Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/151

Rh the enormous difficulties with which he will have to deal by risking complications on such a subject. There is no danger; besides, the next Liberal Foreign Secretary will be a strong man who will take his own course, very different from the pliant and supple Granville. Of course, I may be wrong; time alone can show; but if I waited for that the purpose for which I asked your help, and for which you gave it, would go unaided.

You will see what a precious fix you have put me in. I will not make any further promises until I hear from you.—With all good wishes, I am, faithfully yours, “(Signed) ”

It would seem from this correspondence that there is not a shadow or tittle of reason for attributing to Mr. Rhodes or to the Liberal leaders any corrupt contract, much less that there was any subscription to the party fund which would justify the monstrous assertion of the Spectator that the acceptance of this subscription, of the existence of which probably Mr. Gladstone was unaware, in any way influenced either the policy of the Government about Egypt or the action of the Liberal leaders on the South African Committee.

The attempt that was made in some quarters to represent Mr. Rhodes as dictating the policy of the Imperial Government by a subscription of £5,000 to an election fund is too puerile to be discussed. All that Mr. Rhodes did was to take the course which is almost invariably taken by any person who is asked to subscribe to a campaign fund. There is hardly anything subscribed to the election expenses of a candidate on either side which is not accompanied by a publicly and privately expressed opinion as to the political cause which it is hoped the candidate will support. Subscriptions are constantly given or refused every year because the donor agrees with or dissents from some particular article in the programme of the candidate he is asked to support. It is a curious thing that a great part of the outcry against Mr. Rhodes’s subscription to the Liberal Party arises from those who, when Mr. Gladstone went off to the Home Rule cause, transferred their subscriptions from the Liberal to the Unionist exchequer. The use of electoral subscriptions as a means of promoting political ideas