Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/132

118 His sympathies being well known, overtures were made to him on the part of some sympathisers with the Irish National Party as to whether he could not be induced to contribute to their funds. Mr. Swift MacNeill was employed as an intermediary, and the result of the communications was that Mr. Rhodes intimated his readiness to subscribe to the Home Rule funds on condition that Mr. Parnell assented to the retention of the Irish members at Westminster. Mr. Rhodes held that Mr. Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill simply proposed to convert Ireland into a taxed republic, without representation in the central governing body of the Empire, thus making Home Rule lead direct to disruption, instead of making it a stepping-stone to federation. Mr. Rhodes entirely accepted the formula so succinctly stated by Lord Rosmead, when he declared that “as an Empire we must federate or perish, and the one hope of the Empire is that the Irish may compel us to federate, even against our will.”

When Mr. Gladstone, therefore, instead of seizing the opportunity presented by the concession of Home Rule to introduce the principle of federalism of the British Constitution, took the fatal and false road of proposing to banish the Irish members altogether from the assembly which still retained the right of exacting heavy tribute from the Irish taxpayer, Mr. Rhodes felt that an important crisis had been reached in the history of the Empire. It was necessary for him to act, and to act with decision. Mr. Swift MacNeill’s conversations had revealed to him the nakedness of the Nationalist treasury. He was solicited to subscribe to keep the Home Rule agitation going. He saw the situation, and seized it with his characteristic promptitude. On his return to England, Mr. Parnell called upon Mr. Rhodes at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and a transaction took place between them, which Mr. Rhodes always regarded as very good business for the Empire. In his belief he succeeded in pledging Mr. Parnell to the abandonment of the old disruptive idea of the first Gladstonian Home Rule Bill, and his loyal acceptance of the principle of federalism. By this arrangement Mr. Parnell, instead of accepting the exclusion of Irish members from Westminster and the conversion of Ireland into a taxed republic, which would be furnished in advance with an excuse for revolt by the familiar maxim “taxation without representa-