It is this committee which is sitting in Westminster Hall.

All London was interested when Mr. Cecil Rhodes was called before it and put on the stand as a witness.  Mr. Rhodes was the Prime Minister of Cape Colony, and resigned his position when the trouble came about the Raid.

He is perhaps the most important man in all South Africa.  It is his desire to bring the whole of this territory under English rule, and it is thought that this ambition was at the root of the Jameson Raid, and that Cecil Rhodes is really the person who is responsible for it.

It is also whispered that the English Government looks favorably upon his plans, and that the Raid was only a part of a deep-laid scheme to overthrow the Boer Government, and seize the Transvaal for England.

The Boers evidently believe this side of the story, for at the opening of their Parliament the other day, Oom Paul, the valiant old President, stated that it was the object of the enemy to destroy the Republic, but that the Boers must rely upon the help of God.  He closed his speech with the solemn words: 

“The Lord will not forsake His people!”

Mr. Cecil Rhodes has been asked by the Committee of Inquiry to explain the trouble in South Africa, and he has done so at great length.

His explanation is, however, a trifle funny to fair-minded persons who believe that the old maxim, “What is mine is mine, and what is thine is thine,” should be strictly obeyed.

Mr. Rhodes has made a long complaint against the Boers for not allowing strangers and foreigners to help them govern their own country.  He has pictured the woes of the Uitlanders because they are not allowed to govern, and because their children are not taught English in the schools, and moreover, because they are made to pay heavy taxes for the gold they mine and carry away.  They have still another grievance.  Any favor that the Boers show at all is shown to Germans, and not to Englishmen.  The Boers will not allow any of the products of Cape Colony within their borders, but prefer to do their trading with Germany.  A dreadful offence truly, that they choose their own markets!

The Commission has heard Mr. Rhodes with great seriousness and a good deal of sympathy.

So far, strange to say, it does not seem to have occurred to any member of the august assembly which is making the inquiry, that the Uitlanders are mere squatters in the Transvaal, and that if they don’t like the ways of the country they are visiting, there is nothing to prevent them from packing up their traps, and going back whence they came.

Mr. Cecil Rhodes has not attempted to hide the fact that he did his best to stir up the uneasy feeling in Johannesburg that led to the Jameson Raid.

He admits that he sent Dr. Jameson to the borders of the Transvaal with orders to hold himself in readiness for an emergency.

He does not allow that he is responsible for the actual raid itself, because Dr. Jameson acted without orders when making it.