Transcribed from South Africa Magazine, 29 March, 1902

DEATH OF MR. RHODES

THE GREAT ENGLISHMAN AND EMPIRE BUILDER

PASSES AWAY AT MUIZENBERG

HIS DISTINGUISHED CAREER: A SPECIAL MEMOIR

THE RIGHT HON. CECIL JOHN RHODES.

It is with the deepest sorrow that we announce the death of the Right Honourable Cecil John Rhodes, which took place at Muizenberg, near Cape Town, on Wednesday night, March 26, at 6:13 p.m.

The death of the great statesman is a loss to the British race. He was in the prime of life, being under 49 years of age, and, though all his vast enterprises are well established, there is a poignant regret that he was not spared to carry them through to a triumphant conclusion. For years he has found his path, already difficult, hampered by bitter political opposition, but he has struggled on with an iron resolution that long since won for him the admiration of foreigners and the affection of his own countrymen outside of an unconsidered minority. During the dark days at Muizenberg, when under the oppressive heat the great Englishman was battling for life with a calm fortitude that seemed to reduce the imminence of danger, the nation began slowly to awake to a sense of the coming calamity; but it was not until Her Majesty the Queen sent the message quivering with womanly sympathy to the dying Colossus that the national memory was quickened. “Very sorry to hear of your illness. I pray God to restore your health.” The patient heard the message and smiled, and it will be in the heart of every Colonist to thank the Queen for having conveyed a message, when such sympathy would be priceless, full of promise to the recipient for the swelling benediction of the race. If health could not be restored for the continuance of the great work, at any rate the national importance of the work done would be recognized. The words of Milton to the memory of Cromwell apply:

Our chief of men

Who through a Cloud

Not of war only but detraction rude

Guided by faith and matchless fortitude

His glorious way has ploughed.

The work he did is too near, and fills the foreground too much for us of this generation to judge it as a whole. We have seen the stones hewed, the mortar mixed, the wilderness cleared for the foundations, and have witnessed the tragedies, the disputes, and the bitter controversies under which the building has been raised by the Titan, who, though sometimes distressed by this too vast weight, never once laid down his burden. There has been a tendency on the part of his critics to fasten on one part of the work without relation to the whole. Some think they could have “hewn” the blocks much better; others are sure they would have mixed the mortar with purer ingredients; and a good many would have laid the foundations without clearing away the wild barbaric growth. There are those whose sentiments of delicacy are deeply wounded by the contracts drawn up. Their view is that the Empire builder is to shun business methods, is to lay his foundations on trust, and submit every step taken by him to a jury of purists. And there are others who on principle object to any Englishman taking one single yard of territory when a deserving foreigner has a liking to possess the ground for himself. Amid this little storm and flurry of conflicting views, the grandeur of the work done escapes notice; and when we have laid aside the microscopic lens with which we have been examining the cracks and flaws, another generation will come along which will see the vast proportions of the heroic work in their true nobility, mellowed by time and dignified by a proper perspective.

HIS YOUTH.

He was born on July 5, 1853, the fourth son of the Rev. F. Rhodes, Vicar of Bishop Stortford, Hertfordshire. The children were Herbert (cotton-grower in Natal with his younger brother Cecil, diamond digger and big game hunter, meeting with his death in Central Africa), Louisa, Edith, Francis William (Colonel Rhodes), Basil (died young), Ernest, Cecil John, Frederick (died young), Elmhurst, Arthur Montague (who sailed for the Cape on March 15 with Colonel Rhodes) and Bernard Maitland. In his school days, at his father’s school, Cecil, who was a youth of slender and delicate frame, gave early signs of an indomitable spirit and dogged perseverance. In 1870, on his recovery from a severe illness, it was decided to send him abroad, and he left on December 21 to join his elder brother Herbert, who, a few years previously, had settled in Natal as a cotton planter, arriving at Durban on September 1.

AT KIMBERLEY AND OXFORD

After a few months at cotton planting, particulars of which we have given in South Africa, Herbert went, in 1871, to the dry diggings—known first as the New Rush and then as Kimberley—and Cecil joined him a few months later, taking a step which was of momentous importance to South Africa. At that time the Diamond Fields were in the rough, holding a population composed almost entirely of men with a ruling type that is common to all early mining settlements, strong, generous, independent, and slightly turbulent. The overwhelming British element certainly corrected the turbulence, and only on very few occasions did the miners get out of hand. On one such occasion, about the time the young cotton planter arrived in the camp, the miners, exasperated by the inability of the law to deal with the growing evil of illicit diamond buying, rose one day and made a clean sweep of the canteens which circled the mine. They broke down the canvas shanties, smashed the bottles, and fired one inflammable heap after another, leaving a ring of fire. No one was lynched, which says much for the restraint of the miners. Their provocation was deep. They worked themselves like slaves from sunrise to sunset with very few comforts, and the large diamonds found their way, not into their pockets, but into the dishonest hands of a thieving class of idle scoundrels who bribed the Kafir “boys” with half-crowns and “tots” of Cape smoke. Mr. Rhodes was on the spot early enough to see the mischief caused by these fat parasites who grew wealthy on the industry, and to suffer from the evil, and later on he was instrumental, with others, in founding the compound system for kraaling the natives, which made it difficult for the rich thieves to prosper on the dishonesty of the smaller rogues. Not that the Kafir thief is to be mentioned in the same breath with the European scoundrel who traded on the feeble notions the black man entertained on the right of another man to his own property. It is perhaps to be regretted that the miners on that great day did not lynch a few white rascals. South Africa today would have been better for the example. The miners were, on the whole, a law-abiding race, and when they had their quarrels they settled the dispute right on the spot—in the market place, in the mine, in the street, placidly and orderly, with the naked fists. The Government set the example. The gentleman who acted as Commissioner of Claims would have appealed to Bret Harte. When a miner paid his money and relieved his mind, as is the way of miners, with a few vigorous expressions about the Government, the Commissioner at once suggested that they should settle the matter outside. The miner was always delighted, for the Commissioner was a man of small inches, though his spirit was resolute. After a brief and lively exchange the miner would retire bruised, but convinced that the Government was the best possible Government. Mount Ararat was the dignified name given to the highest mount of debris, and on Mount Ararat the little Mining Commissioner one day upheld the dignity of the Executive by finishing up a gentleman who stood six feet in his socks. When the battle was over the “boys,” who, of course, deserted work to witness the engagement, lifted up a mighty warwhoop, after the manner of the English—and their wild “oorays” always meant either that there was a fight, or that a cart and pair of oxen had “gone over.” There were narrow roads between deep fissures, cut on either side by the claim workers, and when a cart went over the smash was great. Sometimes, always on a Sunday, the “boys” themselves had a field-day for the fine fun of breaking heads, and one day all the riff-raff of Bechuanas, Makatese, and other feeble tribes, issued a challenge to those might warriors and aristocrats, the Zulus. There were about 2000 of the riff-raff armed with picks, crowbars, axes, and only 500 Zulus, formed up in regiments, with shield and assegais, under the command of a lordly young chief with the form of a Greek athlete. The Zulus advanced slowly to the attack, chanting a deep war song, while the allies stood drawn up in dark array, silent and evidently thinking sadly of tomorrow. At the critical time when the young Napoleon was about to launch his guards at the foe, Chief Magistrate Truter inconveniently appeared on the scene and stayed the battle, which thereafter was carried on in fragments whenever six allies could find a Zulu alone. Naturally, when a man would rise worth, perhaps, sixpence, and seek his bed with a fortune in his pouch in the shape of an eight-sided glittering stone of pure water and great size, gambling was carried out in the evenings up to reckless margins, and with water so scarce that a bucketful cost sixpence, it was almost cheaper to wash the dust down with some sort of bar poison. But there were other forms of amusement, and the miners rejoiced greatly in the intellectual duels, in the political harangues of the fine old orator, Buchanan, in the pleadings of the gifted barrister Halkett, of Mr. Shippard, later on Judge, Administrator of British Bechuanaland, and a director of Rhodesian Companies, in the autocratic decisions of Mr. John Blades-Curry, in the attitude of Lieutenant-Governor Southey, in the staunch journalistic support they received from the start in the writings of the pioneer journalist of the Fields, Mr. T. B. Glanville, who was offered a seat in the first Responsible Ministry of the Cape, and Mr. R. W. Murray, sen. They were rough days, but days of great intellectual activity, and into this great cauldron of human energies, the young Colonist was thrown at an age when his character was in formation. He stood against the strong currents that swept many young men along into gambling habits, that carried many more to failure, that left others safely harboured in wealth with a way out to retirement; he held his own, and instead of being swept aside, he mastered the currents, and in time controlled them. It was a rough school, but the friction of it strengthened him, it was like meat to the lion’s cub; and here among these strong men, with their easy ways and their blunt speech, he derived much of that contempt for conventionality which has marked his career, and much, too, of that sympathy with the worker which has endeared him to the people, much of that knowledge of human nature which has helped him to success, and much, too, of that brusqueness of manner which conventional people find rather displeasing. When the young Cecil Rhodes mastered, bridled, and controlled the sturdy independent miners of the Dry Diggings, he must have known that he had it in him to play a great part for his country. It was no light task that, but he accomplished it in a few years with no more resource, outside of his own power, than would have started a tradesman in a corner shop. In the dry air of the Diamond Fields he gained so much in strength that, when his work proved prosperous, he resolved to return to England for a University education. He was entered at Oriel College, Oxford, passed his Matriculation in October, 1873, and after eight years, during which he passed his time between England and Kimberley, he took his B.A. and M.A. degrees together in 1881. The Rev. A. G. Butler, M.A., who was tutor at Oriel at the time, says: “Rhodes’s career at Oxford was uneventful. He belonged to a set of men like himself, not caring for distinctions in the schools and not working for them, but of refined tastes, dining and living for the most part together. Such a set somehow includes men of much intellectual power which bears fruit later.” He had taken as the noblest rule for a man to follow Aristotle’s definition of “virtue” “as the highest activity of the soul living for the highest object in a perfect life.” Even in his Oxford days Rhodes held before him as the “highest object” to advance the boundaries of civilization, and he admitted that he always felt indebted to the educational course at Oxford “which had cleared his vision, fixed his aim, stimulated his enthusiasm, and sustained him in his after life amid the thousand difficulties which beset him in the pursuit of his ideal.” These brief particulars of the ‘Varsity days afford us a glimpse of a very rare type in these days of strenuous work. How many young men engaged in the rapid accumulation of a fortune would have the wish and the will to enter for a University course, extending over a long period, and involving ocean trips to and from of 12,000 miles? As a student and as a diamond digger Rhodes held himself aloof. Conscious of his own power, his mind already fixed on schemes of Empire, he bided his time, accumulating the means for his purpose, and gathering that knowledge of men and of books that he was to draw upon so largely. In a Colony where University degrees were then far from common he never made a pride of his honours as he never paraded his wealth. There was as grand simplicity in his character as there was a thoroughness in his schemes of self-preparation. The ascendancy he gained he used not for his own personal ambition, but to advance the work to which he had put his hand, and the fortune he made he directed to the same end. This trait in his character is well illustrated by an anecdote of a meeting between himself and General Gordon. The latter said he had refused a roomful of gold, offered him as recompense for what he had done in China. Mr. Rhodes was astonished, exclaiming: “Well, if I had been in your place I should have taken it. Just think how much more good you could have done with it.” Then he paused, and, looking Gordon straight in the face, went on: “It’s no earthly use for us to have big ideas if we have not the money to carry them out.” In Kimberley Mr. Rhodes was an autocrat, but he was a benevolent despot, whose hand was always in his pocket. Like Kruger, he could not brook opposition, but unlike the mean old man of Pretoria who was never known to do a kindly thing, he helped the weak liberally, without ostentation, but with judgment. Here are two little stories whose merit is that they are new. One is about a young lady, the other about a young man, both of whom were in distress, and both of whom turned to the Colossus for assistance. The death of the father suddenly left the young lady and her mother in straitened circumstances, and the daughter tried to find employment as a “diamond sorter.” She was slight and delicate looking and her application was refused. So she screwed up her courage and set out one day to see the great man himself. At his house she was told, to her relief—for her courage had been oozing out—that Mr. Rhodes was out, but the servant showed her into a room and seated her in a huge armchair before she knew what had happened. Presently two men entered and one of them saw the little figure crouching in the chair. “Hulloa, who have we here?” came the brusque inquiry. “Oh, Mr. Rhodes,” began the little lady with tears in her eyes and voice. “That will do. Blank (this to his friend) leave the room.” The friend left the room. “Now, my dear child, tell me all,” said the autocrat gently. She told him all, and when she had done he scribbled a note. “There, that will make it all right, and let me know how you get on.” The paper was an order for the applicant and a friend to be taken on as first-class sorters. “The friend” was added as his own thought, in order that the young lady should not have to go and come without a companion. In the other case the young man told a tale of hopes broken and debts incurred. “How much do you owe?” A sum was named. “Is that all?” That was all! A cheque for the amount was written out: “Be ready to leave for the North tomorrow, and see me for your appointment.” The young fellow left happy, but in the morning there was another story. In his dread of stating an amount which to him seemed large, he had not named the true sum of his indebtedness, and had spent the afternoon trying to raise the extra money from Mr. Rhodes’s own friends on the strength of the appointment he was to receive. “It won’t do,” was the unexpected reply he received in the morning. “I asked you a question, and you gave me a wrong answer. You are no use to me. Good day.” As regards his attitude towards women about which so much has been said there is a trifling story which also happens to be true. A beautiful and fascinating woman was a fellow-passenger with him on one of his voyages, and said, apropos of his reputation for brusqueness, that she would make him stoop to her. As he was swinging up and down the promenade after his way, she deliberately dropped her handkerchief before him. He noticed it, stepped over, and left her to recover it herself. Rude, no doubt, but he hated a sham, and the design on his gallantry was too obvious.

