aking,
and only long experience can teach that most difficult part of the
process, the instinctive avoidance of what should not be said. His
brilliant lectures were all read from manuscript, and he had never
been in the habit of thinking on his legs. In 1874 he could at least
say that he spoke only for himself. In 1875 he committed the
Colonial Office, and even the Cabinet, to his own personal opinions,
which were not in favour of Parliamentary Government as understood
either by Englishmen or by Africanders. He was accused of getting up
a popular agitation on behalf of the Imperial authorities against
the Governor of the Colony, his Ministers, and the Legislative
Assembly of the Cape. He did in fact, under a strong sense of duty,
urge Carnarvon to recall Barkly, and to substitute for him Sir
Garnet Wolseley, who had temporarily taken over the administration
of Natal.

Sir Garnet, however, had no such ambition. Soldiering was the business
of his life, and he had had quite enough of constitutionalism in
Natal. Barkly was for the present maintained, and Froude regarded his
maintenance as fatal to Federation. But Sir Bartle Frere, who
succeeded him, was not more fortunate, and the real mistake was
interference from home. To Froude his experience of South Africa came
as a disagreeable shock. A passionate believer in Greater Britain, in
the expansion of England, in the energy, resources, and prospects of
the Queen's dominions beyond the seas, the parochialism of Cape Colony
astonished and perplexed him. While he was dreaming of a Federated
Empire, and Paterson were counting heads in the Cape Assembly, and
considering what would be the political result if the eastern
provinces set up for themselves. If South Africa were federated, would
Cape Town remain the seat of government? To Froude such a question was
paltry and trivial. To a Cape Town shopkeeper it loomed as large as
Table Mountain. The attitude of Molteno's Ministry, on the other hand,
seemed as ominous to him as it seemed obvious to the Colonists. He
thought it fatal to the unity of the Empire, and amounting to absolute
independence. He did not understand the people with whom he had to
deal. Most of them were as loyal subjects as himself, and never
contemplated for a moment secession from the Empire. All they claimed
was complete freedom to manage their own affairs, to federate or not
to federate, as they pleased and when they pleased. They had only just
acquired ful