In 1867 one last struggle occurred, and then Moshesh, weakened by age and realizing that his sons were much as other natives were, and did not possess the ability to hold the country together when his own end had come, turned to Sir Philip Wodehouse, the Governor and High Commissioner at Cape Town, and asked that his people be proclaimed British subjects. This was done, partly from a wise unwillingness to have the Free State so immensely strengthened as it would have been by the possession of Basutoland, partly by a natural objection to have so large a number of natives dispersed over the country without home or special object, and partly by dislike of the policy which the Boers had been for years pursuing in regard to savages generally and missionaries in particular. The Free Staters were intensely annoyed. They had lost the opportunity for a lasting revenge upon their enemy and the possibility of possessing the Switzerland of South Africa. In the light of after events the action of Sir Philip Wodehouse seems almost Providential, and is certainly one of the few instances where British statecraft was really brought into play in this part of the world. Were the Basuto strongholds in possession of Dutch sharpshooters and fortified by German science and artillery, the struggle of 1899-1900 would be infinitely more serious than it is at the time of writing. [Sidenote: "The Hollanders"] The Boers of the Free State bitterly resented this annexation. Although now governed by the wisest Dutchman who has come to the front in South Africa--Jan Hendrik Brand--(afterwards better known as Sir John Brand) who had succeeded Pretorius as President in 1865--they were also greatly influenced by a small and compact body of men, known as Hollanders, who had obtained possession of nearly all the offices of emolument in the State. These Hollanders afterwards drifted largely into the Transvaal where they had fuller and freer scope for anti-British sentiment and policy; and for isolation from the British ideas and principles which gradually and, in the end, powerfully, controlled the policy of President Brand. Meantime, however, these adventurers from Holland had much influence in the Free State. In 1858, when the Basutos had driven back the farmers and were threatening their homes and cattle during one of the ups and downs of the long struggle, a number of the Boers, and even some of the Hollanders, were in favor of seeking annexation to Cape Colony, and actually a resolution to that effect went through the Volksraad. But five years later, when fifteen hundred and fifty signers of a memorial asked the Volksraad to press an agitation to this end, the situation in regard to the Basutos had meanwhile changed, and the Hollanders opposed the proposition strongly. The movement was never seriously revived. Speaking in this connection at the prorogation of the Cape Parliament in September, 1868, Sir Philip Wodehouse declared that: "Entirely on my