THE AMALGAMATOR

In laying the foundation of that wealth he was to use for the benefit of the nation, Mr. Rhodes was in partnership with Mr. C. D. Rudd, and on terms of close friendship with Rochefort Maguire, Alfred Beit, and Dr. Leander Jameson, who was known throughout the Diamond Fields as “Dr. Jim.” These were men of mark and influence with whom he often spoke on the question ever uppermost in his mind, that of making the southern continent “one red,” but the necessity was yet upon him to strengthen his resources for the coming strain. In 1875 occurred to him the great idea of amalgamating the Diamond Mining Companies, and in 1888 he finally carried through the scheme which established the industry on a settled basis. In this scheme Mr. Rhodes was pitted against the late Mr. Barney Barnato. Mr. Rhodes founded the first De Beers Mining Company, and in that area of the Fields began the combination which resulted years afterwards in the wonderful organization which today stands at the head of the diamond trade. The history of the great combine reads like a chapter out of an exciting novel. The various Companies on the Fields found themselves constantly engaged in litigation over falls of reef, floods, &c., while their mining operations were carried on with mutual distrust. While Barnato was buying up all the share he could in the Kimberley Companies, he did not neglect De Beer, and eventually he assisted Mr. Rhodes to form a combination which practically worked the whole mine. Then came the long struggle in which Barnato was fighting chiefly for mere profits, while Mr. Rhodes was determined that amalgamation should mean for him the power to extend our Empire far to the north. The first real tussle came over the French Company, which both sought to control, and for a long time Barnato held the strongest position. This ended in a compromise, but very soon both men were buying share as fast as they could, with various objects in view, and Rhodes was continually forcing Barney’s hand. At last this financial warfare reached such a pitch that it was decided that something must be done to end it. What is now an historic conference was decided upon. From early morning, all night, and up to the dawn of the next day, Rhodes, Barnato, Alfred Beit, and Woolf Joel argued over the terms of the inevitable amalgamation. At last Mr. Rhodes practically got his way, but Barney insisted on certain points which had to be conceded. Amongst them was the creation of life governors—with far-reaching financial rights—of which he was to be one. That is the very arrangement which the plan recently under consideration proposed to put an end to. Thus the great Corporation known as the De Beers Consolidated Mines was brought about, and they now practically control the Diamond Fields. To turn from these reminiscences to the history and present position of the Company, we may observe that it has revolutionized diamond mining on the Fields, and by means of a clever process of dealing with the diamonds themselves, kept up prices and placed the trade in an infinitely better position than it was in before the amalgamation. During the war, under the able direction of Mr. Rhodes, the Company practically saved Kimberley; and the last dividend paid was at the rate of 40 per cent.

AS A POLITICIAN

Mr. Rhodes was 27 years of age when he entered the Cape House of Assembly as member for Barkly West, and made his first speech in April, 1881, when he spoke on the disarmament of the Basutos in strong support of the view that the Imperial Government should control Basutoland. There were, at that time, two strong currents setting against the British power in South Africa—the one was the determination of Germany to get a footing anywhere, so that it could be used as a base from which to push on the ambitious scheme of cutting off the road into the interior of Africa, choking the British Colonies; and the other was the formation of an Afrikander nation dominating a South African Republic. The first action taken by the young member from Kimberley to combat this threatened danger, which was certainly not realized by the older Cape statesmen or by Lord Derby, was to secure from the Chief Monkoroane, in 1882, a concession over a part of Bechuanaland, then seized by a party of raiders from the Transvaal, who, following the example of the filibusters who had seized a part of Zululand, had declared a “Republic of Stellaland.” At first Mr. Rhodes encountered a dead wall of timidity in the Cape Parliament, which, but for his strong will, would have very soon succumbed to the persistent efforts and the cunning wiles of the Afrikander leaders. In the end, however, he was successful, and the road to the north—then known vaguely as “the interior”—was partially secured to the British. His second step of importance was in connection with the same district, when, on the Boers in the newly-annexed protectorate defying the Commissioner, Mr. John Mackenzie, Mr. Rhodes undertook to bring the recalcitrants round, and did so after a notable interview with the redoubtable Delarey, to whose grandchild he became godfather. The raiders of Stellaland having been appeased, the task was entrusted to Mr. Rhodes of reducing the more truculent Boers at Rooi-Grand, but Kruger intervened and issued a proclamation adding Bechuanaland to the Transvaal. People who talk so glibly about the wickedness of the Jameson raid have short memories. The Boers on three occasions had audaciously taken possession of British territory, and Kruger ratified their lawless proceedings. Kruger’s proclamation was promptly met with the movement of a force under Sir Charles Warren. Then Kruger withdrew and agreed to talk the matter over. Sir Charles Warren, with Mr. Rhodes, met the Transvaal autocrat with the young Hollander Leyds at Fourteen Streams in 1885. At this first meeting the wily old Boer adopted a submissive tone; but he could not deceive the resolute young diamond digger, who grimly pressed home his points, and finally the proclamation was withdrawn. It was probably at that early meeting that Mr. Rhodes formed the opinion he many years later announced before the Committee of Inquiry. Fixing his grey eyes on Mr. Chamberlain and nodding his great head at the Colonial Secretary, he said: “In dealing with Kruger you must be firm. Be firm, and he will give way. I may be wrong, but that is my opinion.” The words were spoken to the keen, alert statesman, and there can be no doubt they were noted. Mr. Chamberlain was firm, and before his firmness, if Kruger did not collapse, he at any rate disclosed the real nature of his plans, which up to that time he had kept hid. Shortly after the final settlement in Bechuanaland, Mr. Rhodes took a step which strengthened his position enormously with the Dutch. He had made some promises to Delarey and the Stellaland Boers. These were not observed by Sir Charles Warren, and Rhodes broke away from the strong Imperial feeling he had himself fanned into existence by strongly opposing Sir Charles Warren. Mr. Rhodes was right. It was of more importance that Dutch and English should live in friendship than that there should be a dispute over a few farms, the matter in question. He has always endeavoured to keep the Dutch in the Cape on his side, sometimes to the dismay of the English Colonists, who had reason to dread the great progress made by the Bond.

In 1889, Mr. Rhodes again was matched against Paul Kruger, who developed then a plan he had in his mind to take over the rich territory, the “interior” of the Colonists, the hunting ground of Dutch and English “voortrekkers,” lying between the Limpopo and the Zambesi. The Boers had actually begun their trek, and now was the time for him to make his first great stride to the north if the great plans he had nurtured and worked for were to take shape. He acted at once, and from the mission of Mr. Moffat to Lobengula sprang the Chartered Company, and Rhodesia, with all the vast enterprises those names suggest. In 1881 Mr. Rhodes took his seat as a young member unknown outside of Kimberley; in 1884 he was a Minister of the Crown, the youngest Treasurer-General who has ever come forward with a budget speech; from July 17, 1890, to May, 1893, he was Prime Minister of the Cape with a world-wide reputation; from May 4, 1893, to January 12, 1896, he continued to carry on the Government as Premier with a reconstructed Ministry. Then came the Jameson raid, and since 1896 he has shaken himself free of all efforts to hold him down, maintaining always his old ascendancy in the hearts of the loyalists, feared and hated by the band of Little Englanders, and respected by the heads of Great Powers, one of whom, in the person of Emperor William, was pleased to meet the greatest Englishman of his time. If a German had done for Germany but half what Mr. Rhodes has done for the Empire, his place in the affections of his countrymen would have been promptly proclaimed and not hidden. Mr. Rhodes has left his mark on the statutes of the Cape in the “Glen Grey Act,” introduced in 1894, giving local self-government to natives, and securing them in their titles to land. His mind was not, however, concentrated on the need of the Colony solely; for the time had not come, was not to come, when, relieved of the pressure of his great schemes to the north, he could have tackled the problems of the Old Colony. In his own way, it is true, he gave a line to the Colony in the necessity for irrigation, by building the “Rhodes dam” in the Matoppos, in encouraging production by opening out some of the rich land about the Paarl, and by contributing thoughtful suggestions for the settling of agriculturists on the land, and he has always worked for friendly relations between Dutch and English. In one of the last speeches he made at Cape Town he made an appeal to the white races to sink their differences and work together.

