main object to overthrow their government. The trail of
finance runs over the whole story, but it may be acknowledged that,
although Mr. Rhodes had made an enormous fortune by mining speculations,
and although he was largely interested as a financier in overturning the
system of government at Johannesburg, he was not a man likely to be
actuated by mere love of money, and that political ambition closely
connected with the opening and the civilisation of Africa largely
actuated him. Whether the motives of his co-conspirators were of the
same kind may be open to question. What, however, he did has been very
clearly established. When holding the highly confidential position of
Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, and being at the same time a Privy
Councillor of the Queen, he engaged in a conspiracy for the overthrow of
the government of a neighbouring and friendly State. In order to carry
out this design he deceived the High Commissioner whose Prime Minister
he was. He deceived his own colleagues in the Ministry. He collected
under false pretences a force which was intended to co-operate with an
insurrection in Johannesburg. Being a Director of the Chartered Company
he made use of that position, without the knowledge of his colleagues,
to further the conspiracy. He took an active and secret part in
smuggling great quantities of arms into the Transvaal, which were
intended to be used in the rebellion; and at a time when his organs in
the press were representing Johannesburg as seething with spontaneous
indignation against an oppressive government, he, with another
millionaire, was secretly expending many thousands of pounds in that
town in stimulating and subsidising the rising. He was also directly
connected with the shabbiest incident in the whole affair, the
concoction of a letter from the Johannesburg conspirators absurdly
representing English women and children at Johannesburg as in danger of
being shot down by the Boers, and urging the British to come at once to
save them. It was a letter drawn up with the sanction of Mr. Rhodes many
weeks before the raid, and before any disturbance had arisen, and kept
in reserve to be dated and used in the last moment for the purpose of
inducing the young soldiers in South Africa to join in the raid, and of
subsequently justifying their conduct before the War Office, and also
for the purpose of being published in the English press at the same time
as the first news of the raid, in order