s Government that the fate of the Orange River
Sovereignty depended upon Andries Pretorius, the very man on whose head
Sir Harry Smith had put a price of L2,000. Earl Grey censured and
abandoned both Sir Harry Smith and the Resident, Major Warden, saying in
his despatch to the Governor dated 15th December, 1851, that the British
Government had annexed the country on the understanding that the
inhabitants had generally desired it. But if they would not support the
British Government, which had only been established in their interests,
and if they wished to be freed from that authority, there was no longer
any use in continuing it.

[Sidenote: The Orange Sovereignty once more a Republic.]

The Governor was clearly given to understand by the British Government
that there was in future to be no interference in any of the wars which
might take place between the different tribes and the inhabitants of
independent states beyond the Colonial boundaries, no matter how
sanguinary such wars might happen to be.

In other words, as Froude says, [15] "In 1852 we had discovered that wars
with the Natives and wars with the Dutch were expensive and useless,
that sending troops out and killing thousands of Natives was an odd way
of protecting them. We resolved then to keep within our own territories,
to meddle no more beyond the Orange River, and to leave the Dutch and
the Natives to settle their differences among themselves."

And again: [16] "Grown sick at last of enterprises which led neither to
honour nor peace, we resolved, in 1852, to leave Boers, Kaffirs,
Basutos, and Zulus to themselves, and make the Orange River the boundary
of British responsibilities. We made formal treaties with the two Dutch
States, binding ourselves to interfere no more between them and the
Natives, and to leave them either to establish themselves as a barrier
between ourselves and the interior of Africa, or to sink, as was
considered most likely, in an unequal struggle with warlike tribes, by
whom they were infinitely outnumbered."

The administration of the Free State cost the British taxpayer too much.
There was an idea, too, that if enough rope were given to the Boer he
would hang himself.

A new Governor, Sir George Cathcart, was sent out with two Special
Commissioners to give effect to the new policy. A new Treaty between
England and the Free State was signed, by which full independence was
guaranteed to the Republic, the British Government unde