The Life of Froude

by Herbert W. Paul

"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."

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