That these grievances were real, no one doubts; that they were exaggerated, every one except fanatics will admit; but in any case, it is quite certain that they were not of a nature for which the Johannesburg population would have been willing to revolt with arms in their hands; and Mr. Leonard does not appear to suggest that the National Union was or was meant to be a revolutionary body until that eventful date, the summer of 1895. As regards the main point, which was the question of the franchise, it is evident that, although there were many 1oreigners in the country, they could not in any case receive the franchise without abandoning their nationality and adopting that of the Dutch; and this it is quite certain only a limited proportion of them were prepared to do. After 1895, another set of "grievances" became prominent, the alleged "throttling" of the "mining in dustry" by the Boer government. would be easy to show how little there is in it. Many of the mines have done splendidly, and, in any case, it is the right of any government to take any share it thinks expedient in the profits of its mines. The real "grievance" on this side of the matter is, that, as the charges stand, the low-grade mines will not pay. If the charges could be altered, money could be made in theseif not for the shareholder, at least for the promoter. But that is a wide question, and it is not here in point.

It

It is necessary to add that there had already arisen a certain friction between the government of the Transvaal and the authorities at Downing Street and at the Cape, which culminated in 1895, over what is called the Drifts question. This question was a very petty matter;

war between two rival systems, in one of which the Cape government was interested, while the other belonged to the Transvaal. With the view of forcing the Cape railways into a tariff arrangement which was not in itself very unreasonable, the Transvaal government claimed the right to stop imports into their territory along certain routes. This was alleged by the Cape lawyers to be a breach of the London convention. Perhaps it was. There were, the Cape attorney-general frankly admitted, lawyers of great eminence who took equally strongly the opposite view. As the world now knows, one of the earliest things Mr. Chamberlain did in his tenure of office as colonial secretary, was to make an arrangement with Mr. Rhodes, as Cape premier, by which the expenses of a war with the Transvaal were to be shared between them; and then to deliver to President Krüger a violent ultimatum, such as, it is safe to say, England would never have addressed in the like circumstances to a power of her own size. Whether Mr. Chamberlain meant this to result in the submission of the Transvaal or in a war of conquest, no one knows. In any case the Transvaal submitted, and the war did not come off.

There is little risk of error in the assertion that this and the whole of Mr. Chamberlain's subsequent policy must be looked at in the light of his tion. He had obtained from his politpeculiar personal and political posiical allies the high post of colonial secretary, and he had undoubtedly insisted very strongly upon having his own way. At the same time, he knew that his political allies, to put it simply, hated him. He is an ambitious man, as all the world knows, and he resolved, not only to dominate, but to conciliate the Tory party. For latter purpose there could be no better game than to provide the jingoes with some revenge for what they called the shameful surrender after Majuba Hill.

the

With the character of Mr. Cecil Rhodes we are not for the moment so much concerned; in any case he is pos

The situation of the Chartered Company at the time in question was, to say the least of it, critical. They had annexed Mashonaland, because there was supposed to be gold there. Find ing none or next to none, they had gone on to seize Manicaland in the hope of finding it. There also there was no booty. Then they invaded Matabeleland under circumstances sufficiently disgraceful. Bulawayo at last was to be the El Dorado, but this also turned out to be a vain hope. Now there was nothing left to annexexcept the Transvaal itself. That there was gold there, and gold in abundance, all the world knew. If by any means and under any terms the Rand could be annexed to Charterland, the British South Africa Company might see its golden future after all. If this was not possible, it was, and still is, extremely difficult to see how the enormous amount of capital which the public have described to that extraordinary institution is to earn a dividend. That the price of the shares had been inflated to a value altogether ridiculous was an additional reason for a "coup." In this state of circumstances there came about a memorable interview at Cape Town. Some time in May, 1895, Mr. Beit-a young German Jew-who is one of the chiefs of the great financial concern which speculates in London as Wernher, Beit & Co., and in Johannesburg as Eckstein & Co., visited Mr. Rhodes, with whom he had for years been associated in many vast financial schemes. They had a confidential chat about the situation; they were both, it should be

