The Dutch welcomed him because he acknowledged their rights.
At Grahamstown too, and at Port Elizabeth, he was hailed as the champion of separation for the eastern provinces.

The Legislative Assembly at Cape Town, however, was hostile, and the proposed conference fell through.

Lord Carnarvon did not see the full significance of the fact that the Confederation of Canada had been first mooted within the Dominion itself.
An interesting account of Froude at this time has been given by Sir George Colley, the brilliant and accomplished soldier whose career was cut short six years afterwards at Majuba: "I came home from the Cape, and almost lived on the way with Mr.
Froude ....

It was rather a sad mind, sometimes grand, sometimes pathetic and tender, usually cynical, but often relating with the highest appreciation, and with wonderful beauty of language, some gallant deed of some of his heroes of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries.

He seemed to have gone through every phase of thought, and come to the end 'All is vanity.' He himself used to say the interest of life to a thinking man was exhausted at thirty, or thirty-five.