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 rebellion during the South African War it is probable that there would have been no progressive majority at all. But it sufficed for the time, and, in less than eight years from the date of his conviction, Jameson, the ex-raider, became prime minister of Cape Colony (February 1904). He held office for four years at the head of a loyal party kept together mainly by his own magnetic personality. He bent his whole energies to the task of racial reconciliation; and when finally his small majority had dwindled away and the general election of March 1908 had restored his opponents to power, he had won their respect and, in many cases, their affection, and was incontestably the foremost figure in South African politics. He could feel that, in his own phrase, he had ‘got square’—at the cost of what physical suffering and what sacrifice of every personal inclination was known to few.

As prime minister, Jameson attended the Imperial Conference held in London in 1907, and worked hard, along with Alfred Deakin [q.v.], prime minister of Australia, in the then hopeless cause of imperial preference. During this visit to England he was made a privy councillor and received the freedom of the cities of London and Edinburgh. It also fell to his lot to invite the Earl of Selborne, as high commissioner for South Africa, to review the mutual relations of the South African colonies, whose internal quarrels, over such matters as customs and railway rates, appeared impossible of settlement so long as the several colonies remained politically separate. Lord Selborne's memorandum, prepared in response to Jameson's invitation, was the immediate cause of the assembling in October 1908 of the South African National Convention, of which the outcome was the scheme of South African union, which was embodied in the South Africa Act of the British parliament in 1909. By the time the Convention met Jameson had fallen from power in Cape Colony; but he retained his seat in the legislative assembly and was leader of the opposition. As such he was a member of the Convention. He was also the acknowledged leader of the British section of the whole South African population, and played, along with General Botha [q.v.] at the head of the Dutch section, the chief part in the Convention's proceedings. The two men, inspired by a common ideal of racial amity (and sharing, it may be added, a common taste for the game of bridge), became fast friends, and to their co-operation the success of the Union movement was mainly due.

When Union had been achieved, Jameson favoured the formation of what he called a ‘best man’ government, that is, a government formed of the leading men of both races, irrespective of party. Botha's personal feeling was probably in sympathy with Jameson's, but other forces were too strong for him; and when called upon to form the first government of the Union of South Africa he felt compelled to form it on the old party lines. Jameson therefore entered the first parliament of the Union in 1910 (member for the Harbour division of Capetown) as leader of the opposition, an opposition anything but factious and conducted by him with unabated personal friendliness towards General Botha. He stayed at his post till April 1912, when his constant ill-health and pain obliged him finally to retire from politics, to leave South Africa, and return to England. A baronetcy was conferred on him in 1911.

In England Jameson, who was never married, lived with his brother Middleton, who survived him. He occupied himself mainly with the affairs of the British South Africa Company, of which he had been a director since 1902. He became president on the death in 1913 of the second Duke of Abercorn. In this capacity he paid two more visits to Rhodesia, in 1913–1914 and in 1915; and his work for Rhodes's Company, into which he infused new energy and spirit, ended only with his life. In the European War, though he was almost a dying man, he added to his other labours those of chairman of the committee formed by the War Office to look after the welfare of British prisoners of war. But his strength was now spent; and after a short but terribly painful illness, he died in London on 26 November 1917. When the War was over, his remains were removed from the place of their temporary interment, and finally laid to rest by the side of Rhodes's grave in the Matoppo Hills, near Bulawayo, at the place which Rhodes had named ‘The view of the World’.

A portrait of Jameson was painted by Sir Hubert von Herkomer in 1895.

 JAYNE, FRANCIS JOHN (1845–1921), bishop of Chester, the eldest son of John Jayne, J.P., colliery-owner, of Pant-y-bailea House, near Abergavenny, 294