In 1875, when Lord Carnarvon sent J. A. Froude to 'stump South Africa' in advocacy of a scheme of federation devised in Downing Street, Sir Charles condemned a mission which seemed to him to cast a slur on the local Colonial governments. In his opinion, this mission helped to create those disturbances which rent South Africa in the succeeding years. On May 27th, 1877, he noted that the Blue Book on the Transvaal, then published, was 'an indictment of the Republic intended to justify the annexation,' but that it did not 'show the existence of any overwhelming necessity for annexation, or, indeed, any necessity at all.' Yet he gave only a half- hearted support to Mr. Courtney's opposition to the South Africa Bill when those matters were debated in the House, for, as he wrote in a letter to the _Spectator_, he was opposed, "not to the policy of annexation, which, as leading up to confederation," he supported, "but to the manner in which that annexation had been carried out." It was said to have been done by the desire of the Dutch themselves. If so, why were three battalions of British troops still needed in the Transvaal? The Bill did not establish a self-governing federation; it only provided that federation might be established by an Order in Council. What guarantee had the Dutch, he asked, that such an order would ever be issued? Events justified his question, for the promise was never made good, even when the Liberals themselves came into office, and Sir Charles resented the iniquity of this dealing. In February, 1878, he met Froude at dinner, and 'discussed with him the South African question, on which we took widely different views, and of which his were to be the source of much unhappiness to the Mother Country and the Colonies.' With the difficulty of the Transvaal the Zulu outbreak was indirectly connected. Great Britain had been drawn into strife with the Zulu power, which had for more than thirty years lived peaceably beside the Natal Government, only because the annexation had made England responsible for the peace of the disputed territories beyond the Vaal. There was also a strong if indirect connecting-link in the personality of Sir Bartle Frere, who, as High Commissioner in South Africa, had belittled the Boer claims, and who now by a violent stretch of authority had precipitated war with the Zulus.