He saw quite well that it would not have been opportune or politic to put himself into open opposition to Rhodes.

Sir Alfred therefore did not contradict the rumours which attributed to him the desire to reduce the Cape to the condition of a Crown Colony, but bent his energy to the far more serious task of negotiating a permanent peace with the leading men in the Transvaal, a peace for which he did not want the protection of Rhodes, and to which an association with Rhodes might have proved inimical to the end in view--the ideal of a South African Federation which Rhodes had been the first to visualise, but which Providence did not permit him to see accomplished..