government and have it engross the other states in the region. That method
was tried. The Cape Colony acquired responsible government in 1872, but
the colony was too weak and its white inhabitants
too divided for it to
become the instrument
of such a policy. Until 1880, the colonial govern-
ment refused to incorporate
Griqualand
West, and although it took over
Basutoland
in 187 I, it soon lost control of the Basotho people, so that
Britain had to resume responsibility
for that territory in 1884.
Meanwhile,
in 1875 Lord Carnarvon,
an unusually
activist colonial
secretary serving in Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative ministry, had set in
motion
a series of events that he intended
to culminate
in a Canadian
solution.U
He started by writing a dispatch to the high commissioner
in
Cape Town, proposing a conference of representatives of the white commu-
nities in Southern Africa to discuss native questions, the control of the arms
trade, and, perhaps, confederation.
The South African responses were not
auspicious. The Cape colonial cabinet-the
first under responsible govern-
ment-resented
what it construed as imperial interference. In the Orange
Free State, the voortrekker
spirit had been reinforced by the well-grounded
belief that Britain had manipulated
the arbitration