AS AN IMPERIALIST

As an Imperialist Mr. Rhodes has not played his leading part in a small theatre before a limited audience, but before the world, and Imperialism as a live force has received a greater inspiration from him than from any living statesman. Public opinion in England, as we pointed out recently, has within recent years undergone a complete change, in widening its range from purely insular matters to the affairs of the Empire at large. The English people have got into close touch with the Colonies. The “sane Imperialism” which Lord Rosebery has written on his cleaned slate is merely another rendering of the “practical Imperialism” which is extending its conquest under the powerful direction of Mr. Chamberlain, and both statesmen owe to Mr. Rhodes the enormous advantage of finding the ground already prepared. Imperialism had no grip on the imagination of the people until Mr. Rhodes began to build. Then there was something in the spectacle of a solitary Englishman tackling single-handed a task which successive British Governments had shunned, that went right home to the hearts of a race of men who have raised the greatest Empire in the world, though Governments remained timid or indifferent. We had in South Africa an illustration, that was enough to disgust the most ardent Colonial Imperialist, of the feeble, vacillating methods pursued by the Home Government in regard to matters of Imperial interest. Over the offer of Delagoa Bay, over the Trans-Imperial interest. Over the offer of Delagoa Bay, over the Transvaal, over the seizure of Damaraland by Germany, over the recall of Sir Bartle Frere, the Government blundered helplessly through doubt to surrender. There was an insatiable passion to surrender everything, to limit responsibilities, to retire timidly into the burrow, there to tremble and flinch whenever a foreign Government rattled its saber. The “white rabbits” among the British statesmen were terrified when Lord Beaconsfield brought off his brilliant stroke in connection with the Suez Canal, and they tried to intimidate the British people later on with somber prophecies of disaster in Egypt. Under this sort of leading, Imperialism in England, which flared up fitfully under Beaconsfield, appeared dead; but when Mr. Rhodes supplied the test the old feeling was there ready to respond to the touch of a strong, resolute spirit, and to confound the cowardly doctrines of a melancholy school of pedants. There is nothing more certain than this, that the welfare and prosperity of the people in these Islands depend on the development of closer political and trade relations with the Colonies. The greatness of Mr. Rhodes’s labours is not so much that he added new territory to the Empire, but that he taught the people of England, as other men in former centuries had done, how to use and how to defend its great heritage. He was the mark of venomous attack, but the man of action has ever been incomprehensible to the work-spinner, bound hand and foot to some fetish called a “principle.” Warren Hastings, Clive, Beaconsfield, Gordon, Cromer, were all in turn the mark of attack by men who are constitutionally incapable of facing a risk. The other day they banded themselves against Sir Bartle Frere, then against Mr. Rhodes, today against Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Milner, tomorrow possibly against Lord Rosebery, but their attack has lost its sting. They pulled down Sir Bartle Frere, but Mr. Rhodes has by his work made it impossible to repeat the mischief, for the majority of the British race today are on the side of the men of action. That crowns the work built up for the Empire by the South African statesman. To him is the credit of having prepared the soil in a manner no other man could have so soon achieved, because no other man living had the combination of qualities, the means, and the same indomitable will for the Titanic task he undertook alone, when the British Government would not undertake the responsibility. If there had been no Rhodes in South Africa, Germany would have been astride the Continent, Dutch Republicanism would have been ascendant in the south, Imperialism would have been a sickly growth in the United Kingdom, and the other great Colonies, disgusted at the weakness and blundering of the Home Government, would be discussing, as before, the advisability of cutting the painter. The Empire today is knit together, stronger, more compact, and inspired with the ardent spirit of the younger partners, than ever before in its history. To Cecil Rhodes is the honour and the right of having inspired the manhood of the British race with a true sense of its duties and its responsibilities.

MR. RHODES IN THE CITY

London, it can be said, loved Mr. Rhodes. It followed his career with delighted interest, and when, on rare occasions, he spoke in the City, crowds waited for hours to see and cheer him. The last public appearance of Mr. Rhodes in London was at the meeting of the Chartered Company at Cannon Street Hotel in May, 1899. He was there to place before the shareholders his plans for the extension of that wonderful railway enterprise which for boldness of conception and swiftness of execution stands second only to his work of securing for England the heart of the Continent. Mr. E. P. Mathers, in his work “Zambesia,” published over 10 years ago, foretold that development in the words: “Book from the Cape to Cairo via the Victoria Falls.” The speech he then made showed his mastery of finance and his hold on the imagination of City men, who are not given to emotion as a rule. He spoke for an hour and a quarter, and the impression made on us was one of enormous force of will and personal magnetism. There was no eloquence, no sentiment in his rugged working, not a single trick of the elocutionist; but back of him there was the romance of his work, and the immense power of his personality. Africa loomed behind him, and the history he had already written across it with an indomitable will that left his comrades panting far behind, and that confounded his detractors. What mattered the manner of his speech—since he was hewing history out of the rough? One might as well complain of the chips flying from the sculptor’s chisel without giving regard to the imperishable form taking shape out of the marble block. So they sat or stood and listened, absorbed, to the plain unfolding of Imperial plans. Mr. Rhodes made most of his gestures with his head. He “headed” off each important point as he had headed off Kruger from Matabeleland; then he would throw his chin up, and hitch his broad shoulders, but all the time the massive head, with the strongly-lined face and crown of wavy iron-grey hair, would be rolling from side to side. So he drove his arguments before him, and swept the audience along. Even his railways he referred to under commonplace numbers: Railway No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, No. 4. What he wanted was to drive home his plan. “I have a proposal to make,” he said, after he had demonstrated that Rhodesia was: A White Man’s Country; A Pastoral Country; a Payable Gold Mining Country; A Peaceful Country; and A Country with a Great Future.

The proposal was colossal—it was in connection with his railway scheme—but first he referred to Railway No. 4. The imagination of the shareholders reeled under this familiar reference to the Grand Trans-African Cape-to-Cairo—with the Lakes, the Nile, the Sphynx, the Pyramids, Pharaoh, Napoleon and the Sirdar included—and the shade of Gordon standing on the roof at Khartoum, looking for the help that never came, or came too late. Gordon had done his work, armed with a switch, upright as the day, simple as a child, lonely and heroic. And Cecil Rhodes, one of Gordon’s young men, continued Gordon’s work with his Railway No. 4, out of the confidence he had won, in the face of a superstition as dark as that of the Mahdists (the superstition of the Little Englanders that expansion is a national sin), and out of the foundations of a country he had already built up to serve as a stepping-off place to the north. His railway scheme then included 750 miles, and it was touching this 750 miles through “your own territory,” that Mr. Rhodes made the tremendous proposal that was yet not to alarm the shareholders. He had asked for a Government guarantee, “it was not much to ask,” but Government had declined, and, well—Mr. Rhodes threw his head back, as much as to say, he would carry that line through, with or without Government support. “Leave it to us,” said a shareholder, and that was what Mr. Rhodes intended to do, after remarking that £1,700,000 had already been guaranteed: £200,000 by himself; £500,000 by Mr. Beit; £500,000 by a group of financiers; £500,000 by the gold mining companies. That much already guaranteed out of the £3,000,000 required. The meeting took a deep breath, and then capitulated to the resistless purpose of the man who, left by the Government to sink or swim in mid-stream, had landed on the farther shore, and drawn after him £1,700,000! They felt in their pockets, made a mental calculation of their bank balances, and jumped in after him. “We’re in it,” said an enthusiastic shouter in the gallery, and that summed up the feeling. Finally came the proud note in the speech that sums up his work, that might well be written on his monument, “We have not lost our capacity for administering new countries.” And after that followed the home-thrust, “What, however, is the use of taking up new countries if you know that everything may be worked up and distributed by someone else.” His railways run in and out of Bulawayo, where only a few years ago back Lo Ben the tyrant ruled with a blood-stained assegai by the dread inspired by his man-slaying fighting machine. The Mashonas, who skulked in the mountains like baboons, have come down into the plains to plough and sow in peace, with no terrible shadow of the “Great Black One” over them. The hand of Rhodes gathered in Matabeleland and Mashonaland, and there is now an unbroken stretch of red to Tanganyika, with the projected course of the trans-Continental railway running through. In thinking of the greatness of the task, with its unceasing demands on his attention, the strain on his will, one is left astounded at the progress he made. Disappointments be met at every turn, checks he encountered that would have shaken Governments, and the bitterest and most vindictive opposition, but nothing could stop him. In loneliness Mr. Rhodes has done much of his work. On a larger platform, if he had been spared, with strong men to back him, he might, had he lived, have played a yet greater part in the fortunes of the Empire. With the material at his hands, often defective, he raised up such a monument to his fame as no single Englishman yet has achieved, and his fame was not the goal of his labours. He builded for his country, not “better than he knew,” for he had the clear gaze that looks ahead and the judgment that weighs and calculates, but better than we in this generation can judge.

SOME EXTRACTS FROM “SOUTH AFRICA”

OUR PAST APPRECIATIONS OF THE GREAT STATESMAN

From among the very many references that, during the past fourteen years, have been made in the columns of South Africa to the great man whose loss is now being mourned in all parts of the Empire, and especially in the country he knew and loved so well, we select the following:--

HIS PRIVY COUNCILLORSHIP

On January 5, 1895, upon Mr. Rhodes’s elevation to the dignity of a Privy Councillor, we wrote: “It is of very happy augury for South Africa in this new year that Mr. Rhodes should have been honoured in the way which it is our pleasure to record. We can well believe that he himself appreciates the form of honour bestowed very much the more because it has not come in the form of merely titular distinction. There is probably no man in the whole Empire to whom mere rank is but the guinea stamp, and who is so accustomed if he accepts aught for himself in the way of recognition to look for this last in some form fitting the character of the services rendered. It has been well said that Mr. Rhodes has been making Imperial history on a large scale for many years past very much to the advantage of Downing Street. He will for the future have an opportunity of playing a very prominent part in the making of Imperial politics. If in the past there has been any unwillingness on the part of the Home Government to boldly state the measure and extent of their indebtedness to his advice, it has, we think, been fully made up for by this latest manifestation of satisfaction and good sentiments. And yet again the bestowal of the honour is probably the most emphatic declaration which could be made of the Imperial Government’s opinion that in the part he has been playing, and more especially within the past eighteen months, in South Africa, Mr. Rhodes has been actuated by an ideal which most completely represents the English spirit at its best.”

HE STOOD FOR EMPIRE

In South Africa for January 9, 1897, we find the following: “To the Cape Colonists Mr. Rhodes is the living symbol of all that is best in the British connection. A true type of the Anglo-Saxon, he has shown that his life’s work is to annex unoccupied Africa to the British Empire, and to fuse into a contented nation the homogeneous peoples now calling South Africa home. This is the policy which has again been endorsed in such a marked and memorable manner by the Cape Colonists. They admit the extreme provocation which caused it, but they have not condoned the Jameson raid, as the Little Englanders scheme to make out. They have endeavoured to restore that event to its true place in history. They are determined that the right proportions of recent events and circumstances in South Africa shall at last become manifest. They have decreed that Paul Kruger must fall into line with the other States of South Africa, not that they are to be compelled to fall into line with him….We have never said that Mr. Cecil Rhodes is a perfect man. All the same, we maintain that he is the greatest statesman South Africa has ever seen, or perhaps may ever see. Men like Mr. Rhodes illuminate centuries of history, and he is to be taken as he is, with such of the imperfections as have fallen to his share as one of frail humanity. Down the long illustrious roll of English statesmen we much question if one stands out with fewer blemishes.”

