Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/65

 the mind and language of English politicians, the larger significance of our Imperialism became manifest. The procedure was unhappily dramatized in the Jameson raid and in the revelations of our public inquiry which indicated the connivance of important British Statesmen in this attempt at forcible aggression. The outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 will, however, rank in history as the simplest and plainest example of the interplay of political and economic motives in Imperialism. For the political ambitions of Chamberlain, Milner, and Rhodes were consciously and skilfully utilized by the mine-owners of the Rand for their purpose of profitable control. The mixed Outlanders in the Transvaal demanded that British force should be applied, so as to relieve them from the taxation and other interferences of the Kruger government, and put them in the necessary political control of the country.

What was my particular personal concern in this affair? I happened to have written in the Contemporary Review of March 1899 an article on “Imperialism,” containing some references to the recent history of South Africa, which came before the eyes of L. T. Hobhouse, then the chief political leader-writer for the Manchester Guardian. Hobhouse, destined to become one of my closest friends and associates in many other projects, urged his Editor, C. P. Scott, to send me out on a voyage of political inquiry to South Africa when the outlook began to be dangerous.