The fact of Cecil Rhodes' absence would have cleared the whole situation, relieved Sir Alfred Milner, and given to the Boers a kind of political and financial security that peace would not be subject to the ambitions and prejudices of their enemies, but concluded with a view to the general interests of the country. CHAPTER XV. DEALING WITH THE REFUGEES The refugees were a continual worry and annoyance to the English community at the Cape. As time went on it became extremely difficult to conciliate the differing interests which divided them, and to prevent them from committing foolish or rash acts likely to compromise British prestige in Africa. The refugees were for the most boisterous people. They insisted upon being heard, and expected the whole world to agree with their conclusions, however unstable these might be. It was absolutely useless to talk reason to a refugee; he refused to listen to you, but considered that, as he had been--as he would put it--compelled to leave that modern paradise, the Rand, and to settle at Cape Town, it became the responsibility of the inhabitants of Cape Town to maintain him. Table Mountain echoed with the sounds of their vain talk. They considered that they were the only people who knew anything about what the English Government ought to do, and who criticised it the most, threatening at every moment that they would write to their influential friends--even the poorest and most obscure had "influential friends"--revealing the abominable way in which English interests were neglected in Cape Colony, where the Government, according to them, only helped the rebels, and considered their wants and requirements in preference to those of their own people. At first, when they were not known as they deserved to be, some persons fresh from the Mother Country, to whom South African morals and intrigues were unknown, took to heart the position as well as the complaints of those refugees. Hearing them continually mention cases in which rebel Dutch had, in this way or that, shown their want of allegiance to the British Government, conclusions were jumped at that there must exist a reason for these recriminations and allegations, and that British officials were in reality too anxious to conciliate the anti-English elements in the Colony, to the detriment of the loyalists, whose feelings of patriotism they considered, as a matter of course, required no reward and scarcely any encouragement. These people, unequipped with the truth, took up with a warmth which it certainly did not deserve the cause of these loyalists, sought their advice, and formed a totally wrong and even absurd opinion both as to South African politics and the conduct of the representatives of the Queen in Cape Town.