Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/167

Rh concerned. We have satisfied the people throughout the whole of it, and we may say that we have now come to that point when we can deal, without the risk of war, with the peaceful development of the country. That is what we possess.

“Now, you might very fairly ask what has it cost us. Your position is somewhat as follows:—You have a share capital of £2,000,000, and you have a debenture debt to-day of about £650,000; and I might point out to you that as against that debenture debt you have paid for the one hundred miles of railway in the Crown Colony of Bechuanaland, you have about fourteen hundred miles of telegraph, you have built magistrates’ courts in the whole of your territory, you have civilised towns in five or six different parts, and the Beira Railway. Although you do not hold their debentures, you have the voting power, and the railway is completed. We might now fairly say, if you put aside the Mafeking Railway and the land you hold in the Crown Colony of Bechuanaland, as apart from the chartered territories, that your debenture debt can be regarded as about £350,000; because I do not think it is an unfair price to put in your assets in Bechuanaland at £300,000, for, since the railway was opened there, it has paid its working expenses and four per cent. Therefore, in looking at the matter from a purely commercial point of view, you might say, we possess a country with all the rights to it, in length twelve hundred miles and in breadth an average of five hundred, and we have a debt of about £300,000 or £350,000, because we have an asset apart from that country in the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland of about £300,000.

“The next question you would naturally ask