be. Daring as he is, he could not venture on an entire defiance of public opinion. Parliament of course would have to meet, and equally of course you and Lord D. would have to come up. I conclude the object to be to get up a Russian war after all. The stress laid by Lord Cranbrook on the reception of the Russian Embassy as the point of the injury will make it very difficult for the Russians to be neutral. If this is what the Ministry really intend, they may have their majority in Parliament docile, but I doubt whether they will have the country with them. I am sure they will not if Hartington and Granville support Lord Lawrence.

"I interpret it all as meaning that the Premier knows that his policy has thoroughly broken down in Europe, and at all risks he means to have another try in the East."

It was Froude's opinion, right or wrong, that Lord Beaconsfield might have settled the Irish question if he had left the Eastern question alone. He understood it, as some of his early speeches show, and he might have "established a just Land Court with the support of all the best land-owners in Ireland."* Why the Land Court established by Gladstone in 1881 was unjust Froude did not explain. Some of the best landlords, if not all, supported it, and it relieved an intolerable situation.

— * Table Talk of Shirley, p. 180. —