The despatch from which the above is quoted was written on the 19th March, and another, dated the following day, expresses the writer’s “general approval of the principles on which the boundary award was based,” as intimated in a previous despatch, but gives a very qualified assent to Sir B. Frere’s emendations by which he seeks to secure the “private rights” of settlers on the wrongfully appropriated land, and remarks that he is disposed to think that the recognition of these said private rights of European settlers in the district declared to be Zulu territory should have been restricted as far as possible to those cases in which _bonâ fide_ purchasers had improved their farms by building, planting, or otherwise, which restriction would have limited them to a very small number indeed. Sir M. Hicks-Beach also reminds Sir B. Frere that Her Majesty’s Government had distinctly said beforehand that “they could not undertake the obligation of protecting” the missionaries in Zululand. His comments upon the terms of the ultimatum, he says, are intended for Sir B. Frere’s guidance when the time for once more proposing terms should arrive, and he concludes: “It is my wish that, as far as possible, you should avoid taking any decided step, or committing yourself to any positive conclusion respecting any of them until you have received instructions from Her Majesty’s Government.”—(P. P. [C. 2260] pp. 108-111). Again, upon April 10th, after receiving Sir Bartle Frere’s explanations, Sir M. Hicks-Beach writes as follows: “Since I addressed to you my despatches of the 19th and 20th March, I have received your two despatches of February 12th and March 1st, further explaining the considerations which induced you to decide that the demands made upon Ketshwayo must be communicated to him without delay. The definite expression of the views and policy of Her Majesty’s Government contained in my despatches already referred to, which will have reached you before you receive this, makes it unnecessary that I should enter into any examination of the arguments or opinions expressed in your present despatches. It is sufficient to say that Her Majesty’s Government do not find in the reasons now put forward by you any grounds to modify the tenor of the instructions already addressed to you on the subject of affairs in South Africa, and it is their desire that you should regulate your future action according to these instructions.