The annexation of the Transvaal and the subjugation of Cetywayo were duly accomplished, but success to the policy as a whole was prevented by the war of 1881; and the latter was greatly encouraged, if not practically caused, by the eloquent objections urged in England by Mr. Gladstone. There seems to have been no very clear comprehension of the issue, and there was certainly no accurate knowledge of the Boer character and history, in Mr. Gladstone's mind. They were simply to him a pastoral people asking, and then fighting, for a freedom for which they had struggled steadily during half a century. He knew nothing of the land and cattle and liberties stolen by them from unfortunate native races; of the bitter and ignorant hatred felt by them towards England and British civilization; of the contempt for missionaries and religious or political equality; or of their ambition, even in those days of weakness, to expand north and east and west and to cut off British power to the north and eventually in the south. He never had an Imperial imagination and cared little for the ideal of an united South Africa under the Crown. An historical imagination he did possess, as was shown in his devotion to the cause of Greek independence and his willing transfer of the Ionian Isles, in earlier years, to the new Hellenic Kingdom. But that was based upon his love of Homer and ancient Greek literature--not upon so modern and material a matter as the welfare of British settlers in a distant and storm-tossed colony. [Sidenote: Governor's Restraint of Boers]