Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/161

Rh it is now, and will probably always remain, the colony in which the majority of the people speak Dutch. No person ever rebuked more vehemently in advance the attempts of the military coercionists to discriminate against the Dutch in favour of the British. Mr. Rhodes, by all his antecedents, by force of instinct, strengthened by the deepest political conviction, would have been driven had he lived to come to the front and defend the Dutch of South Africa against the “loyalists” who clamour for disfranchisement and persecution of the Dutch as the condition of the settlement of South Africa.

We had the same kind of thing in 1884, when, after the Warren expedition, it was reported that Sir Charles Warren had drawn up a scheme which contained a provision that no Dutchman need apply for land in the newly-acquired territory. Upon this Mr. Rhodes said:—

“I think all would recognise that I am an Englishman, and one of my strongest feelings is loyalty to my own country. If the report of such a condition in the settlement by Sir Charles Warren is correct, that no man of Dutch descent is to have a farm, it would be better for the English colonists to retire. I remember, when a youngster, reading in my English history of the supremacy of my country and its annexations, and that there were two cardinal axioms—that the word of the nation when once pledged was never broken, and that when a man accepted the citizenship of the British Empire there was no distinction between races. It has been my misfortune in one year to meet with the breach of one and the proposed breach of the other. The result will be that when the troops are gone we shall have to deal with sullen feeling, discontent, and hostility. The proposed settlement of Bechuanaland is based on the exclusion of colonists of Dutch descent. I raise my voice in most solemn protest against such a course, and it