Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/186

172 not have succeeded. Don’t be annoyed with me, gentlemen. Let us look at the facts. There was that development of East Africa based, if I might put it, on the suppression of the slave trade and the cultivation of the cocoanut-tree. (Laughter.) Well, I saw Sir William Mackinnon at the end, and it almost killed him. He got no support from the public. We are very practical people. Take my own case. Take that of the transcontinental telegraph. It will be of great assistance to the Chartered Company, because it will put our territories at the end of Tanganyika in touch with us, and yet the bulk of the public did not help us. I think the public had really no grounds to subscribe. But I will take two corporations I am connected with. Well, one gave nothing, and with the other an indignant shareholder wrote to the Board to inquire who paid for the paper and envelopes of the circular. (Laughter.) Now, I mention this to show what an eminently practical people we are. Unless we had made this undertaking with its commercial difficulties, we should have failed, and that is the best reply to those who sneer at us and call us a set of company-mongers. (Cheers.) We have been fortunate in forming an imaginative conception, and succeeded, and really, if you look at it, within a period—well, I would say, it is hardly equal to the term allotted to an Oxford student. (Laughter.) Commercially, if you think it out, I think you will go away from this room—no, I don’t think you will go away to sell your shares, for it is fair business. When you went into our Company you went into speculative mining; it is certainly not Consols or French Rentes. There are no more claims for fresh money, and our two millions represent a very