Cecil Rhodes; a Biography and Appreciation

UNiVERSITV OF CALIF0BNI4 SAN DIEGO 3 1822 00014 2786 isn CKCIL KHODES Nv, CECIL RHODES, 1897. CECIL RHODES A BIOGRAPHY AND APPRECIATION IMPERIALIST PERSONAL REMINISCENCES By Dr. JAMESON IWO PORTRAITS OF MR. RHODES AND A MAP OF SOUTH AFRICA LONDON : CHAPMAN & HALL, Ld. 1897 CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. The Winning of Wealth .... 1 II. The Winning of Political Power . 20 III. The Occupation of Ehodesia ... 40 lY. The Work of the Chartered Company . 60 Y. The Dictatorship at Cape Town . 79 YI. The Obstacles to South African Unifica- tion ....... 92 YII. The Eeform Agitation in the Transvaal 106 YIII. The Eaid 134 IX. The Consequences of the Paid . 158 X. The Eebellion in Ehodesia . .178 XI. The Pacification of Matabeleland . 192 XII. The Judgment of Sol-th Africa . .216 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE XIII. The Judgment of England . .241 XIV. An Appreciation of a Great Statesman 2(i(> XV. An Appreciation of a Great Statesman [conthnied) ...... 297 XVI. A Great Statesman's Speeches . 328 XVII. A Great Statesman's Speeches {continued) 360 PERSONAL REMINISCENCES BY DR. JAMESON. Chapter 1 391 Chapter IT. ' 406 CFXIL RHODES AT ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD. CECIL RHODES. CHAPTEK I. THE WINNING OF WEALTH. Anyone who Lad come to the Diamond Fields in Griqualand early in the seventies might have observed a tall English lad sitting at a table diamond- sorting, or superintending the work of his gang of Kaffirs, near the edge of tho huge open chasm or quarry which then constituted the mines. That was the time of individual enterprise, and the rough and ready methods of surface work. A man bought a claim inde- pendently or went shares with others, roughed it in a tent, and, with the assistance of a gang of natives, got through the work himself. Tho -« CECIL RHODES. diamond-bearing yellow ground was beaten up and broken small by Kaffirs ; the broken yellow gravel was sifted and passed over tlie table at whicli the claim-owner sat, keen-eyed to pick out the rough gems, and swift to rake away the refuse. A primitive way of working and living it was that then obtained at Colesberg Kopje, where the town of Kimberley now stands. The diamond-seeker sat at his table in the open air, exposed to the burning Griqualand sun and the gravelly dust that rose in clouds from the sieves of the sorters. No one would have sup- posed that the future of a great Continent was bound lip in the life of the dreamy, carelessly dressed English youth, who sat there daily at the diamond sorting; and yet it was in such surroundings, that the direction in which his life-work was to be done first dawned on the mind of the Englishman, who was one day to make history, and paint the map red on a large scale, in South and Central Africa. The younger son of a Hertfordshire clergy- THE WINNING OF WEALTH. 3 man, Cecil Eliocles came out to South Africa iu 1871, and joined his ekler brother Herbert, who was engaged in cotton- growing in Natal. The climate of Natal was the inducement which brought the delicate youth to South Africa. In 1872 Cecil entered at Oriel Col- lege, Oxford, but came back to Africa the same year, his lungs having become seriously affected from a chill caught after rowing. Not long after Cecil came out to Natal, his brother Herbert was drawn away from the slow results of cotton-planting to the dazzling possibilities of wealth to be swiftly won near the place now known as Kimberley. Cecil remained in Natal, but followed his brother to Griqualand the year after. The discovery of diamonds on the Vaal Eiver had been followed by the discovery of the dry diggings, in the place where He Beers now carry on their work, and there the future head of the Diamond Mines found a straight way to wealth and power. 4 CECIL RHODES. Herbert's claim turned out well, and it was not very long before the roving disposition of the elder Rhodes led him to hand over the management to his somewhat dreamy but hard- working and persevering younger brother. Cecil had a share in his brother's claim, and ultimately took over the working, and left Herbert free to follow the more congenial life of gold-seeker, hunter, and explorer in the far North, an adventurous life, which came to an untimely end owing to the accidental burning of the hut in which he was sleeping when elephant-hunting near the Shire. The more tenacious younger brother, Cecil, persevered at the diggings and prospered amazingly, and here it was that he became associated with Mr. C. D. Rudd, who has had so considerable a part in all his great enterprises. Not satisfied with the hard work he did in the search for and purchase of diamonds, the immense and restless energy, which was already a characteristic of young Cecil Rhodes, found THE WINNING OF WEALTH. 