Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/270

 ment, for nearly all the office-holders transferred their services to the new administration. A considerable section of the people dissented, and the president gave expression to the views of the malcontents by a protest against the annexation, while at a meeting of the late executive it was resolved to send Mr. Kruger and Dr. Jorrisen to London to lay the case of the non-annexationists before the colonial office. On their way through Cape Town the delegates had an interview with Frere, who gave them little encouragement, being convinced that they only represented a small and politically mischievous minority. Lord Carnarvon, acting on the opinions of Frere and Shepstone, returned an unfavourable answer to the memorial. In April 1878 the Boers despatched a second embassy to London, armed with a petition against annexation, signed by 6,591 qualified electors out of a total of 8,000. Considerable suspicion existed at the colonial office as to the way in which their signatures had been obtained, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach, the new colonial secretary, returned a similar answer to that given by Lord Carnarvon. A deputation to Frere in July 1878 met with no better success.

Meanwhile Cetewayo, who had been installed on the Zulu throne by Sir Theophilus Shepstone on the death of his father Panda in 1872, was beginning to threaten the Transvaal. An old controversy about a piece of disputed land lying between Zululand and the Transvaal furnished a ready excuse for gratifying his warlike instincts. The Boers asserted that this ground had been given them by Cetewayo in payment for the rendition of two of his half-brothers who had fled to the Transvaal for refuge, and that the gift had been confirmed by Panda, the king. Cetewayo replied that the grant had never been ratified by his father, and was therefore invalid. After the annexation, a commission decided, without going very thoroughly into the merits of the question, that as the gift made by Cetewayo was not shown to have been confirmed by the king, it must be held to be null and void. By the direction of the government, Frere went to Natal to revise the proceedings of the commission. He satisfied himself that, though the finding was technically correct, it was in equity too favourable to the Zulus. The position was one full of difficulty. Had he reversed the award, the Zulus would have regarded the act as one of hostility, while to confirm it absolutely was to leave the white settlers on the territory at the mercy of Cetewayo. Frere therefore confirmed the finding of the commission, with the proviso that the lives and properties of the white settlers should be strictly respected and secured to them.

Cetewayo had already taken umbrage at the arrival of troops in Natal, caused by the threatening attitude of the Zulus. A reassuring answer was returned to a message sent by him; and this was accompanied by the award of the commission as modified by the high commissioner. Frere at the same time reiterated the demand for satisfaction for certain outrages committed on British subjects, and asked for assurances that Cetewayo would carry on his government in the spirit of the promises he had made when he was crowned by Sir Theophilus Shepstone. Frere specially demanded full satisfaction for the murder of two black women and for the detention of two English surveyors. He further required that the king should introduce a settled form of government into the country; should abolish the existing military system; should put a stop to the compulsory celibacy insisted on in certain regiments in the army; should receive a British resident at his capital; and should protect missionaries and their converts. Thirty days were given to Cetewayo to consider these terms, and, as at the end of that time no answer was received from him, Frere, considering that the use of that suasion which had been enjoined upon him by the English government was no longer possible and must yield to force, placed the matter in the hands of General Thesiger. It was this which constituted the disobedience to orders of which Frere was afterwards accused, and on this point Sir Henry Taylor, who was no mean authority on such matters, gives his verdict against him in a judicial letter addressed to Lord Blachford, and published in his ‘Correspondence,’ 1888. It must be admitted that the outrages complained of would not under other circumstances have been considered of an unpardonable nature. Cetewayo had already declared that he was unable to find the murderers, and had offered to make a money recompense to the relations of the murdered women. The surveyors thought so little of their detention that they made no complaint of the treatment they had received for a week after the event. Frere, in fact, had other reasons. ‘The die for peace or for war,’ he said, ‘had been cast more than two years ago,’ when the Zulus assumed their existing hostile attitude. It only remained, therefore, for General Thesiger to take such measures as he might deem advisable to protect Natal against the expected invasion of the Zulus. He had under his command about seven thousand men, many of whom were raw recruits, and more than half of whom were Kaffirs, while the Zulu hosts numbered forty-