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CECIL RHODES.*

IN his preface Sir Lewis Michell says : "Personal affection on ,iny Part may unconsciously sway my judgment of the only -great man with whom I have lived on terms of intimacy." "The words are a key to his Life of Rhodes. The book is a -tribute to one who was as warmly loved as he was strongly mistrusted. There are perfectly sincere efforts to be candid -in Sir Lewis Michell's judgments, but he stands too near to Ithe subject of his biography to be really critical. In a sense 'ill& book 'is the official Life of Rhodes, for Sir Lewis Michell .itas had access to all the necessary private pipers. But Sir Lewis hirnself would certainly not assert that it is the final tife of Rhodes. Rhodes's strange and frequently fine -:,imagination needs a high quality of imagination in his biographer. The time will come when the political character ,,of Rhodes will be -Much more critically examined, while .lustice will still be done to the personal magnetism which Appealed to so many people, as well as to the spacious- iiesi of his material additions to the Empire. We cannot pass over the flaws in Rhodes's political character as mere foibles or carelessness or naivete. .Presently we shall say further what We mean. Here we have to acknowledge that :Sir Lewis Michell's work is well planned, careful, and written in excellent English. It is essentially prosaic in form, how- --,ever; and the author contrives to be perfectly discreet by -Allowing himself rather too broad a margin of safety. Yet all biography is Interesting, and such an official Life of Rhodes as

could scarcely fail, and it certainly does not fail, to be -deeply interesting.

'Rhodes died at the age of forty-nine, a time of life when 'Many great men have scarcely got beyond the preliminaries -of their career. He started at eighteen in Natal with no • capital and a weakly constitution, and in a few years had ;grown. into a robust man, amassed a fortune, and laid a -Apell upon the Kimberley diamond-fields, not the most impressionable type of community. He had also managed in the intervals of mining to have an intermittent career at --Oxford. After that there was no rest for him. He created --bite Of the great industries of the world, was twice Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and fought his ten years' duel with Xinger. He added to the British Empire a territory as large --as i.irope, though not of course without a very large amount -of help from the Imperial Government, both while he was acquiring Rhodesia and while the rebellion was being put -.down, and changed the political standpoint of all South Africa. What was it in him that wrought so mightily on his generation ?

The first and most obvious point was his directness. He -never made any secret of his aims. He wanted power, and .becanse money was power he wanted money ; after that he -wanted to realise his dreams. These dreams were large And obvious,—a British South Africa from the Cape to the Line, the great uplands filled with homesteads and settlers --and children, the Empire united in a bond of business and brotherhood. They were so plain that any one could see them ; the ordinary man -understood them, and followed a leader who could talk his own language. Rhodes always -Spoke in a kind of shorthand. He offered the world a bald -Shmmary, for lie had no literary gifts; the vision was in his .own soul, and gave it its dynamic fury.

. • (1) The Li °f the lit. lion. Cecil John Rhodes, 1853-1902. By the Hon: Sir Lewis Michell. 2 vols. London Edward Arnold. [30s. net.]—(2) Qacil .Rhods his Private Life. By his Pricate Secretary, Philip Jourdan. London .4ohn, Lane. Us. net.1 the influence plainV at work. When he erred it was-tecause he was, in ix politiCal sense, unscrupulous. He thought he could have "squared" the Mahdi. He wanted by gifts of money—i.e., political bribes—

regardless of the deep injury done to our political life, to induce the Irish and the Liberal Parties to alter their policies in such a way as not to conflict with his own. He apparently could hot see that by " perverting,- debasing, degrading " political life by the poliey. of the • open cheque-book be was injuring the Empire—for which, of course, he really cared—more than he was helping it by the rapid addition of territory. An Empire with soUnd ideals as to publio honour. will last far longer than one hustled along on the "get-rich-quick -" principle.. "Damn the mans-! Think.

only of the endsi " even judged by the standard of success, is poor business. We do not mean that Rhodes was a bad man in intention. But his standards were not those which could be observed consistently with the sustained welfare and repute of an Empire. Of the payment of the money to Parnell Sir Lewis Michell says:—

"While in London, he, took his first and almost his only plunge into British politics, by giving £10,000 to Mr. Parnell for the benefit of the Irish parliamentary party. The gift WM much criticised at the time, and writers of the baser sort, whose practice is to impute the lowest conceivable motives for the obscurer- actions of public, men, did not hesitate to assert that his desire was to square' the Irish vote as he had squared' Lo Bengula and Barnato and the Bond, and as he once expressed an opinion that, if necessary, he could square the Mahdi. But, as is often the case, the inetive so sedulously dug for was all the time on the surface. It is true that the money was thrown away. No audited account of its disbursement was ever vouchsafed. It was accepted by Parnell with cold oivility, and what he thought of it and its donor must be left to the imagination. But the motive is trans- parently sinifle. Gladstone, in his Home Rule Bill of 1886, had proposed to exeinde the Irish members from the House of Commons, and Pannell, for purposes of his own, had acquiesced. Rhodes regarded this policy as a Separatist one. His greatest aim in life, to which all his other aims were merely subsidiary, was not to disintegrate, but to consolidate, the Empire. He knew, as every political student knows, that Ireland is over-represented in the Imperial Parliament, but between that and total exclusion there was a great gulf fixed. His ambition was to strengthen the Imperial tie, and the Bill, in his opinion, weakened that tie. Cardinal Manning was of the same opinion. Rhodes was, therefore, anxious to convert Parnell, even if such conversion- necessitated a cash payment."

