Sir T. Shepstone himself allows that Cetshwayo’s frame of mind was a better one after the reception of Sir Henry Bulwer’s message offering arbitration (2079, pp. 51-54); and says that his (Sir T. Shepstone’s) messengers “describe Cetshwayo as being in a very different temper to that which he had on former occasions exhibited;” to use their own expression, “it was Cetshwayo, but it was Cetshwayo born again.”... “They gleaned from the Zulus ... that a message from the Governor of Natal had been delivered, and they concluded that the change which they had noticed as so marked in the king’s tone must have been produced by that message.” The fact that Cetshwayo joyfully and thankfully accepted Sir Henry Bulwer’s promise—not to give him the land he claimed, but to have the matter investigated and justice done—is sufficiently established; but from the Boers the proposal met with a very different reception. Sir T. Shepstone acknowledged the receipt of Sir H. Bulwer’s despatch of December 11th, “transmitting copy of a message” which he “had thought fit to send to the Zulu king,” and then summoned a few leading men in the district, and laid the proposition before them. He reports that after some pretty speeches about the “Christian, humane, and admirable proposal,” which they should have “no excuse for hesitating to accept, if Cetshwayo were a civilised king and the Zulu Government a civilised government,” etc. etc., they proceeded to state their objections. They had, they said, no misgiving regarding the justice of the claim of the State; and they believed that the more it was investigated, the more impartial the minds of the investigators, the clearer and more rightful would that claim prove itself to be. Nevertheless, they professed to fear the delay that must necessarily be caused by such an investigation[79] (the dispute having already lasted fifteen years!) and to doubt Cetshwayo’s abiding by any promise he might make to observe a temporary boundary line. To place the two parties to the dispute on equal terms, they said, the land in question should be evacuated by both, or occupied by both under the control of Sir Henry Bulwer, who, they proposed, as an indispensable condition of the proposed arbitration, should take possession of the land in dispute or of some part of it. And Sir T. Shepstone remarks: “My view is that the considerations above set forth are both weighty and serious. “I do not anticipate that, under the circumstances, Cetshwayo would venture to make or to authorise any overt attack. I do fear, however, the consequences of the lawless condition into which the population all along the border is rapidly falling. Cetshwayo, I fear, rather encourages than attempts to repress this tendency; and, although he will not go to war, he may allow that to go on which he knows will produce war.”