The troubles of the Ministry did not come singly. The storm in South Africa, like the storm in Ireland, was gathering fast when the change of Government occurred. In both countries the new Ministers were the heirs of error or neglect; in both their own policy was unfortunate. The freedom of races was perhaps the main inspiration of Midlothian. The annexation of the Transvaal in 1879 had been denounced by Mr. Gladstone again and again in terms of eloquent and indignant candour: ‘A free European Christian republican community “transformed” against the will of more than three-fourths of the entire people’ into ‘subjects of a monarchy.’ ‘Is it not wonderful,’ he asked (December 29, 1879), ‘to those who are freemen and whose fathers have been freemen and who hope that their children will be freemen and who consider that freedom is an essential condition of civil life and that without it you can have nothing great and nothing noble in political society, that we are led by an Administration ... to march upon another body of freemen and against their will to subject them to despotic government?’ These were important declarations, and they had been unmistakably approved by the nation. Was it strange that the Boers were led to expect from a Government headed and controlled by the man who had uttered them the restoration of the liberties of which they had been deprived? Moreover, much could be urged in favour of the annexation of 1879 which could not be urged in favour of its continuance. While the Transvaal and Natal alike lay under the shadow of the great Zulu power, it may have been a practical necessity to assume some control over the dealings of the Boers with their terrible neighbour, lest a quarrel recklessly or wrongfully provoked should not only bring massacre into the Transvaal, but also upon those who dwelt within the Queen’s dominions. Great Britain was perhaps forced, in the interests of the white man in South Africa, to afford protection to the Boers, and where she extended protection she had a right to claim obedience. But the danger was now removed; the Zulu power was broken; Cetewayo was a prisoner and his armies and military system destroyed. With the close of the Zulu War the all-important argument for annexation disappeared.