The Life of Froude

by Herbert W. Paul

"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.