The Colonial Office in London was treated by Cecil Rhodes with the utmost disdain on the rare occasions when it tried to put in a word concerning the establishment of British rule in the territories which he gloried in having presented to the Queen.  It was sufficient to mention in his presence the possibility of the Charter being recalled to put Rhodes into a passion.  No king or tyrant of old, indeed, treated his subjects with the severity which Rhodes showed in regard to the different civil officials and military defenders of the Rhodesia he loved so much and so unwisely.

It is curious that Rhodes never allowed speculation a free hand in Rhodesia as he had done at Kimberley or at Johannesburg.  He was most careful that outsiders should not hear about what was going on, and took endless precautions not to expose the companies that worked the old dominions of poor King Lobengula, to the sharp criticism of the European Stock Exchanges.  Their shares remained in the hands of people on whose discretion Rhodes believed that he could rely, and no one ever heard of gambling in scrip exciting the minds of the inhabitants of Buluwayo or Salisbury to anything like the degree stocks in Transvaal concerns did.

In Rhodesia Rhodes believed himself on his own ground and free from the criticisms which he guessed were constantly uttered in regard to him and to his conduct.  In the new land which bore his name Rhodes was surrounded only by dependants, whilst in Cape Colony he now and then came across someone who would tell him and, what was worse, who would make him feel that, after all, he was not the only man in the world, and that he could not always have everything his own way.  Moreover, in Cape Town there was the Governor, whose personality was more important than his own, and whom, whether he liked it or not, he had to take into consideration, and to whom, in a certain sense, he had to submit.  And in Kimberley there was the De Beers Board which, though composed of men who were entirely in dependence upon him and whose careers he had made, yet had to be consulted.  He could not entirely brush them aside, the less so that a whole army of shareholders stood behind them who, from time to time, were impudent enough to wish to see what was being done with their money.

Nothing in the way of hampering critics or circumscribing authorities existed in Rhodesia.  The Chartered Company, though administered by a Board, was in reality left entirely in the hands and under the control of Rhodes.  Most of the directors were in England and came before public notice only at the annual general meeting, which was always a success, inasmuch as no one there had ever ventured to criticise, otherwise than in a mild way, the work of the men who were supposed to watch over the development of the resources of the country.  Rhodes was master, and probably his power would have even increased had he lived long enough to see the completion of the Cape to Cairo Railway, which was his last hobby and the absorbing interest of the closing years of his life.