to work upon English public
opinion and persuade the English people that the raid, though
technically wrong, was morally justifiable.[56]

Mr. Rhodes is a man of great genius and influence, and in the past he
has rendered great services to the Empire. At the same time no
reasonable judge can question that in these transactions he was more
blamable than those who were actually punished by the law for taking
part in the raid--far more blamable than those young officers who were,
in truth, the most severely punished, and who had been induced to take
part in it under a false representation of the wishes of the Government
at home, and a grossly false representation of the state of things at
Johannesburg. The failure of the raid, and his undoubted complicity
with its design, obliged Mr. Rhodes to resign the post of Prime Minister
and his directorship of the Chartered Company, and, for a time at least,
eclipsed his influence in Africa; but the question confronted the
Ministers whether these resignations alone constituted a sufficient
punishment for what he had done.

The question was indeed one of great difficulty. The Government, in my
opinion, were right in not attempting a prosecution which, in the face
of the fact that the actual raid had certainly been undertaken without
the knowledge of Mr. Rhodes, and that the evidence against him was
chiefly drawn from his own voluntary admissions before the committee of
inquiry, would inevitably have proved abortive. They were, perhaps,
right in not taking from him the dignity of Privy Councillor, which had
been bestowed on him as a reward for great services in the past, and
which had never in the present reign been taken from anyone on whom it
had been bestowed. They were right also, I believe, in urging that after
a long and elaborate inquiry into the circumstances of the raid, and
after a report in which Mr. Rhodes's conduct had been fully examined and
severely censured, it was most important for the peace and good
government of South Africa that the matter should as soon as possible be
allowed to drop, and the raid and the party animosities it had aroused
to subside. But what can be thought of the language of a Minister who
volunteered to assure the House of Commons that in all the transactions
I have described, Mr. Rhodes, though he had made 'a gigantic mistake,' a
mistake perhaps as great as a statesman could make, had done nothing
affecting his personal honour?[57]

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