Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/76

62 dying day. The way in which he expressed it in these first writings which we have from his hand was “the furtherance of the British rule”; but in after years his ideas were broadened, especially in one direction—viz., the substitution of the ideal of the unity of the English-speaking race for the extension of the British Empire throughout the world. To the undergraduate dreamer in the diamond diggings it was natural that the rapidly growing power of the United States and the ascendency which it was destined to have as the predominant partner in the English-speaking world was not as clear as it became to him when greater experience and a wider outlook enabled him to take a juster measure of the relative forces with which he had to deal.

This first will was, however, speedily revoked. Mr. Rhodes seems to have soon discovered that the Colonial Secretary for the time being was of all persons the last to whom such a trust should be committed. He then executed his second will, which was a very informal document indeed. It was written on a single sheet of notepaper, and dated 1882. It left all his property to Mr. N. E. Pickering, a young man employed by the De Beers Company at Kimberley. Mr. Rhodes was much attached to him, and nursed him through his last illness. How much or how little he confided to Mr. Pickering about his ultimate aims I do not know, nor is there any means of ascertaining the truth, for Mr. Pickering has long been dead, and his secrets perished with him. Mr. Rhodes, in making the will in his favour, wrote him a note, saying the conditions were very curious, “and can only be carried out by a trustworthy person, and I consider you one.”

After the death of Mr. Pickering Mr. Rhodes executed a third will in 1888, in which, after making provision for his brothers and sisters, he left the whole of the residue of his fortune to a financial friend, whom I will call “X.,” in like manner expressing to him informally his desires and aspirations. This will was in existence when I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Rhodes.

All these wills were framed under the influence of the idea. which dominated Mr. Rhodes’s imagination. He aimed at the foundation of a Society composed of men of strong