Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/80

66 Constitution, for that is Home Rule or Federation, and an organisation to work this out, working in the House of Commons for decentralisation, remembering that an Assembly that is responsible for a fifth of the world has no time to discuss the questions raised by Dr. Tanner or the important matter of Mr. O’Brien’s breeches, and that the labour question is an important matter, but that deeper than the labour question is the question of the market for the products of labour, and that, as the local consumption (production) of England can only support about six millions, the balance depends on the trade of the world.

That the world with America in the forefront is devising tariffs to boycott your manufactures, and that this is the supreme question, for I believe that England with fair play should manufacture for the world, and, being a Free Trader, I believe until the world comes to its senses you should declare war—I mean a commercial war with those who are trying to boycott your manufactures—that is my programme. You might finish the war by union with America and universal peace, I mean after one hundred years, and a secret society organised like Loyola’s, supported by the accumulated wealth of those whose aspiration is a desire to do something, and a hideous annoyance created by the difficult question daily placed before their minds as to which of their incompetent relations they should leave their wealth to. You would furnish them with the solution, greatly relieving their minds and turning their ill-gotten or inherited gains to some advantage.

I am a bad writer, but through my ill-connected sentences you can trace the lay of my ideas, and you can give my idea the literary clothing