HIS GREAT CAREER

On January 14, 1899, when the great Empire builder had just arrived in England, we wrote: “Mr. Rhodes goes on conquering and to conquer. No sooner has he placed the seal of success upon one great enterprise of pith and moment than another is attacked with characteristic energy and with that marvelous previsive faculty which his enemies envy, and his friends know well to be the touchstone of his great and successive achievements in South Africa. He is in England today a living modern demonstration of Demosthenes’ great dictum that the prime quality of a statesman is foresight, and a witness to the fact that there is no limit to the range of his political experiments or his combative powers and resource…It cannot be gainsaid, upon a review of the last three anxious years, that Mr. Rhodes, the Cape ex-Premier, has been enabled to turn to greater and far more practical effect the opportunities which amidst the hundred and one official ties, the cabals, and the intrigues which the crowd of smaller men would have manufactured continually against him…Through good report and evil report—the latter, of course, predominating—Mr. Rhodes has approached, like the generals of ancient Rome, his triumphus.”

In South Africa for March 18, 1899, we took the liberty of summing up Mr. Rhodes and his policy as follows: “Mr. Rhodes’s African policy is fast concreting to a finish, for where the contracts are made and terms agreed for railways and telegraph the peoples of South Africa will federate under the British Flag as best for one and best for all. Mr. Rhodes then will take up his larger work, the practical federation of the Empire—his health keeping good; he is young yet, and he cannot avoid or dodge his destiny, and it is well for Britons to keep that destiny in view, for it is theirs and their children’s much more than Mr. Rhodes’s. Mr. Rhodes is a man who came to the surface in the Eighties, that troubled decade when the Derbys, the Ripons, and the Kimberleys of England were busy throwing away the national heritage, and when Bismarck was as busy picking it all up. The influence of the Colonial and Foreign Office of the Eighties is still with us, and it means that the heritage of the Empire will ever be in danger while left to such tradition. Mr. Rhodes wants for the Empire and for his race all that belongs to them by the primogeniture of discovery and of sacrifice, and he will take nothing less, and as he wants nothing which clearly belongs to others his position is strong and unassailable by bluff. Bluff has despoiled us of much of our heritage, but never in any sphere where Rhodes had a say; he ever stood for England, and would not be bluffed, and further compelled in the Eighties and the early Nineties the Mother Country’s officials to stand fast against bluff. Just as the heart of the English-speaking race goes out to Kipling, so it goes out to Rhodes; both embody all that is sane and healthy and strong in our British character. The Press and the persons that belittled Rhodes in the dark days of 1896, now acclaim him as hero and tribune; but Mr. Rhodes has his destiny, and he quietly but steadily obeys that destiny, irrespective of the censure or plaudits of Demos, or of the brief authority of Ministers who, with narrow perception or personal jealousy, think they can damn destiny.” Unfortunately, the doubt which we expressed in regard to Mr. Rhodes’s health has been sadly justified; and while never flagging in his work for the Empire, he was during the last years of his life, most seriously trammeled by the war into which Mr. Kruger plunged South Africa at the close of 1899.

RHODES OR KRUGER?

Writing on May 6, 1899, we said: “When the history of today in South Africa comes to be written, two figures of heroic proportions will stand out boldly on its pages. They are the figures of Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Kruger. Mr. Kruger is the lingering shadow of the Past, not altogether dark, but shining with a certain luminosity borrowed from the constellations of the modern world. Mr. Rhodes is the prism in which are refracted the rays of a bright Future. From him the light streams forth in many colours upon the dark screen of England’s Imperial destiny. Three years ago his star seemed to have suffered a sudden eclipse. Today it shines forth more brightly than ever in the very heart of that glorious Empire for which he has toiled. His fellow-countrymen recognize in him the embodiment and the coming fulfillment of their national hopes. He is the incarnation of the New Spirit of Imperial Duty, the prince of patriots, bearing the crest of triumphant democracy. Mr. Kruger, on the other hand, is a colossal anachronism, a galvanized corpse, in which all the Impotencies of the Past struggle frantically to resist the decree for their won annihilation. It is thus that the two men stand contrasted today. Let the civilized world look upon the one picture and upon the other, and then pass judgment. Already there are indications that the verdict cannot much longer be delayed. In the Transvaal, the sullen mutterings of discontent grow louder and louder, and they are echoed faintly yet sympathetically in the hearts of the British public. Meanwhile Rhodesia basks beneath the rising sun of prosperity.”

THE GOSPEL OF CONCILIATION

In our issue of November 10, 1900, dealing with the speech of Mr. Rhodes at Cape Town on October 10, we said: “There was no note of provocation in his speech, and he repressed the temptation, which must have been strong, to triumph over the numerous enemies who had pursued him with extraordinary bitterness since that dark hour when all his great schemes were in danger of irretrievable ruin owing to one headstrong act. The time of gloom has passed; but he never was greater than when he staggered on under his vast burdens alone—a mark for the derision of the small, a target for the slashing blows of prominent statesmen—until, by his courage, sagacity, and self-restraint, he gained a yet wider share of confidence than was his before. And now he looks back on his Spion Kop calmly, for the way is straightened before him again, and his services to the Empire are no longer dwarfed under the shadow of that one catastrophe. Great events have shaped the policy he was slowly unfolding with a sureness and speed that was beyond the means at his disposal, and he takes up the reins with the obstacles behind him and a clear road ahead. How is he himself equipped to resume the task which he marked out, that of the consolidation of British interests in South Africa, with equal rights for all south of the Zambesi? His speech provides the answer; and it is bare justice to admit that he is better fitted now for this work than he was when a few years ago he had met with no check. The Rhodes of today is more of a statesman than when he went through the mill—more tolerant, more patient, and more disposed to give credit to the finer qualities of the people. It was said the ruling canon of Mr. Rhodes in the old days was that every man had his price, though the truth of the statement has been denied; but today he says ‘teach the boys at school to be considerate to the Dutch,’ remember that the heart of the Boer is sore, and ‘when you meet these people on the veld take special care to be friendly.’ A more difficult problem than the federation of provinces in South Africa is the union of the people, and in his speech Mr. Rhodes applies himself more to the latter than to the former. He returns to the question again and again, first pleading with the Dutch Colonists to leave their camp, and then urging on the members of the South African League to make the way easy for their Dutch fellow-countrymen.”

MR. RHODES’S SPEECHES

SOME OF THE MOST NOTABLE UTTERANCES OF THE RIGHT HON. GENTLEMAN.

Those who followed Mr. Rhodes’s political life, or only a portion of it, will not need to be reminded of his remarkable power as an orator, a power that rested less in the beauty or forcefulness of the language used than in the outstanding importance of the subjects touched upon and the masterly manner in which they were invariably treated. Mr. Rhodes’s political life began with his appearance in the Cape Legislative Assembly, where he made his first speech on April 19, 1881. The Crown Colony of Griqualand West, taken overy by Sir Henry Barkly in 1871, under the cession from the chief Waterboer, and as a result of arbitration, had become an integral part of the Cape Colony only a short time before, in October, 1880. Mr. Rhodes was elected as its first member by the rural constituency of Barkly West, not far from Kimberley, and he held the seat ever after. Mr. Rhodes entered upon political life with the ambitious and far-reaching scheme of winning the Empire of the North for England, and thus of building up a United South Africa in which the hegemony, at least, was to belong to the British Empire.

AN EARLY STATEMENT OF HIS VIEWS

His maiden speech, however, dealt only with the question of Colonel Griffith’s views upon Native disarmament in Basutoland, to which he was opposed as unjust to the natives, and is a mere adumbration of his next speech on the same question (April 25, 1881), in the course of which he said: “I wish to defend my attitude as an independent member, and I thank the House for the cordial welcome they have given to the Griqualand West members. I am in nearly the same position as the senior member for Kimberley in saying that the Disarmament Act ought not to have been applied to Basutoland. We are well aware at the Fields that there will be war. Our boys tell us so. I have a hundred of my own, so I know. My boys say, ‘we cannot help it, Baas; we mean fighting.’ We have been charged with localism in Griqualand West, but so far from the charge being true, it is my belief that localism is the curse of South Africa. The honourable member for the Paarl may prefer a railway to Bloemfontein, but where else should any railway extension go than to Kimberley? It does not matter to the Griqualand West members which party is in power; any railway extension at all must come to Kimberley. The Opposition say they are in favour of a ‘moderate extension,’ and even a moderate extension must come to Kimberley…We have heard a great deal about the rabid Anglo-Saxonism of Kimberley, I have seen it stated in a very able letter in the Cape Argus, but the truth is we are quite cosmopolitan at Kimberley, having men of all nations there…For myself I would have accepted the position of leaving the settlement of affairs to the Mother Country; but when I say that I do not mean that the Mother Country should have the settlement and this country the responsibilities. I believe that if we go on much longer, and the proposal that the Mother Country should take the extra-Colonial territories were to be put to the country, it would be agreed to unanimously.” Mr. Rhodes’s advocacy of the extension of the railway to Kimberley, of course with an immediate view to the advantage of the Diamond Fields population, but also, as he saw clearly, as a first step towards his goal, the North, will be noted. It will also be noted that he was then, as since, in favour of a uniform native policy, and at that time, and for some time after, looked to the Imperial Government to undertake it, the Cape Colony being, as a matter of fact, unable to face the expense.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE DUTCH PARTY

His next speech (June 21, 1881) had to do with an important step of the Dutch party in the House of Assembly, which was one of the first signs of the racial ambition awakened by the success of the Transvaal revolt and the surrender of the British Government. It was made in the debate on the motion of the Rev. W. P. de Villiers for amending the 89^th section of the Constitution ordinance by allowing the use of the Dutch language in Parliament. Mr. Rhodes seconded Mr. Fuller’s amendment. “That this House, while willing to give the fullest consideration to the proposed change in the 89^th section of the Constitution ordinance, is not prepared at this late period of the session to adopt the same.” Mr. Rhodes said: “The honourable member has told us ‘You will have to grant it.’ It is not a case of ‘have’ at all. If the country really desires it, the House is as willing to grant it as anything else; but we do not want to be dictated to by the honourable member. He says we shall ‘have’ to do it; I say: No, but we shall do it if we think it right to do it. The honourable member has deprecated agitation. I say that we ought to have agitation. We ought to learn whether the constituencies are really desirous of this change.”

