Upon the structure of these Governments and around the names of their members turns much of the history of Cape Colony during these years; although a man of the wide influence of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr never held office except for a few months in 1881, while Sir John Henry de Villiers has not been in a Ministry since 1873 when he retired from the Molteno Cabinet to accept the Chief Justiceship of the Colony. The first great question which had to be dealt with under the new constitution was Lord Carnarvon's scheme of federation. This most cultured representative of British statecraft had, curiously enough, been Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time when the head of that Department, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, had refused any favorable consideration to the policy proposed by Sir George Grey in 1858. He had then agreed with his chief; now he was at the head of the Colonial Office, under the inspiration of Lord Beaconsfield's new Imperialism, as a convert in the most enthusiastic degree to the general principle of Colonial federations under the Crown. Accordingly, in 1875, he addressed a despatch to the Cape Government pointing out the complications of South African inter-state relations, the advantages of unity and the willingness of the Imperial Government to enact legislation bringing into effect a federal union of the various communities. At the same time he sent out, as a sort of confidential envoy to press the matter upon public attention, a man who, with all his brilliant attainments as a writer and historian--the late James Anthony Froude--seems to have been without that tact and personal magnetism so essential to the success of a delicate mission. His own record of the matter in _Oceana_ proves this conclusively. And it was not a favorable moment for any general consideration of the matter. The Orange Free State was in a somewnat exasperated condition over the annexation of Griqualand West to Cape Colony, and had not yet become mollified by the personal influence of President Brand and by the results of the monetary return given for the loss of the Diamond Fields. The Transvaal was in a position of such factional discontent and general disintegration that its people could hardly have dealt clearly with such an important issue had even their still keen hatred of the English been eliminated from the question. Natal was in imminent danger from the massing of Zulu spears upon its frontiers; while the Dutch people in Cape Colony looked upon the whole matter with suspicion and certainly without sympathy. [Sidenote: Sir Garnet Wolseley as Governor]