This brings me to make a remark which probably has never yet found its way into print, though some have spoken about it in South Africa. It is that Cecil Rhodes, whilst being essentially an Empire Maker, was not an Empire Ruler. His conceptions were far too vast to allow him to take into consideration the smaller details of everyday life which, in the management of the affairs of the world, obliges one to consider possible ramifications of every great enterprise. Rhodes wanted simply to sweep away all obstacles without giving the slightest thought to the consequences likely to follow on so offhand a manner of getting rid of difficulties. In addition to this disregard of vital details, there was a tinge of selfishness in everything which Rhodes undertook and which gave a personal aspect to matters which ought to have been looked upon purely from the objective. The acquisition of Rhodesia, for instance, was considered by him as having been accomplished for the aggrandisement of the Empire and also for his own benefit. He sincerely believed that he had had nothing else in his mind when he founded the Chartered Company, than the desire to conquer a new country and to give it to England; but he would certainly have felt cruelly affronted if the British Government had ever taken its administration into its own hands and not allowed Rhodes to do exactly what he pleased there. He loved to go to Buluwayo, and would spend weeks watching all that was being done in the way of agriculture and mining. In particular, he showed considerable interest in the natives. 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.