will never remain an historical figure like the
Count of Egmont during the Revolt of the Netherlands, or Mirabeau at the
time of the French Revolution. Undoubtedly he achieved great things, but
nothing truly beautiful. I do not think that even the warmest of his
admirers can ever say that the organising and amalgamation of De Beers or
the conquest of Matabeleland had anything beautiful about them. Still,
they were triumphs which no one except himself could have achieved. He
undoubtedly erected an edifice the like of which had never been seen in
modern times, and he opened to the ambitions and to the greed of the world
new prospects, new sources of riches, which caused very many to look upon
him as truly the god of material success.

Rhodes can be said to have revolutionised Society by bringing to the
social horizon people who, but for the riches he placed within reach of
their grasping fingers, would never have been able to emerge from their
uncultured obscurity.

People have said to me, "How generous was Rhodes!" Yes, but always with a
shade of disdain in the giving which hurt the recipients of his charity.
One of the legends in the Cape is that half those whom Rhodes helped had
been his victims at one time or the other.

It was no wonder that Cecil Rhodes was an embittered man when one reflects
how many curses must have been showered upon his head. The conquest of
Matabeleland had not gone by without evoking terrible enmities; and the
amalgamation of De Beers, in consequence of which so many people who had
spent thousands of pounds in acquiring plots of ground where they had
hoped to find diamonds, and who had later to part from them for a mere
song, were among the things never forgiven him by those whom the
speculations had ruined. Later on came the famous Bill which he caused to
be adopted in both Houses of Legislature concerning the illicit buying of
diamonds, the I.D.B. Act.

The I.D.B. enactment destroyed one of the fundamental principles in
British legislature which always supposes a man to be innocent until he
has been proved guilty. It practically put the whole of Cape Colony under
the thumb of De Beers. The statute was not wisely framed. It could be
invoked to remove persons whose presence in Kimberley was inconvenient.
Therefore the I.D.B. Act drew on the head of Rhodes and of his colleagues
torrents of abuse. It is, unfortunately, certain that cases happened where
diamonds were hidden surreptitiously amo