5 vent in the excitement of all sorts of schemes for making money, from a contract to pump out a mine to the working of an ice-manufac- turing machine, in which he and Mr. Eudd interested themselves, for the refreshment of the thirsty diamond diggers and the benefit of their own pockets. A tall, raw English youth, little more than a sixth form schoolboy in age and appearance, careless in his dress, abrupt, from shyness, in his manner, young Ehodcs was already in power of brain and will far ahead of the older men around him, and was noted for the independence and originality of his views of men and things. Deep in thoughts and schemes that reached far beyond the little world of the Diamond fields, Cecil Ehodcs, when he came to be known, was generally regarded as somewhat eccentric and a dreamer, though admitted to be a far-sighted man of business, with a head for finance. He was often to be seen on the Diamond fields keeping his gang of Kaffir labourers at 6 CECIL RHODES, their work, breaking up and sifting the diamond- bearing yellow ground, while he sat on an up- turned bucket supervising them, his eyes on a book, or his mind deep in thought, out of which study and solitary thinking the dream of Em- pire to the North gradually emerged and took definite shape. At first, and, indeed, for a considerable time, the enjoyment of the excitement of making money kept the young diamond- digger and financier in embryo occupied ; but, as time went on, he perceived that money was worth possessing for the power that it bestowed ; for gold not steel was obviously the Archimedes' lever of the modern world, in which he found himself. At exactly what period he began to be con- scious of the magnetism of Africa, the attrac- tion of that vast unexplored region to the North, which was one day to receive from him its name, he would himself find it very hard to say. But, at any rate, he had already for many years ruminated over the idea when, sixteen THE WINNING OF WEALTH. 7 years ago at Kimberley, he unbosomed himself thus to a friend. Moving his hand as a pointer over the map of Africa, up to the Zambesi, he " " said, That's my dream—all English ; a very Utopian dream, as it must have seemed to an unimaginative man of the world at the time. Yet the dream of that young English diamond-digger was to be more important to his adopted country, and, in due time, to his mother country, than all the petty wars, the elections, and the burning questions of the day, which occupy for a moment the attention of our passing generations. As commonly is the case, the judgment of his contempo- raries on the man and his ideas was very wide of the mark, and, of course, no one guessed for a moment that the far-seeing young financier had the destiny of South Africa in his keeping. Nevertheless, he was the appointed instrument to preserve for antl present to Eng- land the most permanently valuable because the most habitable portion of the last great Conli- 8 CECIL HHODE?. nent that waited to bo annexed; and his love of the excitement of mono3^-making, and his re- markable genius for finance, were to supply the first of the two necessary instruments by which the realisation of the dream of Empire to the Korth might be made practicable—the instrument of money and the command of moneyed men. As a general rule it must be admitted that successful money-getting tends to become mere money-grubbing, and is the dry rot of any- thing great and magnanimous in a man. But Cecil Ehodes was from the first an exception. He never cared for money for itself, to hoard it, or to spend it in luxury or ostentation. Ilis wants remained perfectly simple, and the possession of riches did not make him change his mode of life, or spend more upon himself. At first he cared for money-making because he enjoyed the excitement of success, as a marks- man enjoys bringing down a difficult shot, or a fox-liuntcr enjoys taking a stifi' fence; but THE AVINNING OF WEVLTII. 9 gradually his financial solicmes all centred round and were undertaken to advance his one dominant idea, the expansion and consolida- tion of Greater Britain in South Africa, the occupation for England of the seemingly illimit- able and unexplored regions to the North, up to and beyond the Zambesi.

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