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.