During the 4th Earl of Carnarvon’s presence at the Colonial Office between 1874 and 1878 that statesman endeavoured to repeat in South Africa the success which had attended his consolidation of the North American colonies into one confederated Dominion. He sent out the historian Froude to represent him at the proposed conference of South African states. Already, Sir George Grey had tried hard to bring about this unification of South Africa under the British flag during the fifties; and in 1858 had pressed strongly upon the Imperial Parliament a scheme which would have well effected this desired end. For his pains he was recalled and sharply reprimanded, but, mainly owing to the influence of Queen Victoria, he was sent back to his governorship, though he was not allowed to carry out the far-reaching policy he had formulated. In Cape Colony the Federation Commission was appointed in 1872. But the always present, more or less bitter divergence of sympathies between the English and the Dutch-speaking settlers—a discord constantly discernible in the debates of the Cape Parliament—prevented any ripening of the federation idea; and Lord Carnarvon’s commissioner, Mr J. A. Froude, was snubbed for his pains by the Cape Dutch. Foiled in one direction, Lord Carnarvon sought to effect his end in another way. He sent out Sir Bartle Frere to be Governor and High Commissioner at the Cape. He had been chosen by Lord Carnarvon six months before as the statesman most capable of consolidating the South African Empire; “within two years it was hoped that he would be the first Governor-General of the South African Dominion.” The second step in what seemed to Lord Carnarvon to be the right direction was the annexation of the Transvaal. With this territory of about 120,000 square miles in extent, in British hands, there would only remain the Orange Free State as an obstacle to the unification of South Africa. The Transvaal as an independent state had between 1853 and 1877 come to grief. It was bankrupt, and it was powerless to subdue the powerful native tribes within its borders, some of whom had real wrongs to avenge. Moreover, it was threatened by Zulu invasion. It was therefore annexed by the British Commissioner, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, in the beginning of 1877.