pany. Mr. Beit was good enough to tell the committee what their talk amounted to. The upshot was that "a rising in Johannesburg would take place sooner or later, and he (Rhodes) then thought, as the Uitlanders were not properly prepared, it might be wise to have a force on the border to assist the people of Johannesburg in case of necessity." It was felt, he went on to say, that a rebellion might take place by the end of the year, and that in that event it would be advisable to send some assistance to Johannesburg, in the shape of an armed force to be sent by the Chartered Company to invade the territory of the Transvaal. Out of this conversation grew up the whole preposterous plan, and it is easy, reading between the lines of Mr. Beit's evidence in the light of subsequent events, to see what the plan was, and to supplement the natural reticence and equivocation of its authors.

From that moment the conspiracy developed with businesslike regularity. The two arch-millionaires evidently concluded that money would do anything, and they had resolved, with singular generosity, to find the money. Mr. Beit, whose confessions so far are much more frank than those of Mr. Rhodes, admits that his firm spentnearly two hundred thousand pounds!~ Mr. Rhodes owns that he advancedout of Chartered funds, be it observed,. by virtue of his power of attorneysome sixty thousand pounds. If this was all, it was frugal. When the raid failed, and the whole conspiracy was unveiled, Mr. Rhodes paid up that money out of his private purse; but there is not an atom of reason to believe that he originally meant to do so. If the plan had succeeded, and the Chartered Company had come well out of it, the "New Concessions Account" would doubtless be open in the Company's books to this day.

Why was all this money wanted? For two purposes. First, to get up and arm an artificial, in fact, a bogus revolution in the "Gold Reef City." Next, to equip an invading force. The

required some arrangements. The Charterland did not at that time march with the Transvaal. For a "jumping-off place" a cession of territory in Bechuanaland was required. Dr. Harris was sent home to negotiate this with the Colonial Office. He was to arrange at the same time for the transfer of the Bechuanaland "police" -a mounted force very suitable to form the nucleus of the intended Raid -to the Chartered Company. He succeeded in both projects, and went back to Cape Town in December expressly to be in time for the "flotation." Concurrently, the Johannesburg "Union," with the local Gracchus at its head, was "nobbled" by the capitalists, Mr. Beit taking the initiative. Gracchus was charmed to find that these millionaires, who had hitherto been on the side of Krüger, had seen the error of their ways. It is true they were divided. Misguided persons like Mr. J. B. Robinson were minded to stand in with the government. Many of the Germans, who were a powerful fraction, looked askance on the movement, and evidently suspected from an early period a British coup d'état. But the Boer government did some irritating things, and there was gradually more and more talk of smuggling arms and of resort to force. When Dr. Jamieson came upon the scene-perfervidum ingenium Scotorum-he overcame all scruples, and extracted from Mr. Leonard and a ring of capitalist nominees, who had become the revolutionary junta for the nonce, the famous "women and children letter." That document, it is safe to say, will live in history as one of the most notable lies on record. Gracchus confessed he did not like it. He signed it in the end-poor fool!only "in his personal capacity," and not as chairman of the National Union; and he fondly dreamt that Jameson and his chief would not act upon it till he, Gracchus, gave the final word. It was undated, and an undated cheque, of course, would not be honored till the date was filled in. It evidently never occurred to him that those honorable

the Administrator of Charterland, were capable of filling in that date behind his back and in face of his agonized protests. And yet that was, as we all know, what happened when the administrator read the letter movingly to his troops, and induced them on the strength of it to “ride in,” and when the premier and privy councillor cabled his copy promptly to the Times, with the dates arranged to suit.