INFLUENCING PUBLIC OPINION

The next speech was delivered at Kimberley, and the comment thereon is interesting as indicating that the speaker’s power of swaying public opinion was being felt. The Cape Argus of August 3, 1881, observes: “Those whose only knowledge of Mr. Rhodes’s powers as a speaker is derived from a perusal of the reports of his speeches in the Cape Town papers were certainly not prepared for the exhibition of oratorical skill and dialectic power with which they were favoured by the youthful member for Barkly. Beginning with a dexterous use of the ‘old digger’ argumentum ad hominem, Mr. Rhodes proceeded to assert that from the beginning he had opposed the application of the disarmament policy to the Basutos. He had known their loyalty, their industry, and their potential civilization; and as many a brother digger had said to him: ‘After all we sold them the guns; they bought them out of their hard-earned wages; and it is hard lines to go now and make them give them up again.’ But the speaker continued, whatever his private opinion about the policy, he felt bound, in face of overt rebellion, to support the Government, which staked its existence on suppressing it…Mr. Rhodes sat down amid a perfect tempest of cheering, having made what even his political opponents admitted to be the speech of the evening, and having, we believe, had the gratification of converting several influential citizens to his view of public affairs.”

A STRUGGLE FOR THE NORTHERN ROUTE

The subject of the Griqualand West boundaries involved the immediate practical purpose of Mr. Rhodes’s entrance into political life, namely, the expansion of the British Empire to the North. It was through the territory in question that the trade route to the north, the way to the hinterland, was to be secured, the territory, that is, through which now runs the railway to Bulawayo. On this question on Thursday, May 5, 1882, Mr. Rhodes moved the adjournment of the House. “The boundary,” he said “laid down by the Government was totally different from that provided by Sir Henry Barkly. He believed that the chosen line was laid down from political considerations with regard to native questions. Without saying anything offensive to them, it was (he said) well known that parties of freebooters were anxious to establish a new republic on the border, and this colony ought not to alter the boundaries of the country as handed over to us.” In a speech delivered in the Cape House on May 25, 1882, he said that the effect of the change had been to cut off territory belonging to us, and to leave it in the hands of freebooters, who were, he added, worth nothing but the rifles they carried with them. “The Transvaal,” he said, “had kept a commando on the borders,” a statement of the significance of which he had evidently at that time no conception.

A UNITED STATES OF SOUTH AFRICA

The next important speech was made in the Cape House on the Basutoland Annexation Bill, July 18, 1883. “I believe,” said Mr. Rhodes, “in a United States of South Africa, but as a portion of the British Empire;” and this he contrasted significantly with the opposite belief of the member for Stellenbosch, Mr. Hofmeyr, “a United State of South Africa under its own flag.”

VIEWS ON FISCAL MATTERS

A speech which introduces Mr. Rhodes’s views on taxation was made in the Cape House on August 1, 1883. This speech was made on the taxation proposals of the Government in support of an amendment of Mr. Fuller that this House, “while agreeing that some additional revenue may be raised by the revision of the stamps and licences and by house-duty, and by a partial revision of Customs, as well as by a moderate duty on Colonial beer, is of opinion that, under the circumstances of financial depression and embarrassment in which the country is placed, it would be more equitable to increase the excise duty on spirits than to place novel and excessive burdens on the industrial, trading, and professional classes.”

THE ROAD TO THE INTERIOR

A most important speech was made by Mr. Rhodes in the Cape House on the question upon the boundaries of Griqualand West, on August 16, 1883. Mr. Rhodes moved to Mr. Scanlan’s motion “that Her Majesty’s Government should be requested to allow the Colonial Government to be represented on the occasion of the visit of the Transvaal Deputation to London, &c.,” the following amendment: “And that in the meantime this Colony should place a Resident with the chief Mankoroane.” He said: “I feel that the House has not yet risen to the supreme importance of this question, which is far more important than the disposal of Basutoland or the Transkei. You are dealing with a question upon the proper treatment of which depends the whole future of this Colony. I look upon this Bechuanaland territory as the Suez Canal of the trade of this country, the key of its road to the interior. The House will have to wake up to what is to be its future policy. The question before us really is, whether this Colony is to be confined to its present borders, or whether it is to become the dominant state in South Africa; whether, in fact, it is to spread its civilization over the interior…I respect the Transvaal, but as politicians we have to look to our position as the future paramount State in South Africa; and we see, therefore, that any settlement must be made jointly with the Cape Colony, which must retain the trade of the interior and must remain the dominant State in South Africa.” Here we have Mr. Rhodes, well aware that his policy of Imperial expansion must be kept in the background, pressing the retention of what he happily called the “Suez Canal” to the interior by means of the appeal to the self-interest of the Colony and its representatives, and very carefully avoiding any hint of rivalry as to this territory with the Transvaal, with the ambition of which, for expansion, a large section of Dutch members, headed by Mr. Hofmeyr, were in full sympathy. At the same time Mr. Rhodes dwelt sagaciously upon the mischief to Cape interests which would result from the prohibitive tariffs of the Transvaal, designed to divert the whole trade to itself. But this time the Transvaal was hard at work to secure the key to the interior.

THE NATIVE LIQUOR QUESTION

Expansion to the north, though his chief concern, did not entirely occupy Mr. Rhodes’s mind at this period, as the next speech—a speech on the Liquor Licensing Bill, September 1883—shows. Mr. Rhodes spoke (and voted in the minority) in support of Mr. Robertson’s amendment, the object of which was to keep liquor from the natives, liquor being, according to Mr. Rhodes’s native policy, the same then as now—the curse of the black man.

Early in 1884 Mr. Rhodes had his first experience of office, being for a short time (some six weeks) Treasurer-General in Sir Thomas Scanlan’s Government, about the time when he refused Gordon’s invitation to join him at Khartoum.

A GREAT EXPANSIONIST SPEECH

A rather long speech made on June 30, 1885, in the Cape House gives a clear idea of Mr. Rhodes’s aim in politics and of what he means by Imperialism, and gives also the main facts of the Bechuanaland settlement, then fresh in the minds of his hearers. “I feel,” said he, “that, as we were the dominant State in South Africa, it is our duty, at all hazards, to keep open the route to the interior which is to be found in Bechuanaland. I feel even more than that. Some members on the other side may be inclined to say that it is better that the Transvaal should absorb all the interior, and that the Transvaal has a right to do it, as being the State nearest to the interior. It is not that they want to aggrandize the Transvaal, but because they feel that the absorption of native territory is more suitable to the Transvaal Government than to our own. I feel further this, that there is a real danger owing to the outlet at Delagoa Bay, and the policy initiated at Pretoria, by which numerous adventurers had been able to obtain concessions and bring about a prohibitive tariff. What I feel is that with these influences at Pretoria, our interior trade is seriously threatened; and with the influences I speak of allowed to block the way to the interior, we shall lose all desire for the future union of South Africa. The only possibility of union is in our being able to regard the inhabitants of the Transvaal just as we regard our own fellow-colonists. This union is not to be reached as the late Sir Bartle Frere wanted to reach the Zambesi—all in a moment; I say it with all respect to that name. It is with this idea that I went into politics; this is what I have steadily advocated throughout my political life. I have entered into various local questions; but I have kept this end steadily in view as the ultimate goal of my politics…Do you think that if the Transvaal had Bechuanaland it would be allowed to keep it? Would not Bismarck have some quarrel with the Transvaal; and without resources, without men, what could they do? Germany would come across from her settlement at Angra Pequena. There would be some excuse to pick a quarrel—some question of brandy, or guns, or something—and then Germany would stretch from Angra Pequena to Delagoa Bay. I was never more satisfied with my own views than when I saw the recent development of the policy of Germany. What was the bar in Germany’s way? Bechuanaland. What was the use to her of a few sand-heaps at Angra Pequena, and what was the use of the arid deserts between Angra Pequena and the interior, with this English and Colonial bar between her and the Transvaal? If we were to stop at Griqualand West, the ambitious objects of Germany would be attained. There is then good ground for England’s interference in this country.”

ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE TRANSVAAL

In the period between 1885 and 1888, Mr. Rhodes did not take a very active part in politics at the Cape, partly because these politics were largely merely local, and partly because he was otherwise engaged. As early as the first half of 1886, Mr. Rhodes was at work to carry through this policy of commercial and railway union with the Transvaal, in the hope that the contact of civilization and the influence of closer intercourse would act on the Boer State and gradually remove its keen racial feeling, as the following extract from a speech in the Cape House (May 20, 1886) shows: “I will put the case before the House from two points of view—the sentimental and the commercial. The sentiment of the House is distinctly that the tendency of the action of the House should be to draw us closer together with the Transvaal and the Free State. But what is staring the House in the face at the present moment is that, unless action is taken at once, the Delagoa Bay railroad will be carried out. That means that if the Delagoa Bay railway is carried out, we shall not get a continuation of the line from Kimberley to Pretoria. Commercial people will be always inspiring or instilling into the rulers of the Transvaal hostile action against the Cape Colony. In other words, if the Delagoa Bay railway is carried out, the real union of South Africa will be indefinitely deferred…I believe that arrangements could be made for the extension of the railway from Kimberley, and that would, at any rate, unite us with Pretoria, and, as I firmly believe, would stop the Delagoa Bay railway…If the Delagoa Bay railway is going to develop—and I believe it is—that trade is bound to go either from Delagoa Bay or from Natal. Because if we do not make a Customs Union with the Transvaal, the people of Natal are quite sharp enough to see that they must do something. Before we know what we are about, we shall hear of a Customs Union between Natal, the Orange Free State, Delagoa Bay, and Bechuanaland, and then what shall we do?....I think the House should weigh the question seriously, and meet it, not in a petty spirit, but in a broad spirit, and with the idea always before us that we should be the dominant State of South Africa, and should carry out the union of the South African States. If that were done, the authorities at Pretoria would co-operate with us rather than turn their views towards Delagoa Bay.”

RELATIONS WITH THE CAPE DUTCH

With the closely related idea of winning political influence with the Cape Dutch, and using it to diminish racial distinctions and racial feeling at the Cape, Mr. Rhodes had by this time begun to make practical concessions to the material interests of the Dutch farming electorate which was largely interested in wine-growing and brandy-making, as well as in the growth of corn. A speech, interesting for its statement of his views on Protection, was made in the Cape Parliament on the Hertz Valley Irrigation Works, May 7, 1886. Mr. Rhodes moved that the House go into Committee to consider the following motion: “That it is expedient to increase the area of land capable of being made available for agricultural purposes, and it is desirable to encourage the construction of works for placing land under irrigation; and it is the opinion of this House that the recommendations of the hydraulic engineer for the irrigation of the Hartz River Valley, situated in the district of Barkly West, between the Vaal and Hartz Rivers, should be carried out if possible; and that as the financial condition of the Colony will not warrant the expenditure of public money on the said work, this House is prepared to recommend a free grant of such Crown lands as are situated between the Hartz and Vaal Rivers to any join-stock company or individual who may be prepared to carry out, to the satisfaction of the Government, the plan No. 2 laid before Parliament by the Hydraulic Engineer for the irrigation of the said Hartz River Valley, at a cost not exceeding £120,000.” In the course of his remarks, Mr. Rhodes said: “The Protection party has been led away by the cry for cotton and woolen manufactures; the real protection is to stop the drain on the country by its payment for foreign corn, and produce our own.”

