I heard one story in particular which, if true, throws a terrible light on the state of affairs in the Diamond City.  A young man of good connections, who had arrived from England to seek his fortune in South Africa, was engaged in Kimberley at a small salary by one of the big diamond mining concerns.  After about three or four months’ sojourn he felt so disgusted that he declared quite loudly that as soon as he could put by sufficient money to pay his passage back to Europe he would do so, there to make it the business of his life to enlighten his compatriots as to what was going on in South Africa.  He threatened, too, to warn his countrymen against those who used to deluge England with prospectuses praising, in exalted terms, the wonderful state of things existing in South Africa and dilating upon the future prospects of Cape Colony.  Old residents warned him he would do better to restrain his wrath until he was out of reach of interested parties; he did not listen to them, with the result that one morning detectives appeared in the house where he lodged, searched his room, and—­found some diamonds hidden in a flower pot of geraniums which was standing in his window and which the daughter of his landlady had given him that very morning.  No protestations of the unhappy young fellow availed him.  He was taken to Cape Town and condemned to seven years’ imprisonment, the end of which he did not live to see, as he died a few months after he had been sentenced.

The story was freely current in South Africa; and, true or not, it is unquestionable that a large number of persons suffered in consequence of the I.D.B.  Act, no more serious proofs being offered that they had taken or concealed diamonds than the fact that the stones had been found in unlikely places in their rooms.  Books without number have been written about the I.D.B.  Act, a great number evidently evincing hatred or revenge against Mr. Rhodes and his lieutenants.

The famous De Beers Company acquired a position of overwhelming strength in the social, economical and political life of South Africa, where practically it secured control of everything connected with finance and industry.  De Beers built cold storage rooms, a dynamite factory, ice houses, interested itself in agriculture, fruit-growing, farming and cattle-breeding all over the Colony.  It managed to acquire shares in all the new mining enterprises whether in the Transvaal or in Rhodesia.  Politically it controlled the elections, and there were certain districts in the Cape Colony where no candidate unsupported by De Beers could hope to be elected to a seat in Parliament.  The company had its own police, while its secret service was one of the most remarkable in the world, having among its archives a record of the private opinions of all the people enjoying any kind of eminence in the country.  In presence of De Beers the Governor himself was overshadowed; indeed, I do not think that if the Home Government had tried to oppose the organisation it would have had much chance of coming out on top.