“highest activity of the soul.” Marcus Aurelius was his constant companion. There exists at Grote Schuur a copy of the Meditations deeply scored with Mr Rhodes's marks.
During this Oxford time, and on to 1881, Mr Rhodes was occupied with the amalgamation of the larger number of the diamond mines of Kimberley with the De Beers Company, an operation which established his position as a practical financier and gave him an important connexion and following in the business world. To many admirers who shared his ideas on public questions his connexion with the financial world and his practical success were a stumbling-block. It was often wished for him that he had “kept himself clear of all that.” But this was not his own view. His ideals were political and practical. To him the making of money was a necessary preliminary to their realization, and he was proud of his practical ability in this direction. He was personally a man of most simple tastes. His immense fortune was spent in the execution of his ideals, and it has been justly said of him that he taught the world a new chapter of the romance of wealth.
In 1881 Mr Rhodes entered public life as a member of the Cape assembly. It was the year of the Majuba settlement. South Africa was convulsed with questions which had arisen between the British and the Dutch, and leaders of Dutch opinion at the Cape ventured to speak openly of the formation of a United States of South Africa under its own flag. The British party needed a rallying-ground, and Mr Rhodes took his stand on a policy of local union combined with the consolidation and expansion of Imperial interests. He offered to Dutch and British alike the ideal of a South African Federation governing itself within the empire, and extending, by its gradual absorption of native territories, the range of Imperial administration. Local self-government was, in his opinion, the only enduring basis on which the unity of the empire could be built, and throughout his life he was as keen a defender of local rights as he was of Imperial unity. There was a period somewhat later in his career when this attitude on his part gave rise to a good deal of misapprehension, and his advocacy of the elimination of direct Imperial interference in local affairs caused him to be viewed in certain quarters with suspicion as a Separatist and Independent. Those who were inclined to take this view were greatly strengthened in their suspicions by the fact that at a critical moment in the struggle for Home Rule in Ireland Mr Rhodes contributed £10,000 to the funds of the Separatist party. The subsequent publication of his correspondence on the subject with Mr Parnell, who was at that time leading the Home Rule party, demonstrated, however, the essential fact that, whatever might have been the secret intentions of the extreme Irish Home Rulers, Mr Rhodes's contribution was made strictly subject to the retention of the Irish members at Westminster. He remained of the opinion that the Home Rule movement, wisely treated, would have had a consolidating and not a disruptive effect upon the organization of the empire.
In South Africa the influence which he acquired over the local independents and over the Dutch vote was subsequently an important factor in enabling him to carry out the scheme of northern expansion which he had at heart, and which he had fully developed in his own mind at Oxford in 1878. In 1881 the Bechuana territory was a sort of no man's land through which ran the trade routes to the north. It was evident that any power which commanded the trade routes would command the unknown northern territory beyond. The Pretoria Convention of 1881 limited the westward extension of the Transvaal to a line east of the trade routes. Nevertheless, the reconstituted republic showed itself anxious to encroach by irregular overflow into native territories, and Mr Rhodes feared to see the extension of the British colonies permanently blocked by Dutch occupation. One of his first acts as a member of the Cape assembly was to urge the appointment of a delimitation commission. He served in person on the commission, and obtained from the chief Mankoroane, who claimed about half of Bechuanaland, a formal cession of his territories to the British government of the Cape. The Cape government refused to accept the offer. In February 1884 a second convention signed in London again defined the western frontier of the Transvaal, Bechuanaland being left outside the republic. With the consent of Great Britain, Germany had occupied, almost at the same time, the territory on the Atlantic coast now known as German South-West Africa. In August 1884 Mr Rhodes was appointed resident deputy commissioner in Bechuanaland, where, notwithstanding the conventions to the contrary, Boers had ousted the natives from considerable areas and set up the so-called republics of Goshen and Stellaland. An old Dutchman who knew the value of the position said privately to Mr Rhodes, “This is the key of South Africa.” The question at issue was whether Great Britain or the Transvaal was to hold the key. It was a question about which at that time the British public knew nothing and cared nothing. Mr Rhodes made it his business to enlighten them. President Kruger, speaking for the government of the Transvaal, professed to regard the Dutch commandoes as freebooters, and to be unable to control them. It devolved upon Great Britain to oblige them to evacuate the territory. Largely as the result of Mr Rhodes's exertions the necessary step was taken. The Warren expedition of 1884-85 was sent out. In the presence of British troops upon the frontier President Kruger recovered his controlling power over the Transvaal burghers, and without any fighting the commandoes were withdrawn. Thereupon southern Bechuanaland was declared to be British territory, while a British protectorate was declared over the northern regions up to the 22nd parallel (September 1885).
It was the first round in the long duel fought on the field of South Africa between Mr Rhodes, as the representative of British interests, and President Kruger, as the head of the militant Dutch party. The score on this occasion was to Mr Rhodes, and the entrance to the interior was secured. But the 22nd parallel was far short of the limits to which Mr Rhodes hoped to see British influence extend, and he feared lest Germany and the Transvaal might yet join hands in the native territory beyond, and bar his farther progress towards the north. The discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, by adding to the wealth and importance of the Transvaal, gave substance to this fear.
The territory to the north of the 22nd parallel was at that time under the domination of Lobengula, chief of the Matabele, a native potentate celebrated alike for his ability and for the despotic character of his rule. There were rumours of Dutch and German emissaries at the kraal of Lobengula, engaged in persuading that chief to cede certain portions of his territory. Portugal also was putting forward shadowy claims to the country. It was in these circumstances that Mr Rhodes conceived the idea of forming a British Chartered Company, which should occupy the territory for trading and mining purposes as far as the Zambezi, and bring the whole under the protection of Great Britain. The idea took shape in 1887, in which year Mr Rhodes's first emissaries were sent to Lobengula. The charter of the British South Africa Company was granted in October 1889. Between the two dates his conception of the possibilities to be achieved by the Company had expanded. Mr Rhodes no longer limited the sphere of his operations to the Zambezi, but, crossing the river at the back of the Portuguese settlements at its mouth, he obtained permission to extend the territories of the Chartered Company to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, including within the sphere of its operations the British settlements already made in Nyasaland. He hoped to go farther still, and to create a connected chain of British possessions through the continent which might eventually justify the description, “Africa British from the Cape to Cairo.” The treaty negotiated between Great Britain and Germany in 1890 extended the German sphere of influence from the East Coast to the frontier of the Congo Free State, and defeated this hope. But Mr Rhodes did not wholly renounce the idea. In 1892, when the question of the retention or abandonment of Uganda hung in the balance at home, he threw all the weight of his influence into the scale of retention, and undertook at his own personal expense to connect
