While the conference on union was in progress there arrived, on the 11th of June, a letter from Sir George Grey announcing that in case an agreement to unite the two republics were concluded, the conventions of 1852 and 1854—guaranteeing their separate independence—would no longer be considered binding by Great Britain. Undoubtedly this action evinced a desire, not to say a determination, that the Free State should find safety not by union with the sister republic to the north, but by coming again under British sovereignty and forming one of a group of colonies to be united in a great British Dominion in South Africa. The negotiations for union were dropped on the receipt of Sir George’s letter, and both parties resolved to appoint commissioners to confer with him after peace with the Basutos should be arranged. It was not until the 20th of August that Sir George Grey arrived at Bloemfontein to act as mediator between Moshesh and the Free State. While preliminaries were being discussed the governor received urgent dispatches from London ordering him to send all available troops to India, where the Sepoy rebellion was raging. It became, therefore, a matter of supreme importance to establish peace between the Free State and the Basutos at once—for not a soldier could safely be spared until that was accomplished. On the 29th of September the treaty was completed and signed. It settled a new frontier for the Free State next to Basutoland, and bound Moshesh to either punish marauders of his people himself, or consent that the Free State authorities should do so. This peace lasted only seven years. In 1865 new troubles arose leading to a renewal of war between the Free State and Moshesh. Again the governor of Cape Colony acted as mediator, but his decisions were rejected by the Basutos, and new hostilities began. This time, by a heroic effort made in 1868, the whites defeated and scattered the Basutos with great slaughter, and were at the point of utterly breaking their power, when the always politic Moshesh appealed to the British High Commissioner at the Cape to take his people under British protection. The commissioner doubtless considered the interests of Cape Colony which, in the event of a dispersion of the Basutos, might be overrun by the fugitives, and suffer injury thereby. And it is evident that he was unwilling that the Free State should strengthen itself, beyond the necessity of ever seeking readmission to the British dominions, by the annexation of Basutoland. So, looking to the safety of the old colony, and to the hope of some day adding thereto the Orange Free State, the commissioner took the defeated Basutos under the wing of the imperial government and declared them British subjects.