Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/78

64 to eye with him about the tariff war—Mr. Rhodes superseded the will, which he had made in 1888, on a sheet of notepaper, which left his fortune to “X.,” by a formal will, in which the whole of his real and personal estate was left to “X.” and to “W. Stead, of the .” This will, the fourth in order, was signed in March, 1891.

On bidding me good-bye, after having announced the completion of this arrangement, Mr. Rhodes stated that when he got to Africa he would write out his ideas, and send them to me. It was in fulfilment of this promise that he sent me the letter dated August 19th and September 3rd, 1891. It was written by him at his own suggestion in order that I might publish it in literary dress in his name as an expression of his views. I carried out his instructions, and published the substance of this letter, with very slight modifications necessary to give it the clothing that he desired, as a manifesto to the electors at the General Election of 1895. Mr. Rhodes’s personality, however, at that time had not loomed sufficiently large before the mind of the British public for the expression of his opinions to excite the interest and attention of the world. But when I published the original draft after his death it was received everywhere as throwing altogether new light upon Mr. Rhodes’s character.

Mr. Rhodes’s political ideas were thus written out by him in one of the very few long letters which he ever wrote to anyone, just before his departure from Kimberley to Mashonaland in the autumn of 1891. The communication takes the shape of a vészmé of a long conversation which I had had with him just before he left London for the Cape. Despite a passage which suggests that I should sub-edit it and dress up his ideas, I think the public will prefer to have these rough, hurried, and sometimes ungrammatical notes exactly as Mr. Rhodes scrawled them off rather than to have them supplied with “literary clothing” by anyone else:—

Please remember the key of my idea discussed with you is a Society, copied from the Jesuits as to organisation, the practical solution a differential rate and a copy of the United States