This, however, is hardly the immediate question. It is only necessary to recall the shoddy history of this conspiracy, because at an early stage Mr. Rhodes, Mr. Chamberlain, the Times, and the whole jingo party created an heroic myth about it, which, by reason of their peculiar command of the London press, has been well hammered into the public mind. Until the telegrams and papers seized by the Transvaal government on the field of battle were given to the world, and until the inquiry ordered by the Cape Parliament had brought out, in a fashion which could not be gainsaid, the more obvious facts and inferences concerning the miserable story, the average Londoner and the average Tory M. P. actually believed that Jameson was a heroic man who went in to save British women and children from unprovoked Boer outrages; and that the Johannesburg people had risen in despair and suddenly called him to their aid. That he or his financial chiefshad got up the scheme of a "rising" in cold blood and with Stock Exchange money; that the mass of the people of Johannesburg no more wanted to "rise" than the people of Whitechapel or Bradford; that even the junta organized by Mr. Rhodes and Mr. Beit had retracted the undated "invitation" into which they had been cajoled, and were moving heaven and earth to keep the "hero" quiet in his tent, are new lights which are hardly realized eveu yet. But these things have been made so far clear before, and during the proceedings of the South Africa Committee, that we may assume that the "interim report" which it has suddenly

resolved to present will either declare or assume them. In the course of its proceedings, however, another and a far deeper question has come to the front. And it is because it has come to the front, and because certain members of the committee, and a certain section of opinion outside, refused to let it alone, that the committee has suddenly dropped the whole inquiry, just at the crisis of its Whether it will be possible to gag those who know the inner facts remains to be seen. But it is very necessary to say at once a few things which are not, at present, as well known or as much pondered as they ought to be by those who care for the honor or even the interests of England.

interest.

From the very first, it was believed in many quarters, both here and in South Africa and on the Continent, that Mr. Chamberlain (to use the current and expressive phrase) was "in it." It has been persistently suggested by Rhodesian organs as well as by anti-English opinion abroad. It was made clear by the Transvaal telegrams and the evidence at the Cape inquiry, that many of the Johannesburgers had only joined on the faith of an express pledge that the moment they "rose" the imperial high commissioner would arrive and would throw over them the ægis of the empire, under the decorous formula of a proposal for "arbitration," to issue in "a plébiscite." It is not denied now that Mr. Rhodes gave this pledge, and even that he had talked in some veiled way to the high commissioner about it. It is merely said that the high commissioner did not understand the Cape premier to ask, and did not himself understand that he was giving, any such pledge as Mr. Rhodes passed on to the conspirators, and that the high commissioner remained till the end in blissful ignorance that any such "rising" was in preparation. It is now known, though it was even at the time of the Cape inquiry a deadly secret, that Sir Graham Bower, the secretary and the responsible colonial informant and adviser of the high commissioner, had in fact

been taken into the whole secret, on the cool understanding that he would betray his duty and conceal that knowledge from his chief. We have no adjective quite suitable for such transactions, for they are happily unusual in England. The French would call them inqualifiable. It is well to add that Mr. Newton, the magistrate at Mafeking and an imperial officer, was also let into the secret, and that Mr. Rhodes' colleagues in the Cape Cabinet were carefully hoodwinked and deceived until the deed was done.

But what of the Colonial Office itself? The first fact that appeared was that, as soon as Dr. Jameson had actually "ridden in," the colonial secretary cabled to Mr. Rhodes a furious telegram actually threatening the revocation of the charter. It further appeared, on the Cape inquiry and otherwise, that this thunderbolt took Mr. Rhodes altogether by surprise. He evidently did not expect the home government to take any such decisive ground against him, and, according to his colleague, Mr. Schreiner, who alone saw him at that moment, it cast him into an unusually despondent mood. It was not, be it said by the way, enough to change the purposes of the would-be Napoleon. He refused to move a finger to recall Jameson or to help the high commissioner, who, on orders from home, was making a forlorn attempt to save the situation. Mr. Rhodes considered of course, as he has often said, that if Dr. Jameson could win, it would be all right. He had reason, no doubt, for that belief.

