For a couple of years, however, matters went on without open rebellion. The administration of Sir T. Shepstone was, upon the whole, a wise one. The former officials were largely retained, provision was made for a dual official language, the finances were got into fairly good shape, and the natives were conciliated. Sir Bartle Frere, looking on from Cape Town, wished to establish complete responsible government, and had his policy been carried out, it is possible that the war might have been averted, and certain that the growing influence of Kruger would have been checked. Two Dutch deputations had gone to London, and the restoration of independence had been refused them by both the Beaconsfield Government and the succeeding one of Mr. Gladstone. High officials of all kinds--Frere, Wolseley, Shepstone and Lanyon--had declared that it was an absolute impossibility, and, certainly, no overt attempts were made to obtain it while British troops were present in South Africa in large numbers engaged in crushing the Zulu enemy or the lesser power of the Sekukuni. [Sidenote: Encouragement from England] Unofficially, however, the Boer idea of independence received substantial encouragement from England. Before coming into power Mr. Gladstone, in his famous Midlothian speeches, proclaimed that "if those acquisitions were as valuable as they are worthless, I would repudiate them because they are obtained by means dishonorable to the character of the country." When he came into office he practically repudiated his own statements; but they had meanwhile done the mischief which so often accompanies demagogic or thoughtless oratory when uttered by highly-placed public men. In 1880 Colonel Sir Owen Lanyon became Administrator of the Transvaal in place of Sir T. Shepstone, who was paying a visit to England. He has been described as an "orthodox military man, somewhat pompous and a trifle haughty to inferiors," and, in reality, was the worst possible personage to be placed at the head of affairs in a country now seething with discontent and ripe for insurrection. [Sidenote: Taxation the Cause of War in 1880-81]