It was not yet too late to mend. In 1854, when the cession of the Free State had just been carried out, Sir George Grey, whom we have met with in Australia and New Zealand, came as High Commissioner to the Cape. In 1859 he made the proposal I alluded to in the last chapter for federating all the South African States, including the two new Republics. There is little doubt that the scheme was feasible then. The Orange Free State was willing to join, and, indeed, had initiated proposals for Federation. Its adhesion would have compelled the Transvaal, always more hostile to British rule, to come in eventually, if not at once; for the relations of the two Republics were friendly enough at the time to permit one man, Pretorius, to be President of both States. The scheme was rejected by Lord Derby's Tory Cabinet, and Grey, a "dangerous man," as Lord Carnarvon, the Colonial Secretary, dubbed him, was recalled. Sixteen years later, in 1875, Lord Carnarvon himself, as a member of the Disraeli Ministry, revived the project. Converted in his views of the Colonies, like many of his Tory colleagues at this period, he had carried through Parliament the Federation of Canada in 1867, and hoped to do the same with South Africa. But it was too late. The Cape Parliament, now in possession of a responsible Ministry, was hostile, while twenty years of self-government, for the most part under the great President Brand, had changed the sentiments of the Free State. Federation, then, was impossible. On the other hand, the Transvaal was in a state of political unrest and of danger from native aggression, which gave a pretext for reversion to the long-abandoned policy of annexation, and to that extreme Carnarvon promptly went in April, 1877. He took this dangerous course without ascertaining the considered wishes of the majority of the Boers, acting through his emissary, Sir T. Shepstone, on the informal application of a minority of townsmen who honestly wished to come under British rule.