Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/127

Rh call to all those who believed in him to redouble their exertions to carry out his vast designs for the achievement of the unity of the English-speaking race.

What is the Rhodesian ideal? It is the promotion of racial unity on the basis of the principles embodied in the American Constitution. The question of differential tariff is a matter of detail. The fundamental principle is, as Mr. Rhodes very clearly saw, the principle of the American Constitution; and, as he bluntly said, that is Home Rule. As an Empire we must federate or perish.

Mr. Rhodes saw this as clearly as Lord Rosmead, who was the first author of the saying; but it is to be feared that many of those who call themselves Rhodesians have not yet accepted the very first principle of Mr. Rhodes’s doctrine.

So this day they apologise for the subscription to Mr. Parnell’s Home-Rule Chest as if it were a lamentable aberration. It was, on the contrary, the very keynote of the whole Rhodesian gospel. No man had less sympathy with the high-flying Imperialists of Downing Street than had Mr. Rhodes. No man more utterly detested the favourite maxims of military satraps and Crown Governors. When he came home from the siege of Kimberley he told me that he expected “in two years’ time to be the best abused man in South Africa by the Loyalists.” “I am delighted to hear it,” I replied; “but how will that come about?” “Because,” he said, “these people have set their minds upon trampling on the Dutch, and I am not going to allow it. For you cannot govern South Africa by trampling on the Dutch.”

Mr. Rhodes was a Home Ruler first and an Imperialist afterwards. He realised more keenly than most of his friends that the Empire was doomed unless the principle of Home Rule was carried out consistently and logically throughout the whole of the King’s dominions. “If you want to know how it is to be done,” he once said to me, “read the Constitution and the history of the United States. The Americans have solved the problem. It is no new thing that need puzzle you. English-speaking men have solved it, and for more than a hundred years have tested its working. Why not profit by their experience? What they have proved to