THE NATIVE QUESTION

On no subject did Mr. Rhodes hold more decided, and in the opinion of South Africans, more sane views than on the native question. Speaking on June 23, 1887, in the debate on the motion for the second reading of the Parliamentary Registration Bill, he said: “If I were asked upon what we can divide, I would tell the House that there is one great crucial question upon which we can divide—the Native question…All that I say is that we have to govern the natives as a subject race. I do not go so far as the honourable member for Victoria West, who would not give the black man a vote. All I say is, that you must govern natives living under communal tenure as a subject race…We talk a great deal about there being no race question, when there is a very serious race question. What if the honourable member did let out that he wanted the native vote to counterbalance the Dutch? I myself have been burned in effigy in Colonial towns—and what for? For trying to defend English interests in South Africa. I have great respect for the Dutch party for one simple reason. I fought it upon the question of expansion to the interior, but they have born me no enmity for it, although I attained my object…If there were not a Dutch and an English question, this question of the native franchise would have been settled long ago. My honest opinion is that we would have given the native his vote because we are afraid of him…These are my politics on native affairs, and these are the politics of South Africa. Treat the natives as a subject people as long as they continue in a state of barbarism and communal tenure; be the lords over them, and let them be a subject race, and keep the liquor from them.”

THE BALLOT BILL

Speaking on July 25, 1888, upon the attempt to introduce special legislation for Kimberley, Mr. Rhodes said: “Why should we alter the present representation? Is there any injustice in it? I deny that Kimberley wants the ballot, and challenge anyone to prove that it does…I wish that, when we legislate for one part of the community, we should legislate for another. Do not make a separation again on the ballot question. If you desire that it should be extended to the whole of the Colony, or even to the towns of the Colony, I would agree to that…I believe the feeling of members of the Government is that they would like to watch the next election to see if undue influence is used with our employes.”

A SPEECH ON THE RAILWAY EXTENSION BILL, then before the Cape Parliament, was made at the beginning of August, 1888, and is a strong argument for a considerate and conciliatory policy towards the Transvaal, no doubt largely conditioned by the natural desire in view of the coming Northern expansion, to substitute a railway to Mafeking for a railway to the Vaal River.

MR. RHODES AND PAUL KRUGER

A speech made in the Cape House on July 23, 1888, is interesting both for the confident attitude of the speaker and for its allusions. It alludes to the changed feeling at the Cape on the subject of northward expansion. This speech contains also an interesting appreciation of President Kruger’s position, “that man is the dictator of the Transvaal,” and a generous expression of pity for the failure of the great champion of an Independent Republican South Africa, together with an allusion to his difficulties and his mistakes—among others the establishment of a Hollander clique in the administration at Pretoria. “Looking to the future,” said Mr. Rhodes, “we must consider our natural position, and in this inquiry we must consider Natal and Delagoa Bay. If Delagoa Bay has not the advantage of natural position with regard to the gold fields, I am sure Natal has. If we take the four hundred and fifty miles from Natal as against eight or nine hundred miles from the Cape, I feel certain that the heavy goods traffic in the Fields will go through Natal. Under the circumstances, what is the best thing for the Cape Colony? I would say a perfectly splendid traffic, provided the Transvaal would admit it, in passengers and light goods. But passengers always desire to be put down on the spot of their destination. Whether we can do this depends on the sanction of the Transvaal, which is Paul Kruger. If we put our foot down too soon now, we may find Paul Kruger stopping railway extension beyond the Vaal River. Now Cape Colony is the only country in South Africa I am interested in, and in its progress alone I am concerned. What would the extended railway carry in the future, if passengers did not patronize it? It would carry Cape wines, and so forth, and perhaps some coals from the border, if the junction line was constructed. I need not linger here to impress upon the House that the essential condition of this railway extension to the Vaal River is that it should not stop at that river, but should extend to Witwatersrand.”

A GREAT STATEMENT OF POLICY

The most important speech of 1888, however, is that dealing with the whole question of northern expansion, by this time (September 28, 1888) practically assured. It was made to Mr. Rhodes’s own constituents at Barkly West, and centers very fully into the chief points of his own political life and political work up to that time. It was, in fact, says “Vindex” (one of the ablest of Mr. Rhodes’s biographers), the Apologia pro vita sua up to that time of the South African statesman. Among other things, the gift of £10,000 to Mr. Parnell is explained. In the course of the speech, Mr. Rhodes said: “There have been many things invented respecting my career. I have been told that my object was to obtain a seat in the English Parliament; but, of course, I give no heed to these rumours—there is no truth in them. It is my intention to remain attached to Cape politics, for I take a great interest in them; and I tell you candidly I have not the slightest idea of quitting South Africa for any other country. Here I can do something; but were I to go to England as a politician I should be lost in obscurity. I have been told that my desire is to enter the English Parliament, and that my contribution to the Parnell Fund was made with this object. I have the presumption to say that I believe I could at any time obtain a seat in the English Parliament without paying Mr. Parnell £10,000; and that, if ever I stood for the English Parliament, I should not stand for an Irish constituency. I gave Mr. Parnell’s cause £10,000 because in it I believe lies the key of the federal system on the basis of perfect Home Rule in every part of the Empire, and in it also the Imperial tie begins.” Proceeding, and having referred to the means by which the Boers had obtained, for a time, a footing in Stellaland, Mr. Rhodes continued: “I returned home disappointed and disgusted; and it was at that time that I began to acquire my admiration for the man who was then ruling in the Transvaal—I mean ‘Oom Paul’; for had he not conceived the noble scheme—from his point of view—of seizing the interior, of stretching his Republic across to Walfisch Bay, of making the Cape Colony hide-bound, and of ultimately seizing Delagoa Bay, and all this without a sixpence in his treasury? From my humble point of view, I felt I was embarking upon a project without an atom of support at my back. But, in my despair, a fortunate change of circumstances occurred. His Excellency the High Commissioner, with whom I was then utterly unacquainted, had grasped the fact that, if Bechuanaland was lost to us, British development in Africa was at an end. He persuaded Lord Derby to deal with the Bechuanaland question, and induced Sir Thomas Scanlan, the then Prime Minister of the Cape, to share in the obligations of the undertaking…If the much-despised Sir Thomas Scanlan had not taken this responsibility, Bechuanaland would have passed to the Transvaal, as Lord Derby was neutral on the question. Even though the Cape Colony rejected this arrangement, its being made kept the matter open, and the interior was saved to us…My ideas have always been directed towards the broad question of South African politics, and I believe that if I succeed in the object of

MY POLITICAL AMBITION, that is, the expansion of the Cape Colony to the Zambesi, I shall provide for you in the future success in the prospecting for, and the production of, gold far beyond that which has occurred to you in the development of your property on the river. I look on you as ‘waiting by the river,’ waiting for such an expansion as can only fall to this colony….My belief is that the development of South Africa should fall to that country or countries which by their progress shall show that they are best entitled to it; and I have faith that, remote as our starting point is, the development of Africa will occur through the Cape Colony; that exempt from the risks of the unhealthiness of the East and West Coasts, we shall be able to obtain the dominant position throughout the interior, starting from the Cape Colony, passing through Bechuanaland, adopting the Matabele arrangement, and so on to the Zambesi; and I have confidence that the people of the Cape Colony have the will, and the pluck, and the energy to adopt this as their inheritance. I have little more to add. Here are the

POLITICS OF SOUTH AFRICA IN A NUTSHELL.

Let us leave the Free State and the Transvaal to their own destiny. We must adopt the whole responsibility of the interior. Let us consider that as an inheritance of the Cape Colony, and let us be prepared to take that responsibility at all hazards. As for the neighbouring States, we must take responsibility as to the railway communication if they so desire it. We must propose a Customs Union on every suitable occasion; but we must always remember that the gist of the South African question lies in the extension of the Cape Colony to the Zambesi. If you, gentlemen, are prepared to take that, there is no difficulty in the future. We must endeavour to make those who live with us feel that there is no race distinction between us; whether Dutch or English, we are combined in one object; and that is, the union of the States of South Africa, without abandoning the Imperial tie. And what we mean by the Imperial tie is this, that we have the most perfect self-government internally, whilst retaining to ourselves the obligation of mutual defence against the outside world.”

THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA

About the time of the foundation of the Chartered Company the speeches were not numerous, as Mr. Rhodes’s energy was finding more congenial expression in action. An important speech of 1890 is one made as premier at Kimberley on September 6, in the course of which Mr. Rhodes said: The Government’s policy will be a South African policy. What we mean is that we will do all in our power, whilst looking after the interests of the Cape Colony, to draw closer and closer the ties between us and the neighbouring states. In pursuance of this we have arranged to meet in December next in Bloemfontein, and hope to extend the railways from Bloemfontein to the Vaal River. We feel it is a matter of time to arrive at a settlement of the various questions which divide the States of South Africa. It may not come in our time, but I believe that ultimately the different States will be united…It is customary to speak of a United South Africa as possible within the near future. If we mean a complete Union with the same flag, I see very serious difficulties. I know myself that I am not prepared at any time to forfeit my flag. I repeat, I am not prepared at any time to forfeit my flag…When I speak of South African Union I mean that we may attain to perfect free trade as to our own commodities, perfect and complete internal railway communication, and a general Customs Union, stretching from Delagoa Bay to Walfisch Bay; and if our statesmen should attain to that, I say they will have done a good work.”

IN BECHUANALAND

Not long after this Mr. Rhodes accompanied the High Commissioner in a journey to the north of Bechuanaland to visit the Colonists and the native chiefs, and in the course of this journey the High Commissioner and the Premier were entertained at a banquet at Vryburg, to which the northern railroad had just been completed. Here Mr. Rhodes, amid loud laughter, alluded to the days when he saved Bechuanaland for the Empire, and yet was informed by a high Imperial Officer (General Warren) that he was dangerous to the peace of the country. This was early in October, 1890.

MR. RHODES AND THE AFRIKANDER BOND

On March 30, 1891, we find Mr. Rhodes delivering a speech at the Annual Congress of the Afrikander Bond, a speech which emphasizes the admirable work of racial conciliation under the Imperial flag which he had been accomplishing throughout his political life. In the course of it he said: “As a Cape Colonist I hope to make Cape Town the centre of South Africa. I ask you again, as representatives of the Afrikander Bond, to assist me in carrying out that idea….Self-government is everything that you want. Do not let us dispute on that point; let us accept jointly the idea that the most incomplete internal self-government is what we are both aiming at; that self-government means that in every question in connection with this country we shall decide and we alone. I think that proposition will meet your views. If you desire the cordial and intense co-operation of the English section of this country, let us unite and be of one mind on this question of self-government. Remember that we have been trained at Home; we have our history and our nation to look back upon, and we believe that with your help it is possible to obtain that union, fulfilling in every respect your ideas of self-government, and yet you will not be asking us to forfeit our full loyalty and feeling of devotion for he Mother Country.”

A speech at Paarl (April 23, 1891) begins with the account of the cross-fire of adverse criticism to which Mr. Rhodes’s speech to the Afrikander Bond had exposed him. It was Bechuanaland all over again. Extreme Imperialists in London blamed him for being too Afrikander, while the Free State Express “slated” him for being too much an Englishman. The liberal and enlightened Imperialism of Mr. Rhodes naturally did not please either extreme.