Dr. Jameson failed. He failed, not by misadventure, but by condign folly. The military conduct of the expedition was absurd. The hanging about in the neighborhood of Krugersdorp is to this moment as unexplained as the act of a lunatic; for Sir John Willoughby's version of the famous letter is plainly refuted, not only by the evidence of those who wrote it, but still more by the piecing together of the fragments which remain. But let that pass. The raid failed, anyhow. Johannesburg never really "rose" at all. The popu

lace, including the Cornish miners, either ignored it, or flatly refused to rise for the amusement of the capitalists. The "Union" made terms with Krüger, and Jameson surrendered. It was necessary for Mr. Chamberlain, of course, to take a line. He did it with his accustomed vigor. He declared that neither he nor the Colonial Office, nor the Cape authorities, nor Mr. Rhodes, were in any way to blame. They were, one and all, as innocent as babes. It was the headlong impetuosity of Dr. Jameson, inflamed by the nameless wickedness of the Boer government, which had done the mischief. Nothing could be more satisfactory, if only it were true. The House and the country received the strong assurance with acclamation, and Mr. Chamberlain's reputation went up with a bound.

That it was not true as regards Mr. Rhodes speedily became plain, though the government press as well as the other Rhodesian organs tried for a long time to throw dust in the eyes of the public. At last they have come down to this: that Mr. Rhodes and the "Chartered Magnates" were cognizant of "the Jameson Plan," but were quite innocent of "the Jameson Raid" because Doctor Jameson rode in, we are asked to suppose, on a day which his chief did not altogether approve. To those who know the real story of the telegrams preceding the start, this is trivial enough; but the guilt of Mr. Rhodes and of Mr. Beit and Lord Grey and Doctor Harris and the whole inner ring of the Chartered Company is less important now than the guilt or innocence of the Colonial Office. Mr. Chamberlain spoke bravely of the innocence of the Colonial Office, as he did of the innocence of the Cape premier. Was it with equal reason? This is, undoubtedly, the next question which the committee exists to solve, and it is, strangely enough, the one question the committee shirks.

Since the famous interview between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Rhodes, which was followed by the abrupt departure of the gentleman who had

sworn "to face the music," London society and the Smoking-room of the House of Commons have been full of strange rumors. Rumors, of themselves, are vain. But the odd thing about these rumors is their source. Undoubtedly they are Rhodesian rumors. All the organs of the Rhodes party, beginning with Mr. Stead and ending with the Daily News, are clear that Mr. Chamberlain was "in it." Mr. Hawkesley, the confidential lawyer of the group, has never wavered in public or in private from the same assertion. There are other stories of startling detail. Here is one. A Conservative of the highest honor and standing, whose word no one would dream of disputing, was travelling at the Cape and saw Mr. Rhodes. They discussed the matter freely, and Mr. Rhodes told him plainly that Chamberlain was in it up to the hilt. On that authority, the member saw Lord Salisbury and was ultimately confronted with the colonial secretary. "Who told you I was in it?" said the minister. "Rhodes himself," said the critic. We omit the reply.

But the theory was started that this Rhodesian cry was a piece of blackmail; and so it may have been, in its way. It was alleged by those who were supporting the government that Mr. Rhodes and his friends were not to be credited because they were endeavoring to use private information in order to secure from the Colonial Office in future better terms in South Africa. It is no part of the purpose of the present writer to defend Mr. Rhodes, still less to defend Dr. Rutherford Harris. There is apparently some reason to believe that threats of disclosure may have all along been used, not only by Mr. Rhodes' subordinates, but by himself, for the purpose of obtaining terms from the colonial secretary. As a matter of evidence, however, this makes the question, as it concerns Mr. Chamberlain's complicity, not better but worse. Unless the Rhodesian party had something to reveal, they would hardly be so insane as to use threats of revelation; and unless they