“Our hearts are very bitter this day.  We hear that the Queen calls you to England.  We have not heard that you are sick; then why have you to leave us?  By you we have now peace.  We sleep now without fear.  Old men tell us of a good Governor Durban (Sir Benjamin Durban) who had to leave before his good works became law; but red coals were under the ashes which he left.  Words of wicked men, when he left, like the wind blew up the fire, and the country was again in war.  So also Sir George Grey, a good Governor, good to tie up the hands of bad men, good to plant schools, good to feed the hungry, good to have mercy and feed the heathen when dying from hunger, He also had to leave us.  We do not understand this.  But your Excellency is not to leave us.  Natal has now peace by you; we have peace by you because God and the Queen sent you.  Do not leave us.  Surely it is not the way of the Queen to leave her children here unprotected until peace is everywhere.  We shall ever pray for you as well as for the Queen.  These are our words to our good Governor, though he turns his back on us.”

The Malays and other Orientals, of whom there is a considerable population at Capetown, looked upon Frere, a former Indian Statesman, as their special property.  The address from the Mahommedan subjects of the Queen says:—­

“We regret that our gracious Queen has seen fit to recall your Excellency.  We cannot help thinking it is through a mistake.  The white subjects of Her Majesty have had good friends and good rulers in former Governors, but your Excellency has been the friend of white and coloured alike."[27]

* * * * *

The following letter is from Sir John Akerman, a member of the Legislative Council of Natal:—­

“August 9th, 1880.

“Having become aware of your recall to England from the office of Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, etc., etc., I cannot allow your departure to take place without conveying to you, which I hereby do, the profound sense I have of the faithful and conscientious manner in which you have endeavoured to fulfil those engagements which, at the solicitation of Great Britain, you entered upon in 1877.  The policy was not your own, but was thrust upon you.  Having given in London, in 1876, advice to pursue a different course in South Africa from the one then all the fashion and ultimately confided to yourself, it affords me the greatest pleasure to testify to the consistency of the efforts put forth by you to carry out the (then) plan of those who commissioned you, and availed themselves of your acknowledged skill and experience.  As a public man of long standing in South Africa, I would likewise add that since the days of Sir G. Grey, no Governor but yourself has grasped the native question here at all, and I feel confident that had your full authority been retained, and not harshly wrested from you, even at the eleventh hour initiatory steps of a reformatory nature with respect to the natives would have been taken, which it is the duty of Britain to follow while she holds her sovereignty over these parts.”