The Malays and other Orientals, of whom there is a considerable population at Capetown, looked upon Frere, a former Indian Statesman, as their special property. The address from the Mahommedan subjects of the Queen says:—
"We regret that our gracious Queen has seen fit to recall your Excellency. We cannot help thinking it is through a mistake. The white subjects of Her Majesty have had good friends and good rulers in former Governors, but your Excellency has been the friend of white and coloured alike."[27]
The following letter is from Sir John Akerman, a member of the Legislative Council of Natal:—
"August 9th, 1880.
"Having become aware of your recall to England from the office of Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, etc., etc., I cannot allow your departure to take place without conveying to you, which I hereby do, the profound sense I have of the faithful and conscientious manner in which you have endeavoured to fulfil those engagements which, at the solicitation of Great Britain, you entered upon in 1877. The policy was not your own, but was thrust upon you. Having given in London, in 1876, advice to pursue a different course in South Africa from the one then all the fashion and ultimately confided to yourself, it affords me the greatest pleasure to testify to the consistency of the efforts put forth by you to carry out the (then) plan of those who commissioned you, and availed themselves of your acknowledged skill and experience. As a public man of long standing in South Africa, I would likewise add that since the days of Sir G. Grey, no Governor but yourself has grasped the native question here at all, and I feel confident that had your full authority been retained, and not harshly wrested from you, even at the eleventh hour initiatory steps of a reformatory nature with respect to the natives would have been taken, which it is the duty of Britain to follow while she holds her sovereignty over these parts."
Sir Gordon Sprigg wrote:—
"August 29th, 1880.
"I don't feel able yet to give expression to my sentiments of profound regret that Her Majesty's Government have thought it advisable to recall you from the post which you have held with such conspicuous advantage to South Africa. They have driven from South Africa 'the best friend it has ever known.' For myself I may say that in the midst of all the difficulties with which I have been surrounded, I have always been encouraged and strengthened by the cheerful view you have taken of public affairs, and that I have never had half-an-hour's conversation with your Excellency without feeling a better, and, I believe, a wiser man."
Madame Koopmans de Wet, a lady of an old family, Dutch of the Dutch, wrote to him, Nov. 16th, 1880:—