• That excuse is to our mind no excuse. Conversion by cash payment is a deplorable doctrine. Besides, is Sir Lewis. Michell's explanation the truth, or rather, for we do not in the least doubt his complete bona fides, the whole truth ? Mr. Rhodes, we shrewdly suspect, did not want the Irish Members prying into his charter, and criticising any slip that might be made by his underlings in the Chartered

Company's domains, just as they criticised weak points in Imperial administration elsewhere. That he wanted to buy

off such criticism cannot of course be proved; but unless we are greatly tnifitaken, the £10,000 proved a good investment in this particular. The Nationalists took Mr. Rhodes's money, and, as far as we know, never worried him with awkward questions in Parliament in the early days of the charter. So again in the case of the gift of 25,000 to the Liberal Party funds. Rhodes explicitly stated in his letter to Mr. Schnadhorst, the Liberal organiser, that if . the next Home-rule Bill did not provide for Irish representation at Westminster the money was to be returned to him. He also added in a postscript that the money was to be returned if the Liberals abandoned Egypt. He had so little misgiving as to the propriety of "conversion by cash payment," and so little doubt as to its efficacy, that shortly after the cheque had been sent we find him genuinely puzzled that Me. Gladstone should be speaking of the wisdom of retiring from Egypt :— • " As you are aware," he wrote to Mr. Schnadhorst, "the question of Egypt was the only condition I made, and it seems rather extraordinary to me that the first public speech your leader should make, which sketches generally his views upon the near approach of office, should declare a policy of abandonment. I asked you at the time I wrote to see him and tell him of my action, and I suppose you must have mentioned the Egyptian question which was really all I cared about."

To this Mr. Schnadhorst replied that Rhodes's letter had put him in a fix, as he had already used the money, but that Mr. Gladstone did not really mean what he said, and so forth. It cannot honestly be said that the money given on such con- ditions is not a corrupting influence. In the letters we see

Sir Lewis Miehellagives the following account of his visit to Rhodes after the ealamity of the Jameson Raid:— "At first he was quite unmanned and, without a word spoken, we held hands like two schoolboys. I was struck by. his shattered appearance. After awhile—never ceasing to walk the room like a caged lion—he poured out his soul and swept away many of the misconceptions which then and subsequently possessed the public mind. The idea, he said, was this. First. The Raid was to be subsidiary to a rising within the Republic. If and when the latter occurred, the Chartered Company were to staike in atone with other forces. Second. The Republic was not to be over- thrown. A Conference was to be called, the High Comnrissiener to be convener. The independence of the Beers was to be guaranteed in return for redress of grievances. Third. A Customs Union : equalisation of railway rates : a common Court of Appeal : leading on to ultimate Federation. Fourth. Zululand to be annexed to Natal and Basutoland to the Free State, provided recognition of British Supremaey was frankly accepted. Result— a Federal Union under the Crown, powerful enough to say Hands off' to Germany. This great conception, he said, had been marred by the prempitertoy of the Raid, the unpreparedness of the Rand and the timidity of Hofmeyr when the crisis mine. Reverting to the litter of telegrams on the floor, he stated that he had not replied teeny of them. I reminded him that ho was still Prime Minister' that policy required them to be aeknewledged, and that I was ready to send 'safe' replies to every one of them. Read them,' he replied and then you will understand.' I waded through them and saw his difficulty. A majority were from Deboh supporters -asserting their personal regard and continued political support, conditionally on his public disavowal of Jameson. Yen see my point,' he said, and why there can be no reply.' "

We cannot enter into the details of this curious statement, but we note with a feeling of positive amazement that Mr. Rhodes was willing to sacrifice the Basntos to the Free State,—their hereditary enemies. That might have meant Glencoe on a colossal scale. There is a great deal in the book which shows the strong and good side of Rhodes's character. His sympathy with the natives and his insight into their thoughts and customs were remarkable ; with them he displayed a singular patience, although he was impatient in all the other relations of life. He was a man of highly strung nerves, and yet in the presence of Matabeles and Mashonas he frequently took risks which were the despair and admiration of his friends. In these respects, and many others, there is much which can be unfeignedly praised in Rhodes, and which is likely to become a fruitful legend in South Africa. Mr. Philip Jourdan's amiable book adds to the picture. But we cannot allow the good side to blind us to the other. We cannot acquiesce in the fashionable plan of flattering Rhodes's memory because the happy fate of Britain and the shedding of much blood have given us a fresh start in South Africa.

There are two types of Imperial Englishmen. Rhodes is one. At the other end of Africa Lord Cromer, the opposite type, did infinitely better work under infinitely more difficult conditions. Lord Cromer would never work by methods and through instruments dubious or corrupt, and thereby debase the moral currency of the Empire. Rhodes was, in truth, almost the exact contradiction of the character which Wordsworth, with Nelson and Wellington in his mind, drew of the Happy Warrior. He was determined to have his way, no matter how he got it. It is necessary for all patriotic men.to understand the difference between the two types, and to insist that they are served by the right one.