THE FRANCHISE

The next notable speech was made in the Cape House on the proposal for an alteration of the franchise made in the form of a short resolution introduced by Mr. Hofmeyr. The proposal was to increase the votes of those who had a certain property of education qualification; a double vote to be given (1) to a man with a house worth £100 (2) member of one of the learned professions. In the course of his speech Mr. Rhodes said: “I feel that our great object should be to assimilate our franchise to that of the neighbouring States. I have before said that I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour, but I think we shall be right in considering the question of a higher franchise…I think we have been extremely liberal in granting to barbarism of forty or fifty years’ training what we have ourselves obtained only after many hundreds of years of civilization.”

AGAINST THE POLICY OF SCUTTLE

A speech made at the second annual meeting of the British South Africa Company (November 29, 1892) is important as containing Mr. Rhodes’s patent, by which the Chartered shareholders were to get their return by the pegging out for the Company by each prospector of the same number of claims which he pegs out for himself—in other words, the Company, as owners of the whole mineral wealth, were to take half the claims pegged out by each prospector, that is, finally, 50 per cent. Of the vendor scrip was to go to the Company. This is very clearly explained by Mr. Rhodes, and shown to be, taken in connection with the other conditions, no hardship whatever. Proceeding, Mr. Rhodes said: “There is a party of ‘scuttle’ in England whose idea is to retire from every portion of the globe. I ask every one of you, each in his own way, at all times and on all occasions, to oppose the party of ‘scuttle.’ I do not mean this on the basis of ‘Jingoism,’ or on the basis of the Empire on which the sun never sets, but on the basis of pure practical business….The idea that the taking up of the uncivilized portions of the world is to the advantage of the classes is erroneous; the proceeding is entirely to the advantage of the masses….It seemed to be forgotten in talking about these islands that there are thirty-six millions of people and that the islands only produce sufficient to support six millions, the other thirty millions being entirely dependent on the trade of the world. I maintain that the first duty of statesmen is to keep this question open….It is your duty wherever and whenever you can to impress upon the masses that this question of keeping control of the outer world is a matter of pleasure to the classes, but is a question of life to the masses…My plan therefore is gradually to assimilate the territory south of the Zambesi, so that when the day arrives there will be no difficulty in the change from government by charter to government by the people of the country. In addition to this work I hope that I shall be able to continue steadily with the telegraph overland.”

THE CONQUEST OF RHODESIA

At Bulawayo, on December 19, 1893, Mr. Rhodes addressed a rare audience—the assembled conquerors of Matabeleland, with the half-consumed ruins of Lo Bengula’s capital, as it were, for background. “You would,” he said, “Have thought that the English would have been satisfied. On the contrary, you have been called freebooting marauders, bloodthirsty murderers, and so on; but I know this has not been by the people of England as a whole, but only by a section of them….There are no people more loyal than your Colonists in Africa, but continued misrepresentation will alienate the most loyal….There is one pleasurable thing to remember, and that is, that a combination of Colonists and Imperial police has effected the destruction of ruthless barbarism south of the Zambesi, and established a further extension of the British Empire, and done this practically by their own unaided efforts.”

HIS GREAT IDEA

After the speech, Mr. Rhodes hurried down from Bulawayo to Cape Town, and upon his arrival was entertained at a banquet attended by representatives of all political parties, at the Good Hope Hall on January 6, 1894, where he made another striking speech. He sketched with some interesting reminiscences his work of expansion, and concluded with one of those revelations of the real man behind the politician, which are only too rare in his public utterances. “I have,” he said, “found out one thing, and that is, if you have an idea, and it is a good idea, if you will only stick to it you will come out all right. I made the seizure of the interior a paramount thing in my politics, and made everything else subordinate….I knew that Africa was the last uncivilized portion of the empire of the world, and that it must be civilized, and that those who lived at the healthy base, with the energy that they possess would be the right and proper individuals to undertake the civilization of the back country. I was fortunate in being in that position which falls to few: To have an idea, and to be able to call upon funds to support that idea.”

DIFFICULTIES FORESEEN

“Do not think for one moment that I do not recognize all the fences I have to take. It may be in the future that a fence will meet me that I cannot get over, but it is satisfactory to think that in the past, in connection with this conception of mine, I have been as yet able to surmount the fences in front of me. And I may say to you frankly that I know full well that the great success of the future rests on your support and on your approval. No man can form ideas or can carry out an undertaking on this gigantic scale unless he has the support of the people, and that is my own feeling. It is for you to decide and for you to consider carefully, irrespective of your local politics, whether in the future you can give me that cordial and hearty support. My motives have been assailed. I have many enemies, and they have insinuated many reasons for my action; but they do not understand yet the full selfishness of my ideas. I will take you into my confidence, and will say that I have a big idea that I wish to carry out, and I know full well the reward, a reward which is the highest reward a human being can attain; and that reward, Mr. Mayor, is the trust, the confidence, and the appreciation of my fellow-citizens.”

THE GLEN-GREY ACT

On moving the second reading of the Glen-Grey Act in the Cape House on July 30^th, 1894, Mr. Rhodes said: “The natives there are increasing at an enormous rate. The old diminutions by war and pestilence do not occur. Our good government prevents them from fighting, and the result is an enormous increase in numbers….No I say the natives are children. They are just emerging from barbarism. They have human minds, and I would like them to devote themselves wholly to the local matters that surround them and appeal to them. I would let them tax themselves, and give them the funds to spend on these matters—the building of roads and bridges, the making of plantations, and other such works. I propose that the House shall allow these people to tax themselves, and that the proceeds of their taxation shall be spent by them on the development of themselves and of their districts.”

RHODESIA AS AN ASSET

In his speech to the Shareholders of the Chartered Company on January 18, 1895, Mr. Rhodes gave a very full description of the condition of things in Rhodesia at that time, saying, inter alia: “Looking at the matter from a purely commercial point of view, we possess a country, with all the rights to it, in length twelve hundred miles, and in breadth an average of five hundred, and we have a debt of about £300,000 or £350,000 because we have an asset, apart from that country, in the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, of about £300,000.

AFTER THE RAID

A speech delivered at Port Elizabeth at the end of 1896 is important as laying down his intentions in politics after the catastrophe of the raid. A very significant point in this speech was the idea put forward by Mr. Rhodes of a practical solution of the Transvaal problem, namely, that the major portion of President Kruger’s burghers, his backbone of fighting men, would gradually leave the Transvaal for Rhodesia, attracted by the excellent pasturage and vast unoccupied areas, and that in Rhodesia they would become loyal citizens of the British Empire, learning by good experience of good government and intercourse with their British fellow-settlers the falseness of the notions of British tyranny and injustice with which they had been for years indoctrinated by President Kruger and his anti-British supporters. From Port Elizabeth Mr. Rhodes went to Kimberley. He had to make a speech at each of the stations, and the gist of his speeches was this. He was not going out of political life. He would stick to his seat in the Cape House and work not only for the development of the Empire he had won in the North, but also for the union of South Africa. As for the accusation that his action in Johannesburg was instigated by race feeling he gave it an unqualified denial, pointing out that his staunchest friends belonged “to the race which most of you represent here; and therefore, when at times some of my conduct, when criticized, has been referred to the question of race, I hope you know how perfectly false that is.”

THE RAID INQUIRY

It will be of interest to give Mr. Rhodes’s statement before the South African Select Committee: “From the date of the establishment of the gold industry on a large scale at Johannesburg much discontent has been caused by the restrictions and impositions placed upon it by the Transvaal Government by the corrupt administration of that Government, and by the denial of civil rights to the rapidly growing uitlander population. This discontent has gradually but steadily increased, and a considerable time ago I learnt, from my intercourse with many of the leading persons in Johannesburg, that the position of affairs there had become intolerable. After long efforts they despaired of obtaining redress by constitutional means, and were resolved to seek by extra constitutional means, such a change in the Government of the South African Republic as should give to the majority of the population possessing more than half the land, nine-tenths of the wealth, and paying nineteen-twentieths of the taxes in the country, a due share in its administration. I sympathized with, and as one largely interested in the Transvaal shared in, these grievances; and, further, as a citizen of the Cape Colony, I felt that the persistently unfriendly attitude of the Government of the South African Republic towards the Colony was the great obstacle to common action for practical purposes among the various States of South Africa. Under these circumstances I assisted the movement in Johannesburg with my purse and influence. Further, acting within my rights, in the autumn of 1895 I placed on territory under the administration of the British South Africa Company upon the borders of the Transvaal a body of troops under Dr. Jameson prepared to act in the Transvaal in certain eventualities. I did not communicate these views to the Board of Directors of the British South Africa Company. With reference to the Jameson raid, I may state that Dr. Jameson went in without my authority. Having said this, I desire to add that I am willing generally to accept the finding as to facts contained in the report of the Committee of the Cape Parliament. I must admit that in all my actions I was greatly influenced by my belief that the policy of the present Government of the South African Republic was to introduce the influence of another foreign power into the already complicated system of South Africa, and thereby render more difficult in the future the closer union of the different States.”

THE CAPE ELECTIONS OF 1898

Having devoted himself for a year or so almost entirely to the development of Rhodesia, Mr. Rhodes again came prominently before the public at the General Election in Cape Colony in 1898. In the first of his election speeches, made at Good Hope Hall, on March 12, Mr. Rhodes set forth very fully the Progressive programme and the far-reaching issues of the election then approaching. “You have to decide,” he said, “on gentlemen who may be connected with a total change of South Africa, and that is why I would warn you to be most careful as to the manner in which you register your votes….If you return a non-progressive party, or an Ons Land party, or a Hofmeyr party, they will never consent to union, because they are afraid to lose the oligarchical domination which exists here and in the Transvaal, which is out of sympathy entirely with republican ideas and Imperial ideas, which preaches that the government of a few shall run a State….Return the Progressive majority, and you will deal with these questions of closer union because you want a Great United South Africa. Return the non-Progressive majority, and all these questions will be opposed. I will put it neatly; Kruger will be supported and the northern development damned.”

A second speech was made to his own constituents at Barkly West on August 3. In this speech Mr. Rhodes referred to the early days of his representation of Barkly West in Parliament, and said that the desire of certain towns for increased representation in Parliament arose from increased population as a result of the development of the mining industry. He said he would not deal with the side issue that had been raised as to his own personality in connection with that present election, as he did not think that that would affect

THE BROAD ISSUE.

Referring to a contribution to the Navy, Mr. Rhodes favoured the idea of an annual contribution by the Colony, to be used by Her Majesty’s Government as they deemed fit. Having sketched the programme of the Progressive Party, Mr. Rhodes referred to the Bond party. “With regard to my late colleague, Mr. Schreiner, who is so vehement in his condemnation of myself, I cannot help remembering that a short time before all the trouble occurred he was prepared to go to war with President Kruger on the Drift question, and within 24 hours….The late Prime Minister and the coming Prime Minister said that physical force was necessary. Why? Because the position of the interior State was so impossible that for the good of South Africa, unless changes were made, forcible measures had to be used….There is one great question before the country. The whole basis of one side in this election is to make the Transvaal paramount, however much the Transvaal may insult Her Majesty. This party say, ‘We are going to make President Kruger paramount as against Her Majesty, and we are going to elect as leader that gentleman who has declared that the only solution of the position is physical force against President Kruger?’ How the elections are going to be conducted now, and upon what consistent basis, I fail to see. What does the position show me? It shows me this, that whatever may have been my faults, the Transvaal situation was an impossible one; impossible, if that which we all desire is to be obtained—the union of South Africa.”

