346 



FRERE, SIR HENRY BARTLE EDWARD. 



Presidency, and afterward to Mysore, Sinde, 

 and Berar. He was unexpectedly called to the 

 position of private secretary to Sir George Ar- 

 thur, Governor of Bombay. The annexation 

 of Sinde, through the military operations of 

 Sir Charles Napier, raised an outcry among 

 the East Indian civilians, many of whom con- 

 sidered the act inexpedient as well as unjust. 

 Mr. Frere displayed tact and discretion during 

 this controversy. In 1844 he married a daugh- 

 ter of Sir George Arthur. In 1847 he was ap- 

 pointed Sir James Outram's successor as Resi- 

 dent at Sattara. When the Rajah died Frere 

 recognized his appointed heir as Rajah, but 

 the Company, which had deposed the former 

 Rajah and deprived him of the right of adop- 

 tion, ignored its agent's act, and annexed the 

 state. Mr. Frere was made Commissioner. 

 Two years later, in 1850, he succeeded Sir 

 Charles Napier as Chief Commissioner to Sinde. 

 That barren country he improved by con- 

 structing canals, and by opening roads, and 

 by making Kurrachee a seaport. 

 When the mutiny broke out with 

 the rising at Meerut, although he 

 had but two English regiments 

 among a Mohammedan population 

 of two millions, he sent the best of 

 them to hold the strong fortress of 

 Moultan. He displayed the same 

 foresight, vigor, and fortitude dur- 

 ing the entire crisis. He repressed 

 three attempts at mutiny among his 

 native troops, and sent part of them 

 to preserve tranquillity in the Pun- 

 jaub, and part into central India, 

 saying, in a dispatch to Lord El- 

 phinstone, that " when the head and 

 heart are threatened, the extremities 

 must take care of themselves." For 

 his services during this period he 

 was knighted. After the suppres- 

 sion of the mutiny, he was nomi- 

 nated to the Viceroy's Council, and 

 went to Calcutta, where he assisted 

 James Wilson in restoring the dis- 

 ordered finances. After Mr. Wilson's 

 death he was Finance Minister until 

 the arrival of Samuel Laing, whom 

 he assisted in the completion of the 

 work. In 1862 he was appointed 

 Governor of Bombay. He started 

 many works of public utility in the 

 presidency. During his administra- 

 tion the death- rate of Bombay was 

 reduced one half. He was Governor 

 during the cotton -fever and the 

 crisis that followed upon the end- 

 ing of the American war. 



In 1867 Sir Bartle Frere returned to England 

 and was appointed to the Indian Council. His 

 career in India was uniformly successful and 

 fortunate, but the same success did not attend 

 him in a new field of labor which he entered 

 near the close of his life. After serving as 

 Special Commissioner to the East Coast of Af- 



rica in 1872 and in May, 1873, negotiating the 

 treaty with the Sultan of Zanzibar in which 

 that ruler undertook to suppress slavery, he was 

 appointed to accompany the Prince of Wales 

 on his Indian tour and enlighten him in mat- 

 ters of Indian policy and history. In January, 

 1877, Sir Bartle Frere was appointed Governor 

 and High Commissioner at the Cape of Good 

 Hope. Here he showed the same vigor and 

 political capacity that distinguished him in 

 India, but neither the white nor the black popu- 

 lations of South Africa were to be molded to 

 the will of a great administrator like the con- 

 quered people of India. He took up the scheme 

 of a confederation of the states of South Africa, 

 over which England should exercise a supreme 

 controlling power. The idea had been sug- 

 gested as a means of diminishing the responsi- 

 bility of the English Government in South Af- 

 rica, but with him it meant the extension and 

 strengthening of imperial authority. The Zulu 

 and Transvaal wars were the result of his pol- 



8IB HENRY BARTLE EDWARD PBEBB. 



icy. What he might have accomplished by the 

 unlimited exercise of the military power of 

 England remains a subject of historical specu- 

 lation, for his action in South Africa was one 

 of the main causes of the overthrow of the 

 Disraeli ministry, a consequence of which was 

 his recall and the reversal of his imperial policy. 



