Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/75

Rh help such a Church could depend, how they should be recruited, and how they would work to “advocate the closer union of England and her colonies, to crush all disloyalty and every movement for the severance of our Empire.” He concludes: “I think that there are thousands now existing who would eagerly grasp at the opportunity.”

Even at this early date, it will be perceived, the primary idea which found its final embodiment in the will of 1899 had been sufficiently crystallised in his mind to be committed to paper. It was later in the same year of 1877 that he drew up his first will. This document he deposited with me at the same time that he gave me his “political will and testament.” It was in a sealed envelope, and on the cover was written a direction that it should not be opened until after his death. That will remained in my possession, unopened, until March 27th, 1902, when I opened it in the presence of Mr. Hawksley. It was dated Kimberley, September 19th, 1877. It was written throughout in his own handwriting. It opened with a formal statement that he gave, devised, and bequeathed all his estates and effects of every kind, wherever they might be, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies for the time being, and to Sidney Godolphin Alexander Shippard (who died almost immediately after Mr. Rhodes; Mr. Shippard was then Attorney-General for the province of Griqualand West), giving them full authority to use the same for the purposes of extending British rule throughout the world, for the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom to all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise, the consolidation of the Empire, the restoration of the Anglo-Saxon unity destroyed by the schism of the eighteenth century, the representation of the colonies in Parliament, “and finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to hereafter render wars impossible and to promote the best interests of humanity.”

This first will contains the master thought of Rhodes’s life, the thought to which he clung with invincible tenacity to his