On August 4, 1898, Mr. Rhodes addressed a meeting at Longlands, in his own constituency, in which he said: “The politicians will tell you, or certain papers tell you, that there will be a division of the two races in this election. I hope there will be nothing of the kind. There is an immense feeling of

UNION BETWEEN THE TWO RACES;

But I will admit that the politicians for their own purposes are trying to make it a race question….I still keep the strong support of a large section of the Dutch people. I have a broad idea as to the union of Africa, and I have not altered my ideas in the least about the equality of the races, and I am prepared to meet Dutch audiences equally with English….It is not Rhodes that is causing unrest in Africa—it is the Transvaal position that is causing unrest in Africa, and if I were dead tomorrow the same thing would go on. The same thing must go on until the new people in the Transvaal receive similar privileges with the old—and it is only when you accept the idea of the equality of human beings that you can consider seriously the union of Africa.”

ON THE EVE OF THE WAR

A speech at Port Elizabeth, made September 17, 1898, gave Mr. Rhodes the opportunity of showing a little genial pride in an art which he does not often practice, though he has made more than one success—the art of phrase-making. The rare felicity of “unctuous rectitude,” as applied to that self-righteous and censorious attitude so dear to a certain not uncommon type of Englishman, is quite wrongly described by the French as hypocrisy. Mr. Rhodes invented a phrase for a quality that existed, but had before that time defied attempts at nomenclature, and the phrase is illuminating. “I will tell you,” he said in this speech, “what I mean by Krugerism. As you know in the Transvaal the whole of the wealth, the greater portion of the population, practically the whole of the intelligence, is not represented at all, but they are lived upon by foreigners and an ignorant minority. Now, in this country they desire to apply Krugerism in this way. They are perfectly aware that the votes of the majority are for the party of progress, and they say ‘We will not allow you to be fairly represented, we will evade it in every possible way, and allow the government of the country to be carried on by a minority, and we will prevent any fair redistribution, so as to prevent the majority having a voice.’ This is really Krugerism again in a minor form, and that is what we are fighting. And shall we win? Well, it will depend upon ourselves. Yes, if we keep united in the Cape Parliament, we shall win. But there are always some weak-kneed ones. There are always a number of those who have immense rectitude, who are always finding reasons for not voting with the Progressive party…I am naturally desirous of keeping on welding that State (Rhodesia) together with Cape Colony and Natal and with the future Government of the Transvaal. All these things are perfectly sure to come. It is as sure as it is that we shall get through to Egypt with the telegraph, and subsequently with the railway.”

After again visiting Europe, Mr. Rhodes arrived at Cape Town on July 18, 1899, and had an unprecedented reception. He spoke in the Claremont Hall on Thursday, July 20, at the meeting assembled to welcome him back. His remarks upon the Transvaal show how thoroughly convinced he was in common with all English-speaking South Africans, and indeed, with the British Government, that President Kruger would give way, and that there would be no war—a conviction based on President Kruger’s surrender on the Drifts question in 1895.

MR. RHODES ON KRUGERISM AND CONCILIATION

Mr. Rhodes delivered an important speech at the annual congress of the South African League at Cape Town in October of 1900. He began by showing the necessity of instituting the system of party government in the Colony, and the impossibility of the “mugwump” position. The mugwump he accused of causing the war by upsetting the Government after voting for the Redistribution Bill, which would have given the Progressive party a majority, in face of which, with the feeling in Natal and Rhodesia, Kruger, he declared, would never have dared to throw down the gauntlet to Her Majesty’s Government. Mr. Rhodes continued: “Well, gentlemen, we have had a great battle. And whom have we been fighting? We have not been fighting the Dutch. Let us be quite clear about that. We have been fighting Krugerism. And if we could only drive that home to the people that live with us and are going to develop Africa with us, we should be doing great service. Now, I suppose there are no three people at the present moment with such different personal views as myself, Mr. Schreiner, and Mr. Merriman….These men at the present moment very much apart—so widely divergent that I do not know another parallel, yet on this one point of Krugerism they have been all absolutely agreed, that Krugerism was impossible….We have won our position. Our position was—the maintenance of Her Majesty’s flag in this country, and equal rights to the civilized man south of the Zambesi. I use the word civilized to cover the coloured people and others who, under Hofmeyr’s Enfranchising Act, were considered worthy of the rights of voters. I say too, that the Dutch have got to fight with us against Krugerism. That is the position I take, and I know none will be more pleased than the country farmer to be freed from that awful terrorism of the inner circle of the Bond which is similar to Kruger in Pretoria. What I want to put before you clearly is, what a grand inheritance is before us now. No more divided States, no more hostile tariffs, no more special privileges in the Free State and the Transvaal, no more obstacles in connection with our own race as to the development of the energies of the more vigorous of your offspring in the remote territories of the interior. The whole country one, and with what a work before us! Fancy some of those denizens of the old, worn-out countries of Europe, crammed together as they are still they can hardly move, being told, ‘There is a portion of the earth almost as big as Europe, where minerals are developing in every direction and prosperity reaching to most remote parts, and all that is the first chance of about 600,000 white people.’ Fancy their envy; and for us to know that our troubles are over, and our only thought should be development. As to the future, he continued: “We know self-government means the union of South Africa. If our opponents—I will call them our temporary opponents—would only think of these big questions, they would get tired of this endless personal chatter in the House of which I am a member. They would say, ‘We have got such a big question before us, we must begin to prepare for it. The whole of Africa is at our feet.’ Some of you who are on farms in the country will meet at divisional councils men who sympathized with the Transvaal. Take special care to be considerate and thoughtful of their feelings. When you are riding along past a farm occupied by the other race, make a point of stopping and having a chat. Make a point of inculcating these views on your boys at school coming in contact with young Dutch boys.” Speaking of Rhodesia, he said: “I do not want praise for Rhodesia, but I tell you that in five years we have been able to open nearly 1600 miles of railway. We propose in Rhodesia, if the report of our coal is successful, to extend our railway across the Zambesi below the Victoria Falls. Then we have an enormous territory right on to the Congo boundary to develop. And for whom? For the people of this country and those energetic ones who will come and join us from Home. Are we going to be paralysed in this effort by this wretched race dispute between us and the Dutch? I say, at any rate, we will have none of that. The battle is over. A portion of our people were really nothing but slaves in the Transvaal, and we think a good many of the Dutch people have been up to lately nothing but slaves to a political organization here in this Colony. Come and join us in the good work, and for goodness sake, let us try and drop these disputes about the war and the origin of the war. Let us drop that feeling that we are both going to take the alternative course—that is, to remain in two different camps and fight each other on the race feeling, because we have got lots more before us. If we were in an old country with nothing to do, I can see you doing it; but we have so much work to do—endless railways, endless developments, mines being found everywhere; the consideration of what we shall do with our sheep, how we shall increase them; fencing, irrigation, and fifty other questions arising in this country, which is as big as Europe.

THE COMING PROSPERITY

Speaking at Bulawayo in June 1901, on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of the New Drill Hall, Mr. Rhodes, discussing the question of the position of different Colonies at the conclusion of the war, said that the Transvaal would soon be restored to the position of its old prosperity, and if he was right, within three or four years Federation would be submitted. He was quite sure that the present Colonial Secretary and High Commissioner would not go out of office without bringing about Federation in South Africa. He (Mr. Rhodes) prophesied that Federation would come within the next four years. It was absolute nonsense the idea of talking of self-government for the Transvaal and Orange River Colony before Federation was accomplished. The only power that could make Federation in the country was the Crown, and it had got the matter in its own hands. Mr. Rhodes then dealt with the position of Rhodesia. If they asked any engineer he would say that for every mine now producing there were ten that would do equally as well. He was told that they could produce coal equal to the best of English coal from a coal area as big as that of England. In comparison with the Rhodesian production of £700,000 per annum, he noticed that a neighbouring Colony with eight millions of debt, and occupying the amusing position of being a self-governing Colony—(laughter)—was producing £1,100,000 after forty years. Then he said that the position of Rhodesia was a good one. Turning to the Transvaal, he said that its production would go up from seventeen millions to thirty millions. Little Natal was doing very well. It was in complete touch with the Transvaal, and with Johannesburg and Rhodesia. The only State he was sorry for was his old Colony.

MR. RHODES AT ORIEL.

An “Oriel Man,” who was a college friend of Mr. Rhodes, writes to M.A.P.:

HONORIS CAUSA, D.C.L.

The Oriel “Gaudy,” June, 1899, was a memorable occasion. The University of Oxford had just conferred the honorary degree of D.C.L. on the Hon. Cecil Rhodes, in spite of much opposition on the part of those who considered that he was an unscrupulous adventurer,” and was disqualified for any such distinction on account of the part which he had taken in the Jameson raid. The Lord Chancellor was present, representing Queen Victoria, the Royal visitor of the College, founded by her predecessor, King Edward II. No reporters were there to record the speech which Rhodes delivered on the occasion, in which he boldly defended himself against his traducers. His eloquent words live only in the recollection of us who heard them.

A REMARKABLE SPEECH

“You have compared me,” he said, “with Lord Clive and Warren Hastings, and others who have made it their business in life to act as pioneers and found empires for the extension of English sovereignty. Even some of these men, greater men than I, have not escaped calumny, and have been tried before their peers for alleged misconduct. But they were acquitted, as I have been acquitted, though I do not deny that I have made mistakes, and there are certain events in my life which, if they occurred again, would have been arranged differently.”

EMPIRE MAKING IN SOUTH AFRICA—MR. RHODES’S RECORD

The following chronological statement of the steps by which His Majesty’s dominions in South Africa have been enlarged and secured, which has just been prepared by the South African Association, should be of great interest at the present time. In 1885 the Bechuanaland Protectorate was carried up to the Molopo River. In 1887 Lord Salisbury declared the Zambesi to be the northern limit of British South Africa, a protectorate was extended over Amatongaland, and Zululand was proclaimed British territory. In 1888 Mr. Rhodes acquired from Lobengula the mineral rights over the country to the north of the Limpopo. In 1889 was granted the charter of the British South Africa Company. In 1890 Rhodesia was extended across the Zambesi up to the Great Lakes. In 1894 the British South Africa Company took over the administration of British Central Africa except Nyassaland. In 1894 Pondoland was annexed to Cape Colony, and the territories of Zambaan, Umbegeza, and other chiefs were added to Zululand. In 1895 the Crown Colony of Bechuanaland was incorporated with Cape Colony. In 1897 the railway was extended to Bulawayo. In the same year Amatongaland was added to Natal. 1898, administration of Rhodesia. October 9, 1899, Boer ultimatum. May 28, 1900, Orange Free State annexed to the British Empire as the Orange River Colony. October 25, 1900, South African Republic incorporated as the Transvaal Colony.

Regards,

Ellen Stanton

Email: harprulz@bellsouth.net