c, or
popular, or national question or movement, the mere fact of
calling these people different nations would not make them so,
nor would the fact of a mere fordable stream running between them
sever their sympathies or prevent them from acting in unison....
Many questions might arise in which, if the Government on the
south side of the Orange River took a different view from that on
the north side of the river, it might be very doubtful which of
the two Governments the great mass of the people would obey."[5]

[Footnote 5: Despatch of November 19th, 1858, to Sir E. B.
Lytton.]

The "divergence of opinion" between Capetown and Downing Street was
complete. Grey was charged with "direct disobedience" for listening to
the offers of the Free State inhabitants. Recalled by a despatch of
June 4th, 1859, he was reinstated in August on condition that "he felt
himself sufficiently free and uncompromised," both with the Cape
Legislature and the people of the Free State, to be able personally to
carry out the policy of the Home Government, which, said the despatch,

"is entirely opposed to those measures, tending to the resumption
of sovereignty over that State, of which you have publicly
expressed your approval in your speech to the Cape Parliament,
and in your answers to the address from the State in question."

Nor was that all. In his endeavours to establish a simple but
effective system of European magistrates over the Kafirs beyond the
eastern border of the Colony, he was hampered by the short-sighted
economy of the Home Government. It seems incredible that a Colonial
Governor, even at that epoch, should have been looked upon by Downing
Street as a sort of importunate mendicant. But Grey's language shows
that this was the attitude against which he had to defend himself.

[Sidenote: The burden of the empire.]

"I would now only urge upon Her Majesty's Government," he writes
on September 8th, 1858, "that they should not distress me more
than is absolutely necessary for the government and control of
the people of the country which lies beyond the Colony of the
Cape of Good Hope. Stripping the country as I am of troops [to
serve in putting down the Indian Mutiny], some great disaster
will take place if necessary funds are at the same time cut off
from me. I am sure, if the enormous reductions I have effect