Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/88

74 up their own country and do not know what to tackle next—to share in a scheme to take the government of the whole world! Their present president is dimly seeing it, but his horizon is limited to the New World north and south, and so he would intrigue in Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, to the exclusion of England. Such a brain wants but little to see the true solution; he is still groping in the dark, but is very near the discovery. For the American has been taught the lesson of Home Rule and the success of leaving the management of the local pump to the parish beadle. He does not burden his House of Commons with the responsibility of cleansing the parish drains. The present position in the English House is ridiculous. You might as well expect Napoleon to have found time to have personally counted his dirty linen before he sent it to the wash, and re-counted it upon its return. It would have been better for Europe if he had carried out his idea of Universal Monarchy; he might have succeeded if he had hit on the idea of granting self-government to the component parts. Still, I will own tradition, race, and diverse languages acted against his dream; all these do not exist as to the present English-speaking world, and apart from this union is the sacred duty of taking the responsibility of the still uncivilised parts of the world. The trial of these countries who have been found wanting—such as Portugal, Persia, even Spain—and the judgment that they must depart, and, of course, the whole of the South American Republics. What a scope and what a horizon of work, at any rate, for the next two centuries, the best energies of the best people in the world; perfectly feasible, but needing an organisation, for it is impossible for one human