64 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



They may argue and prate and order; 

 Go tell them to save their breath. 

 Then over the Transvaal border 

 And gallop for life or death. 



" I suppose we were wrong, were madmen; 



Still I think at the judgment day, 



When God sifts the good from the bad men 



There'll be something more to say, 



We were wrong, but we aren't half sorry, 



And as one of the baffled band, 



I would rather have had that foray 



Than the crushings of all the Rand. " 



Machiavelli never wrote anything more abominable than that. 

 Yet it is the product of our own time, and the language of the Poet 

 Laureate of England. 



After the death of Rhodes, his friends contributed many 

 articles to the Reviews extolling his every quality, except his 

 morality. Upon that point let me read to you what some of them 

 said: — 



Sidney Low (19th Century, May, 1902, 839) wrote:— 



''Absorbed in the contemplation of the great ends, he was 

 indifferent to the means by which his results were to be attained. 

 His abhorrence of detail, he carried into the moral sphere; right 

 and wrong were to be judged by large cosmic standards, not by 

 the rules of a morality which I suppose he thought merely con- 

 ventional. His vision of the future was too vivid to be blurred 

 by such considerations. " 



Iwan-MuUer (Fortnightly, May, 1902, 757, 8) wrote:— 



''If my assumptions are granted (good purposes) I am not 

 concerned to discuss the question of the morality of the means 

 which Rhodes adopted to secure his ends * * * The short- 

 comings and even the vices of the most applauded of 'cosmic' 

 heroes would, if exhibited by individuals, justify their exclusion 

 from the society of decent men. Who would defend the character 

 of Frederick the Great, if he had been plain Herr Schmidt? * ** 

 If we are called upon to judge great men, we must judge them by 

 the standard of great men, and not by that which we apply to the 

 life and conduct of the men and women whom we jostle in the 

 streets. * * * j make no claim for Cecil Rhodes that he was 



