h Africa
must be gathered under the British flag without delay. He had noted
the disintegrating influences at work in the Cape Colony and the
strength of the potential antagonism of the republican Dutch. The
annexation of the Transvaal was not his deed, nor did either the time
or the manner in which it was done command his approval. But he
asserted that British rule, once established there, must be maintained
at all costs. With this end in view, he urged that every
responsibility incurred by England in the act of annexation must be
fulfilled to the letter. Utilising the information which he had gained
by personal observation during his visit to the Transvaal in 1879, and
availing himself of the co-operation of President Brand, of the Free
State, and Chief Justice de Villiers, in the Cape Colony, he drafted a
scheme of administrative reform sufficient to satisfy the legitimate
aspirations of the Boers for self-government without endangering the
permanency of British rule. It included proposals for administrative
and financial reforms framed with a view of reducing the cost of
government to the lowest point consistent with efficiency, for the
reorganisation of the courts of law, for the survey of the proposed
railway line to Delagoa Bay, and full details of a system of
representative government. This measure he urged upon the Colonial
Office as one of immediate necessity, since it embodied the fulfilment
of the definite promises of an early grant of self-government made to
the Boers at the time of annexation.[8]

[Footnote 8: The receipt of the despatch in which these
valuable recommendations were made was not even acknowledged
by the Colonial Office. Frere himself gives the outlines of
his proposals in an article published in _The Nineteenth
Century_ for February, 1881.]

He recognised the value of Delagoa Bay as an essential factor in the
political and commercial system of a united South Africa, and he
earnestly recommended its acquisition by purchase from the Portuguese
Government. His perception of the extreme importance of satisfying all
legitimate claims of the Boers, and his acute realisation of the
danger of allowing the Transvaal to become a "jumping-off ground"
either for foreign powers or Afrikander Nationalists, are exhibited in
due relationship in a private memorandum which he wrote from the Cape
at the end of July, 1879:

"Any reliance on mere force in th