The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby’s Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a “dangerous man,” as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him, was recalled.

Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the Disraeli Ministry, revived the project.  Converted in his views of the Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped to do the same with South Africa.  But it was too late.  The Cape Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile, while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State.  Federation, then, was impossible.  On the other hand, the Transvaal was in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877.  He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who honestly wished to come under British rule.

Rash as the measure was, lasting good might have come of it had the essential step been taken of preserving representative government.  The promise was given and broken.  For three years the Assembly, or Volksraad, was not summoned.  Once more home statesmanship was blind, and local administration blunderingly oppressive.  Shepstone was the wrong man for the post of Administrator.  Sir Owen Lanyon, his successor, was an arrogant martinet of the stamp familiar in Canada before 1840, and painfully familiar in Ireland.  The refusal of an Assembly naturally strengthened the popular demand for a reversal of the annexation, and this demand, twice pressed in London through a deputation headed by Paul Kruger, obscured the whole issue, and raised a question of British national pride, with all its inevitable consequences, where none need have been raised.  There was a moment of hope when Sir Bartle Frere, who stands, perhaps, next to Sir George Grey on the roll of eminent High Commissioners, endeavoured to pacify the Boer malcontents, and drafted the scheme of a liberal Constitution for the Transvaal.  But one of the last acts of the Tory Government, at the end of 1879, was to recall Frere for an alleged transgression of his powers in regard to the Zulu War, and to pigeon-hole his scheme.  Mr. Gladstone, who in opposition had denounced the annexation with good enough justification, though in terms which under the circumstances were immoderate, found himself compelled to confirm it when he took office in April, 1880.  But he, too, allowed the liberal Constitution to sleep in its pigeon-hole.  He was assured by the officials on the spot that there was no danger, that the majority were loyal, and only a minority of turbulent demagogues disloyal; and in December, 1880, the rebellion duly broke out, and the Transvaal Republic was proclaimed.  What followed we know, war, Laing’s Nek, Majuba, and one more violent oscillation of policy in the concession of a virtual independence to the Transvaal.