It was at this junction that the Federation policy of Lord Carnarvon, Colonial Secretary in the Beaconsfield Government, combined with the apparent local necessities of the case to cause the intervention of the Imperial authorities. Lord Beaconsfield was an Imperialist of the strongest type, imaginative yet practical, initiative in policy and also courageous in execution. His Government had bought the Suez Canal shares in order to ensure the trade route of the Empire to India, and had made the Queen an eastern Empress and the Prince of Wales the centre of Oriental hospitality and magnificence, in order to appeal to the sentiment of those vast regions and teeming populations. Lord Carnarvon had, in 1867, as Colonial Secretary, presided over the Confederation of British America, and his present great ambition was to help in creating a federated South Africa. But it was too late so far as South Africa was concerned; too early so far as Imperialistic sentiment at home was concerned. When Sir Bartle Frere reached Cape Town he found that the Transvaal had just been annexed, and that one great apparent difficulty had been removed from his path. At the same time, however, he found the Orange Free State opposed to federation though ready for a customs union; and two years later the malcontents in the Transvaal, roused and encouraged by Mr. Gladstone's public sentiments as Leader of the Liberal Opposition and in defence of the Boer right to independence, were in rebellion and able to influence their racial allies at Cape Town in the vetoing of the Commissioner's general policy of federation. Such was the story in a brief summary. [Sidenote: Threatened Anarchy] The details are both interesting and important. In 1876 the Boer attack on Sekukuni--a not very strong Kaffir chief upon the Transvaal border--had, as already stated, been repulsed, and the High Commissioner of the moment in South Africa, Sir Henry Barkly, wrote to Lord Carnarvon, under date of October 30th, describing the ensuing situation of the Transvaal at some length, and concluded with the following expressive words: "In short, the whole state of things borders very closely upon anarchy; and, although in other parts of the Republic lawlessness and inhumanity are less rampantly exhibited, the machinery of administration is everywhere all but paralyzed, and the Republic seems about to fall to pieces through its own weakness. In that event the Boers in each district would either have to make their own terms with the adjacent Kaffir tribes or trek onwards into the wilderness, as is their wont, whilst the position of the large number of British subjects scattered about on farms, or resident in the towns, or at the gold fields, might fairly claim the humane consideration of Her Majesty's Government even if there were not other reasons to save so fine a country from so miserable a fate."