[[1]] Life and Times of Sir George Grey. By W. L. Rees. London, 1892. Vol. XI., p. 298.

The First Cape Ministry

The year 1872 had seen the grant of full responsible government to the Colony and the crowning of its Parliamentary system by the establishment of the first Cape Ministry. As in the British-American Colonies, from 1854 onwards, the Ministry now had to obtain and hold the confidence of a majority of the members of the House of Assembly, and its defeat upon any important question necessitated immediate retirement. The head of the Government, or Prime Minister, was ex-officio in charge of native affairs within the Colony, but, owing to the complex position of South Africa in the relationship of its various states to each other and towards the natives, the Governor of Cape Colony remained High Commissioner in South Africa with the control of British interests outside the bounds of Cape Colony. In such matters he was responsible to the Crown and not to his own Colonial Ministry. Parliament could be dissolved, constitutionally, at the pleasure of the Governor, but practically and mainly upon the advice of his Ministry. It could not sit longer than five years, so that the people were, and are, able to turn out their Government either through pressure upon their representatives at Cape Town, resulting in a Parliamentary vote of want of confidence, or by their own votes at the polls as the result of a general election. The following have been successively Prime Ministers of Cape Colony:

1872, Sir John C. Molteno, K.C.M.G.
1878, Sir J. Gordon Sprigg, K.C.M.G.
1881, Sir Thomas C. Scanlen, K.C.M.G.
1884, Sir Thomas Upington, K.C.M.G.
1886, Sir J. Gordon Sprigg, K.C.M.G.
1890, The Hon. Cecil J. Rhodes.
1893, Right Hon. Cecil J. Rhodes, P.C.
1896, Right Hon. Sir Gordon Sprigg, P.C.
1898, Hon. W. P. Schreiner, Q.C., C.M.G.

Lord Carnarvon's Scheme of Federation

Upon the structure of these Governments and around the names of their members turns much of the history of Cape Colony during these years; although a man of the wide influence of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr never held office except for a few months in 1881, while Sir John Henry de Villiers has not been in a Ministry since 1873 when he retired from the Molteno Cabinet to accept the Chief Justiceship of the Colony. The first great question which had to be dealt with under the new constitution was Lord Carnarvon's scheme of federation. This most cultured representative of British statecraft had, curiously enough, been Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time when the head of that Department, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, had refused any favorable consideration to the policy proposed by Sir George Grey in 1858. He had then agreed with his chief; now he was at the head of the Colonial Office, under the inspiration of Lord Beaconsfield's new Imperialism, as a convert in the most enthusiastic degree to the general principle of Colonial federations under the Crown. Accordingly, in 1875, he addressed a despatch to the Cape Government pointing out the complications of South African inter-state relations, the advantages of unity and the willingness of the Imperial Government to enact legislation bringing into effect a federal union of the various communities. At the same time he sent out, as a sort of confidential envoy to press the matter upon public attention, a man who, with all his brilliant attainments as a writer and historian—the late James Anthony Froude—seems to have been without that tact and personal magnetism so essential to the success of a delicate mission. His own record of the matter in Oceana proves this conclusively. And it was not a favorable moment for any general consideration of the matter. The Orange Free State was in a somewnat exasperated condition over the annexation of Griqualand West to Cape Colony, and had not yet become mollified by the personal influence of President Brand and by the results of the monetary return given for the loss of the Diamond Fields. The Transvaal was in a position of such factional discontent and general disintegration that its people could hardly have dealt clearly with such an important issue had even their still keen hatred of the English been eliminated from the question. Natal was in imminent danger from the massing of Zulu spears upon its frontiers; while the Dutch people in Cape Colony looked upon the whole matter with suspicion and certainly without sympathy.

Sir Garnet Wolseley as Governor

Following Mr. Froude's mission to the Cape came the appointment of Sir Garnet (afterwards Field Marshal Lord) Wolseley as Governor of Natal, with the special object of studying the situation and promoting federation. He returned to London after a few months without accomplishing anything very definite, and on August 3, 1876, presided over a Conference held in the metropolis and attended by several South African delegates. Amongst them was Theophilus Shepstone, a clever and ambitious man who had for years been in charge of native affairs in and around Natal, and for some time prior to this date had been in London urging a union of the various States as the only way out of existing evils and difficulties. The meeting adjourned, however, without any practical result, and in the succeeding year Sir Bartle Frere, a brilliant Anglo-Indian administrator, was sent out as Governor and High Commissioner with a special view to the promotion of confederation. Steps for Annexation of Transvaal About the same time Mr. (now created Sir) Theophilus Shepstone was given exceptional authority as a Special Commissioner in Natal to steps for take steps for the annexation of the Transvaal under certain possible conditions of necessity or willingness on the part of its inhabitants. These conditions appeared to present themselves and annexation followed; as did the Zulu war and the war of 1881. Meantime Sir Bartle Frere found himself and his policy opposed by practically the whole Dutch population of Cape Colony. He was violently criticised by the press and politicians of the Colonial Boers—who were now awakening to the possibilities of racial power under the new institutions of the country—and in 1880 had the mortification of having his carefully prepared federal proposals thrown out of the Cape Parliament; chiefly at the instigation of the Transvaal Boers, who were just then entering upon their struggle for independence. Meanwhile the Beaconsfield Government was defeated, Mr. Gladstone came into power, and in the prompt recall of Sir Bartle Frere and the equally prompt repudiation of his policy another unmerited grave was dug in the cemetery which South Africa has provided for the reputations of many Governors.