I am responsible for having lighted the straw; and if Lord Carnarvon has been frightened at the first bad news, there will be danger of real disturbance.

The despatch has created a real enthusiasm, and excited hopes which must not now be disappointed." "Never," he wrote a few weeks afterwards, "never did a man of letters volunteer into a more extraordinary position than that in which I find myself." Sir Garnet Wolseley stood by him through thick and thin.

After Sir Garnet's departure he had no English friend.

His local supporters were "all looking out for themselves," and there was not one among them in whom he could feel any real confidence." -- * The present Lord Wolseley.
+ A favourite expression with Mrs.Carlyle.
-- Of Molteno he made no personal complaint, and he always considered him the fittest man for his post in South Africa.

But Colonial politicians as a whole were "not gentlemen with whom it was agreeable to be forced into contact." To give the Colony responsible government has been "an act of deliberate insanity" on the part of Lord Kimberley and the Liberal Cabinet.