ce of opinion between the home and the local authority became
in this case wider than ever. In short, it was the will of the nation
that caused Frere to be arrested midway in the accomplishment of his
task, and gave a mandate in 1880 to the Liberal party to administer
South Africa upon the lines of a policy shaped in contemptuous
indifference of the profoundest convictions and most solemn warnings
of a great proconsul and most loyal servant of the Crown.

The facts of Frere's supersession and recall are notorious: the story
is too recent to need telling at length. We know now that, apart from
the actual discovery of the Witwatersrand gold-mines, all that he
foresaw and foretold has been realised in the events which culminated,
twenty years later, in the great South African War. The military power
which at that time (1877-80) stood in the way of South African unity
under the British flag was the Zulu people. The whole adult male
population of the tribe had been trained for war, and organised by
Ketshwayo into a fighting machine. With this formidable military
instrument at his command Ketshwayo proposed to emulate the sanguinary
career of conquest pursued by his grandfather Tshaka;[7] and he had
prepared the way for the half-subdued military Bantu throughout South
Africa to co-operate with him in a general revolt against the growing
supremacy of the white man. Frere removed this obstacle. But in doing
so he, or rather the general entrusted with the command of the
military operations, lost a British regiment at Isandlhwana. This
revelation of the strength of the Zulu army was, in fact, a complete
confirmation of the correctness of Frere's diagnosis of the South
African situation. His contention was that England must give evidence
of both her capacity and her intention to control the native
population of South Africa before she could reasonably ask the
republican Dutch to surrender their independence and reunite with the
British colonies in a federal system under the British flag. A native
power, organised solely for aggressive warfare against one of two
possible white neighbours, constituted therefore, in his opinion, not
only a perpetual menace to the safety of Natal, but an insuperable
obstacle to the effective discharge of a duty by the paramount Power,
the successful performance of which was a condition precedent to the
reunion of the European communities. The only point in dispute was the
question whether the powers o